What role should the physician's conscience play in the practice of medicine? Much controversy has surrounded the question, yet little attention has been paid to the possibility that disputants are operating with contrasting definitions of the conscience. To illustrate this divergence, we contrast definitions stemming from Abrahamic religions and those stemming from secular moral tradition. Cle...

In this study, we present a hardware implementation of the conscience mechanism in Kohonen self-organizing maps. The proposed realization of the conscience mechanism is important to the functioning of the neural network as it eliminates so-called dead (inactive) neurons. As a result the network learning, the level quantization error can be reduced. The conscience mechanism and the Winner Take A...

Lack of clarity about the proper limits of conscientious refusal to participate in particular healthcare practices has given rise to fears that, in the absence of clear parameters, conscience-based exemptions may become increasingly widespread, leading to intolerable burdens on health professionals, patients, and institutions. Here, we identify three factors which clarify the proper scope of co...

This article critically evaluates the conception of conscience underlying the debate about the proper place and role of conscience in the clinical encounter. It suggests that recovering a conception of conscience rooted in the Catholic moral tradition could offer resources for moving the debate past an unproductive assertion of conflicting rights, namely, physicians' rights to conscience versus...