Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T03:50:45.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cognitive Moral Development Theory And Moral Decisions in Health Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2021

David F. Allen  and
Marsha D. Fowler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the past few years, health care professions haw received strong criticism for seemingly ethically wrong or inhumane practices. The Tuskegee syphilis study, experimentation on mentally retarded persons at Willow-brook, forced sterilizations of retarded individuals, and alleged malpractice and Medicaid abuses are a few examples of those instances that have received publicity. Incidents such as these, coupled with the development of an aggressive consumerism and with escalating scientific technological advances, haw created an urgent and widespread concern about medical ethics or bioethics. The Hastings Institute, two presidentially appointed commissions on issues in medical ethics, and the introduction of ethics courses in the curricula of medical and nursing schools are responses to ethical concerns in health care.

Although numerous texts and articles on specific bioethical issues haw been published in recent years, troubling questions remain about the normative ethics that form the foundation of responses to these issues.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , February 1982 , pp. 19 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

See generally Piaget, J. Inhelder, B., The Psychology of the Child (Basic Books. New York) (1969).Google Scholar
Kohlberg, L., Education for Justice: A Modern Statement of the Platonic View. in Moral Education (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.) (1970) at 50; Kohlberg, L., The Claim to Moral Adequacy of a Highest State of Moral Judgment, Journal of Philosophy 60(318):630–46 (October 25, 1973); Kohlberg, L., From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away with It in the Study of Moral Development, in Cognitive Development and Epistemology (Academic Press, New York) (1971) at 155; Kohlberg, L., The Concepts of Developmental Psychology as the Central Guide to Education: Examples from Cognitive, Moral and Psychological Education, in Proceedings of the Conference on Psychology and the Process of Schooling in the Next Decade: Alternative Conceptions (U.S. Office of Education. Washington, D.C.) (1971) at 41.Google Scholar
Kohlberg, L., From Is to Ought, supra note 2, at 164-65.Google Scholar
Kohlberg's position on this issue has formed the basis of one substantive criticism of his theory from a philosophical perspective. There are, additionally, other substantial criticisms which are beyond the scope of this paper.Google Scholar
Consequentialist theories determine whether an action is good or bad based upon the consequences it produces in relation to a specific good which is sought, i.e., utility. Deontological theories judge an action as right or wrong on the basis of the intrinsic qualities of the action, rather than upon the consequences.Google Scholar
Hydranencephaly is an abnormality which originates in fetal life, and in which most parts of the cerebral hemisphere are replaced by a fluid-filled sac. The condition can be diagnosed with certainty at or shortly after birth. Only the brainstem, thalamus, and basal ganglia are intact, while virtually all of the cerebral cortex and white matter are absent. There is potential only for vegetative functioning. Hydrocephalus, a more common entity, has a decidedly brighter prognosis.Google Scholar
Frankena, W., Ethics, 2nd Edition (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.) (1973) at 15.Google Scholar
Id. at 18.Google Scholar
Kohlberg, L., The Implications of Moral Stages for Adult Education, Journal of Religious Education 72(2): 183–201 (March/April 1977).Google Scholar
Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.) (1971).Google Scholar
Tapp, J. Kohlberg, L., Developing Senses of Law and Legal Justice. Journal of Social Sciences 27(2):65–91 (1971).Google Scholar
Kohlberg has recently postulated a transitional phase (not a true stage) 4&frace12;, and a stage 7. Neither, as yet, has been fully described in his publications.Google Scholar