title: The role of moral imagination in patients' decision-making.
abstract: This article reviews recent developments within a number of academic disciplines pointing toward an increasing importance of imagination for understanding morality and cognition. Using elements from hermeneutics and metaphor theory, it works toward a framework for a more context-sensitive understanding of human agency, especially focusing on moral deliberation and change. The analytic framework is used to analyze the story of a patient making tough decisions in the context of prenatal diagnosis. We show how a relatively stable outlook on the world, here called the "baseline of choice," is challenged by unexpected events and how imaginative processes enter into the active creation of a new moral order. The ensuing interpretation is then placed within a broader philosophical landscape. John Dewey's notion of "dramatic rehearsal" is put forward as one particularly promising way of understanding moral imagination, deliberation, and decision-making.
authors: University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. kjetil.rommetveit@svt.uib.no
authors: Kjetil
authors: K
authors: Rommetveit
authors: Jackie Leach
authors: JL
authors: Scully
authors: Rouven
authors: R
authors: Porz
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000941:ethics; D003657:Decision Making; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D009014:Morals; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000523:psychology*; D011296:Prenatal Diagnosis / Q000941:ethics / Q000523:psychology