IN SESSION—No Easy Answers: Medical Ethics
James Harold enjoys the outdoors with his son, Tobias.
It’s early Tuesday morning, and in a lecture hall in Kendall, students enrolled in Philosophy 235, Medical Ethics, are hashing out the moral rights of people in the late stages of dementia. Their assigned readings offer two different approaches to a thorny issue inherent in this life-altering condition. Is it more important to honor a patient’s directive for care in such a situation, made long before the dementia took place, or the current needs of the same individual, which may conflict with the person’s earlier wishes?
It’s tough stuff for many students, whose exposure to abstract ideas like the nature of self, standard fare in the philosopher’s world, has been limited. For James Harold, an assistant professor of philosophy who teaches the class, the goal is not memorization of a slate of correct answers to difficult medical questions but an understanding of how, logically, to get to an answer and the philosophical principles relevant to that answer.
“What I hope … is to have [students] become more reflective,” said Harold in an interview in his booklined office in Skinner Hall. “To not accept too quickly what views seem attractive, but [to welcome] what requires serious thought. Especially when lives are at stake.”
While philosophy may bring to mind images of old, Greek men waxing eloquent under an olive tree, in fact, the skills central to the discipline— critical thinking among them—are excellent preparation for almost every contemporary, postgraduate endeavor. Former President Bill Clinton was a philosophy major. So was Woody Allen. Philosophy majors score highest in most graduate-school exams, Harold adds.
To some students, the tricky questions posed by topics like cloning or euthanasia seem a bit “fringe” in nature, but they fully appreciate Harold’s reasoning in selecting them: to dissect an author’s reasoning, think about issues never before considered, and stimulate productive debate in class.
“The point is to understand that this is a philosophy class, and that it’s really hard to put aside that knee-jerk reaction,” offers Jessica Suhowatsky ’10, a biology major from Littleton, Colorado. “I may think what I’m about to say is wrong, but you have to challenge the other arguments.”
Harold notes that it’s easy for students to fall into old habits of thinking on more familiar topics, such as abortion and euthanasia. So he chooses issues like assigning a sex to those with ambiguous genitalia, or tries to find a less-considered aspect of a topic like abortion—such as aborting disabled fetuses—to shake up familiar ways of thinking.—M.H.B.
Photo by Andrea Burns
