The Flossopher: A lover of wisdom…teeth
Welcome dental professionals to The Flossopher, a dental ethics and philosophy blog! Do you ever question why you do the things you do?
The intention of this site is to increase engagement of dental students, practicers, policy makers, and academic in philosophical examination. The goal is to help dental professionals better examine their lives, encouraging ethical careers and treatment of patients.
First Principles
The Flossopher is mainly concerned with the engagement of the ethical principles set out in academic dental bioethics. The principles are (1) justice, (2) beneficence, (3) maleficence, and (4) respect for autonomy. However, we will also explore metaphysical and epistemological issues in dentistry. Metaphysics is the rational inquiry into the nature of reality behind abstract concepts such as health, beauty, and ethics. Epistemology involves the difficulty for humans to grain knowledge in such inquiry.
We examine issues in dentistry from a philosophical perspective. Many authors in the field of healthcare ethics stick to case studies. They then offer clinical or legal advice. This may be fine for particular situations, but the goal of a philosopher is to become better acquainted with universal principles. These universal principles (“first principles”) help resolve all ethical situations in real time without having to run to google.
A Life Examined
Philosophy is very practical and helps us to become independent, intentional, and productive agents in a ever chaotic world. Being so bold, I am willing to claim that only through philosophical examination can we be moral agents. Plato warns us that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” However, we do not all have to go into the streets harassing people like Socrates. In the age of instagram, we must learn to read, engage with sophisticated terminology, and contemplate.
Moving forward, a dental professional must not only examine teeth but examine her life and ask why she does the things she does.
Please start by reading the Intro to Dental Ethics to learn about the four bioethical principles and how to do philosophy.
You can given submit an article for publication in The Flossopher by Contacting the Editor!
Read recent dental ethics and philosophy articles:
A signature can prove that a person wrote a name on a document. It cannot prove that the person made a choice. That sounds almost too simple to say. Yet in a dental office, the distinction is easy to forget. A form is handed over. A patient signs. The form ...
Plato argues by analogy that a leader is someone that must act in the best interest of her subjects in The Republic. He says a ship captain takes care of her crew, a farmer of her sheep, and a doctor of her patients. In this article, we will look at ...
The purpose for this article is to explore the idea that things have innate purposes. The idea of the final cause (purpose) is left out of most scientific conversations except when it comes to biological phenotypes. The classic examples are that the eyes are for seeing and the teeth are ...
In this article I will explore the concept of altruism, giving to and helping others. Altruism will be critiqued based on one of the leading ethical theories on motivation, egotism. We will will explore ethical and ontological defenses, as well as, give a Kantian understanding of altruism. Egotism Egotism is ...
In this article, we will discuss the age old question: "Do I have to floss?". I will give an analysis of the understanding of the term "have to" in terms of physical necessity and moral obligation. The discussion will be tailored to a introductory audience on the topic of hypothetical ...
In this article, I will critique the common sense notion that all our desires are one's own and give us a sense of self. The second section will acknowledge how we can come to know an intelligible self and its desires through practical reason. The corollary establishes the foundations of ...
In the Ethical Moment feature “Ethical issues when a dentist with an active practice dies,” Dr. Jill M. Burns, referencing the ADA code of ethics, suggested that dentists are obligated to inform staff of practice debt due to the “ethical obligation to ‘provide a workplace environment that supports respectful and ...
The following was a question submitted by a student at Northern Michigan University. Please use the "contact us" page to make a submission of articles or questions that will be posted on this blog website. Question: If a person has a dental procedure (extraction and bone graft) by an “out of ...
This blog post will help to develop understanding of the concept of autonomy and its importance to ethics. We will juxtapose it with the concept of personal choice. Respect for autonomy is a very important principle in dental bioethics but it is often conceived as respect for personal choice. While ...
Philosophy of language is the third tripartite in the hierarchical foundations of philosophy. Every philosophical subject (ethics, religion, etc.) can be expressed as a "what is...?" question, "how do we know what is...?", or a "how to express our knowledge of what...?". Mindfulness of language selection is important in dentistry ...
