Confucian Medical Ethics and Cultural Differences in Doctor-Patient Relationships

Vocabulary flashcards covering Confucian medical ethics, family-centered medical disclosure, and philosophical models for interpreting cultural moral differences.

Ren

The central Confucian virtue signifying humaneness or benevolence; it binds individuals in appropriate family relations and broader social relations modeled on the family, serving as the moral basis of medicine.

Junzi

A Confucian gentleman, defined as an exemplary person of moral integrity and good character who actively exercises Confucian virtues in practice.

Virtue Ethics

An ethical framework, exemplified by Confucianism and Aristotelianism, that focuses on the cultivation and character of the good person rather than following strict rules of right action.

Confucian End of Practicing Medicine

The overarching goal of medicine in Confucianism, which is to lead a Confucian way of life rather than treating people's diseases merely as a technician.

Reconstructionist Confucian Account of the Family

The philosophical view that families are autonomous social entities and the source of legitimating authority, whose nature, value, and authority are not reducible to their individual component members.

Traditional Chinese Medical Disclosure

The practice in which a physician reveals a fatal diagnosis or prognosis solely to the patient's family, allowing the family to decide whether, when, and how to inform the patient, and cooperating in deception if requested.

Principle of Confucian Family-Oriented Deception

The principle permitting physician deception of a competent patient within commitments to family autonomy, truth-telling to the family, and beneficence to the patient, provided two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions are met.

Necessary Conditions for Patient Deception (Fan and Li)

Two requirements: (1) the physician finds evidence of manifest mutual concern of family members for the patient, and (2) the family's wishes are not egregiously in discord with the physician's professional judgment regarding the patient's medical best interests.

Condition for Direct Patient Communication

The clinical requirement that a physician must communicate directly with a competent patient if either or both conditions of Confucian family-oriented deception are not met.

Simple Realism

The metaethical view of cultural differences asserting that moral disagreement between cultures demonstrates that at least one culture must be mistaken.

Skepticism (regarding Cultural Moral Differences)

The perspective that persistent moral disagreements between cultures indicate that there are no objective moral truths at all.

Simple Relativism

The metaethical view proposing that what is morally right or wrong in each culture is simply relative to whatever beliefs are held in that specific culture.

Deep Universalist Realism

The view that moral differences reflect different cultural methods of realizing shared universal values, such as gratitude or respect for the dead.

Pluralist Realism

The position that different cultures realize distinct, objective values (such as individuality versus family and community) that cannot all be combined within a single way of life.

Critical Pluralist Realism

A variant of pluralist realism maintaining that cultures realize different objective values, while explicitly leaving open the possibility that some cultural values should be critiqued.