A requirement for serving on a hospital ethics committee is willingness to maintain
confidentiality. Doctors are professionally required to observe confidentiality as regards
information about their patients. It is sometimes argued that professors of ethics, in spite of
their relevant training, are not suitable for ethics committees because they do not have an
obligation of confidentiality. However, the fact is that professors must observe
confidentiality just as doctors do. For professors it is a duty to keep confidential information
they learn about their students. Thus, since both have a duty of confidentiality, it is
unjustifiable to exclude professors from ethics committees on grounds of confidentiality.
What will be an ideal response?
(Argument from analogy. It is argued that both cases should be treated the same
because, it is claimed, they are relevantly similar. They are indeed similar in virtue
of being obliged to keep confidences. They are not similar in virtue of the clients to
whom they have their obligations or to the kinds of information they are obliged to
keep. The objection to professors serving on ethics committees is based on a false
analogy, since both groups do have a duty of confidentiality. The objection would
have to be reframed: professors do not have a duty to patients.)
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respect.
Indicate whether the statement is true or false.According to the analogical version of the design argument, just as a watch has a watch-maker, so the world has a world-maker (God) who designs it. Hume rejects this analogy because, he says:
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Suppose that Denise posts lies about Darrell on her Facebook page, because she wants to make Danielle break up with him. Denise does this because she believes that she, Darrell, Danielle, and everyone else who is affected by the breakup will ultimately be happier as a result. Denise is thinking like a
a. Kantian b. utilitarian c. virtue ethicist d. none of these