PHIL514 - Healthcare and the Human Person

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Teaching organisation

This unit will be delivered in online mode using an active learning approach to support students in the exploration of knowledge essential to the discipline. Students are provided with choice and variety in how they learn. Students are encouraged to contribute to asynchronous weekly discussions. Active learning opportunities provide students with opportunities to practice and apply their learning in situations similar to their current or future professions. Activities encourage students to bring their own examples to demonstrate understanding, application and engage constructively with their peers. Students receive regular and timely feedback on their learning, which includes information on their progress.

Unit rationale, description and aim

This unit provides an introduction to philosophy of the human person, thereby providing a rich context for understanding the “presenting person” in healthcare settings, and ethical issues concerning treatment. As such, it considers problems such as personal identity; free will; consciousness and issues around the relatedness of body, mind and soul; life meaning and understandings of death; sexuality and gender; reason and emotion; the individual and community; and so on. Each of these issues will be considered in the context of an exploration of the nature of illness and wellness, and of the activity and vocation of providing care for the unwell. In providing participants with a heightened appreciation of the complexities of human lives, the unit aims to assist students to critically analyse patterns of patients need, and thus the ethical issues raised in the care of individuals in social and familial contexts.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Critically analyse various issues and problems in philosophical anthropology (GA5)

LO2 - Apply issues in philosophical anthropology for clinical practice (GA1, GA4, GA5, GA8)

LO3 - Assess the implications of different theoretical understandings of the human person to particular clinical situations (GA1, GA4, GA5)

Graduate attributes

GA1 - Demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity

GA4 - Think critically and reflectively

GA5 - Demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession

GA8 - Locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information

Content

Topics chosen from the following broad areas:

• The patient as a human person;
• The lived experience of illness;
• Selected issues in philosophical anthropology of relevance to the ethics of healthcare:
• mind and body;
• personal identity;
• freedom;
• life meaning and understandings of death;
• sexuality and gender;
• reason and emotion;
• the individual and community

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

ACU Online

This unit will be delivered in online mode using an active learning approach to support students in the exploration of knowledge essential to the discipline. Students are provided with choice and variety in how they learn. Students are encouraged to contribute to asynchronous weekly discussions. Active learning opportunities provide students with opportunities to practice and apply their learning in situations similar to their future professions. Activities encourage students to bring their own examples to demonstrate understanding, application and engage constructively with their peers. Students receive regular and timely feedback on their learning, which includes information on their progress.

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment strategy for this unit is designed to facilitate broad engagement across the topics covered, while also requiring deeper engagement with one of the unit topics in particular. The online test is designed to check that students have a solid working understanding of key items of terminology pertinent to the topics investigated in the unit, and that they are able to apply them practically. The short written task that follows requires students to explicate and analyse a key text drawn from one of these fields, thereby applying their understanding of terms and theories, while also developing and demonstrating critical analytical skills. Finally, the research essay provides students with the opportunity to undertake sustained philosophical reading and research, culminating in an extended piece of formal writing that examines their capacity to develop a coherent argument in response to an important philosophical question. 

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Blackmore, S (ed). (2005). Conversations on Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cahill, K et al. (2017). Finite but Unbounded: New Approaches in Philosophical Anthropology. Berlin: De Gruyter.  

Kane, R. (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kupperman, J. (2010). Theories of Human Nature. Indianapolis: Hackett.

McLaughlin, B, et al (eds). (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Trier-Bieniek, A and P. Leavy. (2014). Gender & Pop Culture. Springer.

Quante, M. (2017). Personal Identity as a Principle of Biomedical Ethics. Springer International.

Thagard, P. (2010). The Brain and the Meaning of Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Torchia, J. (2008) Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature. Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers.

Tuomela, R. (2007). The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press.