Philosophy
https://hdl.handle.net/1808/96
2024-03-28T17:25:21ZReframing the Opioid Epidemic into its Proper Context: With results from survey taken in March 2018
https://hdl.handle.net/1808/32541
Reframing the Opioid Epidemic into its Proper Context: With results from survey taken in March 2018
Lamb, Maxx P.
In this essay I will address the imperative nature of relieving pain due to its physiological consequences. I will also reference sources that illustrate comprehensively how to do this. I also recommend measure that can be taken to reduce the diversion (particularly by theft, which is responsible for most prescription drugs that end up on the black market) substantially and effectively without reducing patient access to them. I will also elucidate the differences between dependence and addiction, and explain why opioids are essential for the management of severe (or intractable) pain.
The American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) are by far the most recent, comprehensive, detailed, thorough, and useful guidelines formulated on opioid prescribing in light of the national crisis of overdose deaths. Utilizing the ASIPP guidelines in place of the older, and far less comprehensive CDC guidelines would be advisable, and beneficial to millions suffering from chronic pain, and steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths resulting from illicit fentanyl analogues such as carfentanil that are driving these deaths. Taking “high dose” –an arbitrary distinction (Kroenke and Cheville, 2017)–opioids off of the market will only cause suffering and death at worst, and inconvenience and suffering at best without reducing overdose deaths. This is especially true when one considers how the vast majority of “overdose” deaths involved illicit carfentanil and its analogues, not drugs prescribed by doctors, and as such there is no rational reason to remove these lifesaving drugs from the market or restrict access in any other manner as has been proposed by the FDA, and enacted via the CDC’s guidelines for opioid prescribing (2016), which have indisputably resulted in a great deal of pain and suffering (Kline and Lamb, 2017) The gaps and inconsistencies left in the management of pain have been profound; in every state in the U.S. since the implementation of the VA Department of Defense guidelines and the CDC guidelines, patients have been expressing disturbing amounts of suicidal ideation on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and on comment threads of news articles. Their complaints and reasons for expressing such sentiments are always in relation to inadequate pain relief, typically because their doctors forcefully, involuntarily, tapered them, a practice with no research showing benefit, and plenty of research showing profound harms, as well as an abundance of testimonials.
2018-06-18T00:00:00ZWomen Philosophers Throughout History: An Open Collection
https://hdl.handle.net/1808/30067
Women Philosophers Throughout History: An Open Collection
Lascano, Marcy; Watson, Kevin; Martins, Rafael
This is collection of four philosophical texts written exclusively by women. It contemplates in chronological order The Dialogue by Catherine of Siena, The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex by Judith Drake, and An Enquiry into the Evidence of the Christian Religion by Susanna Newcome. As such, the collection includes works in value theory, practical reason, theology, metaphysics, and epistemology. It encompasses eminently philosophical topics such as self-knowledge, prudence vs. morality, the pursuit of perfection, the cosmological argument, Cartesianism, the psychology of religious experience, reason vs. faith, and an array of topics in Early Modern feminism.
This project was funded by KU Libraries’ Parent’s Campaign with support from the David Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright and the Open Educational Resources Working Group in the University of Kansas Libraries.
2020-01-01T00:00:00ZThomistic Approaches to Welfare Theory
https://hdl.handle.net/1808/29881
Thomistic Approaches to Welfare Theory
Hayes, Michael
The purpose of this work is primarily to defend the Thomistic approach to well-being on three fronts. First, it is often said that objective theories of well-being are vulnerable to the objection that, if well-being is objective, someone’s good might not sufficiently resonate with him or her. That is, objectivist theories suffer because they fail to meet the “internalist” constraint. I argue, however, that a Thomistic theory of well-being—objective though it is—is not vulnerable to this criticism. Second, it has been argued that perfectionist theories of well-being (like Aquinas’) cannot accommodate the intuition that pleasure and “cheap thrills” positively contribute to human well-being. I argue that a Thomistic theory of well-being can indeed affirm the intrinsic goodness of pleasure and “cheap thrills.” Finally, I argue—against the objections of other scholars—that a singular analysis of relational goodness (i.e. x is good for y) is possible. This singular analysis is grounded in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and, I believe, can helpfully inform our discussions about human well-being.
2019-05-31T00:00:00ZWhy There is no General Solution to the Problem of Software Verification
https://hdl.handle.net/1808/29420
Why There is no General Solution to the Problem of Software Verification
Symons, John; Horner, Jack J.
How can we be certain that software is reliable? Is there any method that can verify the correctness of software for all cases of interest? Computer scientists and software engineers have informally assumed that there is no fully general solution to the verification problem. In this paper, we survey approaches to the problem of software verification and offer a new proof for why there can be no general solution.
2019-06-03T00:00:00Z