Registration Link: For HKU members / Non-HKU members
MH Conversations and Connections Series (Contemporary Issues in Bioethics) – Lunchtime Seminar
Title: Through Thick and Thin: Trust, Commitment, and Obligation in Medicine
Date: 13 Aug 2025 (Wed)
Time: 12:30-1:45 pm HKT
Venue: HKJC-S1B, G/F, Room G-02, The HKJC Bldg for Interdisciplinary Research, 5 Sassoon Road
Registration Link: For HKU members / Non-HKU members
Abstract:
In The Trusted Doctor, Rhodes (2020) identifies trust as the center of moral gravity in medicine. On her view, the medical professional’s fundamental obligation is to seek trust and be worthy of it, and all other obligations derived from it. In “Trust, Distrust and Commitment,” Hawley (2014) develops a commitment theory of trust, according to which to trust someone to do something is to believe that they have a commitment to doing it and to rely on them to meet that commitment. Hawley separates trust and obligation for three reasons: (1) people can make contrary-to-duty commitments, (2) people can have obligations to which they are uncommitted, and (3) the concept of “being trustworthy” (i.e. living up to one’s commitments) is thicker than the concept of “acting rightly” (i.e. living up to one’s obligations). Now, I find both Rhodes’s view and Hawley’s view compelling. However, combining them generates a puzzle. If we characterize trust and trustworthiness in terms of commitment rather than obligation, then we deprive “seek trust and deserve it” of its moral force. In this presentation, I will characterize and motivate this puzzle, and I will sketch some ways of solving it. And I will say why this matters for the ethics of medicine.
Speaker:
Dr Kyle Ferguson
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Hunter College, City University of New York
Dr Kyle Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College, CUNY. He works in moral, social, and political philosophy, bioethics, and environmental ethics. He is co-editor of The Metaphysics of Practice: Writings on Action, Community, and Obligation by Wilfrid Sellars (Oxford University Press, 2023) and the author or co-author of more than a dozen journal articles and book chapters. His current research focuses on ethical challenges related to climate change adaptation, vaccines and immunization policy, and disease eradication. Since 2018, Kyle has co-led the NYU–University of Ghana Research Integrity Training Program, a bioethics capacity building program in West Africa funded by the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Augustana College and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center. He completed an ethics fellowship in at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a postdoctoral fellowship at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Welcome to join us!
Enquiry: Please contact Mr Edison Cheng (mehu@hku.hk).