Scholarly Research Writing Assignment on Nursing Paper

Scholarly Writing Assignment on Nursing - Research Paper Example Health and Illness Health, illness, psychosocial aspects of health and their interrelations are an area that receives much debate among medical practitioners, psychologists and other stakeholders besides being accompanied by confusion among the public. Questions abound about the difference between health and illness and whether the absence of one translates to presence of the other, whether they are absolute or relative terms and particularly whether health means absence of all diseases in an individual’s body. The role of personal attitudes in disease causation and development in relation to the known psychosocial aspects of health and illness also elicits discussion. This calls for studies into the existing evidence on the entire concept of health, illness and the psychological influences on the two. 1. Health and Illness Before the two concepts can be compared and contrasted, it is important to understand why there is a need to define each of them. Data on morbidity is an i mportant aspect in healthcare systems around the world, and the views of individuals or societies on what health is and what it means to be ill is crucial to epidemiology. Different sections of the society seem to have different perspectives on the two concepts; lay people have their own views not necessarily based on biomedical tenets while even expert opinion appears unresolved. Moreover, illness and health perspectives or traditions impact the decisions of individuals to seek medical care or other alternatives. The patients’ views on health also may have an interesting comparison to what a medical practitioner diagnoses (Unden and Elofsson, 2001). Health is usually defined as a state, meaning that it is absolute rather than relative. In the state of health, one is completely well in terms of physical, social and psychological aspects. This description of health means that absence of diagnosable disease is not the only qualifier to determine whether a person is healthy or n ot. The other aspect that can be derived from this definition is that health is a positive concept. Illness on the other hand is defined as a state of not being well as self-reported by a patient. It is based on the physical or psychological symptoms that the patient reports and can vary from minor problems to serious ones. Illness is thus a negative concept. However, the health and illness concepts have been understood in several different perspectives. Most people’s understanding is that the two terms have an inverse relationship in that the more there is of one, the less there is of the other. This creates a scenario where health is not viewed as an absolute state and rather much of a relative state. Further perspectives are that health is an entirely different concept unrelated to illness hence definitions such as the capacity of action towards goals that are vital or the possibility of living meaningfully (Wikman, Marklund and Alexanderson, 2004). Van Dalen, Williams and Gudex (1994) explored the views of lay people on the concepts of health and illness. They found that the two concepts were closely related to such individuals, with health being termed as the absence of illness. Other individuals stated that health is the functional capacity of an individual, while other groups related it to fitness. Their study found out that personal health was less related to the

The Divine Command Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Divine Command Theory - Essay Example Too many words and arguments have been expended on this topic, but let me draw my reason from this simple passage to why this theory should be endorsed: " God is love." [1 John 4:8]. If we believe that God does not declare what is good, and simply commands us to do it, just because he is the stronger and he is therefore the authority, isn't it hard to obey The human nature is stubborn, that I believe. But if we are to think that there are these existing commandments, from an authority who knows our inmost being, Someone who provides our needs even before we ask for it, the One who loves us unconditionally (these I learned from Sunday schools), isn't it true that it will be easier to follow I deem that the same God I got to know on Sunday schools is the same God being talked about in the Divine Command Theory. Therefore, to endorse the theory will mean no harm; instead this will lead people to do good, embrace what is good, and to obey His commandments. One main objection to the Divine Command theory is the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma, proposed by Plato. The dilemma goes like this: "are morally good acts good because God commands it, or God commands it because God Himself is good" From this, at least three problems for a Divine Command Theory arise: The problem of emptiness, whereby "God commands what is good"; the problem of independence, whereby God only commands things because they are already morally good, thus making God irrelevant to the moral rightness of action; and thirdly the problem of horrendous commands, whereby God could, if DCT is true, command acts that we find horrendous The independence problem: how can the notion of "goodness" be objectively separate from God How can one judge God to be good if God is the source of what we call goodness (Peoples). I chose to cite the implication that morality is arbitrary as another standard objection to the theory aside from the well famous Euthyphro Dilemma. It implies that if the theory is true, morality is based only on God's whim. Therefore if God commands cruelty then, it would be only right to obey him and commit cruelty as well. One reply to this objection denies that God, the familiar omnipotent, omniscience, and omnibenevolent theistic deity (Miller), would have commanded such things because, He necessarily does not command evil. Whether God is red in tooth and claw (Kevin Kim), or whether He is the God of love I came to know on Sunday schools, it only means that all of us, from time to time, reflects on that Being to whom goodness emanates, may it be absolute or not depending on your beliefs. Works Cited Wheeler. http://www.philosophy.uconn.edu/department/wheeler/divine.pdf Glenn Andrew Peoples http://www.berettaonline.com/articles/philosophy/echo.html Miller, Christian. "Divine Theory and Obligation". New Waves in Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Y. Nagasawa and E. Wielenberg. Palgrave Macmillan, 105-124.. http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5230U.pdf Kim, Kevin. http://bighominid.blogspot.com/2005/05/divine-command-theory.html Cultural Relativism Cultural relativism is the philosophical principle which says that an individual's beliefs and activities is to be understood by his culture. It holds