This is for revision for my Advanced Higher RMPS class at school. It deals with the ethics surrounding embryo research and abortion, and the opinions of different philosophers and religions.

This is revision for my Advanced Higher RMPS class at school. Our topic is medical ethics and this is the euthanasia section where we investigate the laws surrounding assisted suicicde; the underlying reasons; religious and secular viewpoints on the issue; and the morality of it.

Fritjof Capra said that from a systems perspective, ethical behavior is always related to community; it is behaviour for the common good. Using this perspective, I would define Meta-Values as those values that promote the well-being of human beings and safeguard the biosphere on which that well-being ultimately depends.  Considering meta-values as an overriding criteria and rejecting an automatic acceptance the narrow options offered by doctrines and ideologies provides a much larger choice on which to base decisions.  Doctrines and ideologies could then serve to provide explanations, views of how the world works, that could be used if found appropriate in a particular situation -  but  viewed from an agnostic stance and not from a quasi religious belief in their truth. As Donella Meadows once said, 'No paradigm is true'. Actions based on aspects of  doctrinal beliefs that are false are very likely to lead to unintended negative consequences.  Can carefully considered decisions based on Meta-Values avoid most of these negative side effects? The CLD shows the dynamic that could be at work if this assumption is true. 

Examples of macroanalysis relevant to assessing individual patient causal mechanisms contributing to deficits in wellbeing from fava guidi sturmey and ethicsfor judging value from barbosa 2012

Arthur Kleinman's book p228 the remaking of moral life

Here we show that the model is able to evaluate intrinsic as well as instrumental values and is accepting arguments of virtues ethics, deontic ethics as well as consequentialism.

Summary of Buchanan 2008 AJPH article

WIP Integrating other Double Loop Learning and Clinical Reasoning Concepts with Klein's Macrocognition and Lintern's Decision Ladder.

Adjectives such  as 'bad' or 'good' used for value judgments always evaluate something  specific - they characterize what they describe as predicate. Unlike the adjective 'good', the word 'good' in the phrase 'The Common Good' does not qualify anything. It is a noun and  intrinsic value that denotes something desirable. As it does not qualify any specific object or project it could be regarded as an all-encompassing Meta Value. This diagram shows a practical use of The Common Good as a guiding principle:  anything that creates it or adds to it is morally desirable and anything that detracts from it or destroys it is not. The word 'common' that limits the meaning of the noun 'good' is taken to mean 'civilization as a whole', though it would be possible to specify a local community also. Only factors that influence the common good DIRECTLY have been shown. These factors could serve to formulate goals to prompt desirable action and are very suitable for exploration via the use of systems thinking. 

The purpose of this insight intends to provide a template for public and private partnerships in establishing basic human needs with variables determined at the national or state/tribal levels.