HOPE AND EXPLOITATION

摘要

The range of vulnerabilities entailed by the hope for an unlikely cure is most visible through the lens provided by some recent philosophical work that treats hope as an attitude that goes beyond the desire for an uncertain outcome.2 These accounts contain interesting disagreements about hope's crucial characteristics, but for the purpose of distinguishing the different forms of exploitation to which hope makes sick people vulnerable, we need only three points, upon which there is uniform agreement: * Hope for an outcome involves the desire for it. * Hope involves imaginative engagement with the desired outcome, such as prayer, mental imaging, or fantasizing. * Emotions, including hope, play a framing role in relation to our uptake, interpretation, and deliberative use of information. On one hand, both the general public and the medical community have the notion that hope is a precious commodity, allowing ailing people and their loved ones to endure hardship and illness, to face terrifying odds, and to find meaning in even the bleakest outcomes.4 On the other hand, the same groups believe that it can be deceptive to support or offer hope when bleak outcomes are to be expected.