Lunchtime Talk – Daniel Wilkenfeld 10/31/25

Title: Moral Distress as a Kind
Abstract: Within nursing (and other healthcare) ethics, researchers often talk about “moral distress”. However, there is disagreement over how narrowly or broadly to define the construct, with options ranging from this construct only applying when someone knows the right action but is prevented from taking it by external constraints, to being any psychological distress experienced adjacent to a moral event. In this talk I explore how philosophy of science (and some other fields) can shed light on this question, specifically by investigating whether moral distress is best thought of as a real kind, whether the evolution of moral distress (the concept) is an example of appropriate open-textured conceptual change, and whether we should be lumpers or splitters about different phenomena that could fall under this particular same heading. (Spoiler alert: yes, no, and splitters.)