Carter Hardy
Carter Hardy
Assistant Professor
VIEW CV 508-929-8805 chardy@worcester.edu
Faculty Member's Office
S320-B
Office Hours:
TR 2:30-4:00, or you may make appointments with me through email

Bio

Carter Hardy is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Worcester State University. His work focuses on the role that emotions play in our moral motivations and values, especially as they relate to physician-patient relationships and other areas of medical practice. His areas of specialization include bioethics and moral psychology, and applied ethics. He has published papers on the role that empathy and sympathy play in best medical practices, as well as how other emotions, like humor, impact these emotions. He also coaches Worcester State University’s Bioethics Bowl team.

Medical Ethics
Physician-Patient Relationship
Moral Psychology
Moral Emotions
Empathy and Sympathy
Emotional Solidarity
Moral Motivation
Applied Ethics
Artificial Emotional Intelligence
Phenomenology

Publications

AMA Journal of Ethics

Empathy and Calm as Social Resources in Clinical Practice

Empathy has been shown to improve patient care and physician well-being. However, the emotional labor involved in expressing empathy might interfere with experiencing calm, equally important to clinicians’ well-being. This article offers examples of how clinical environments can bolster both empathy and calm and suggests that empathy can be expressed socially, not just individually, to build solidarity and make space for calm.
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Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy

Humor and Sympathy in Medical Practice

Medical professionals seem to interpret their uses of humor very differently from those outside their profession. Nurses and physicians argue that humor is necessary for them to do their jobs well. Many (potential) patients are horrified that they could one day be the butt of their physician’s jokes. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the respectful use of humor in clinical practice, so as to support its importance in medical practice, while simultaneously protecting against its potential abuse. While humor can conflict with clinical sympathy, but this need not be the case. If medical professionals actively engage with clinical sympathy and focus on using humor in a way that is respectful towards their patients, then humor can continue to be a positive force in their lives while still providing the best care for their patients.
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Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy

Clinical Sympathy: The Important Role of Affectivity in Clinical Practice

Bioethics has begun to see the revaluation of affects in medical practice, but not all of them, and not necessarily in the sense of affects as we know them. Empathy has been accepted as important for good medical practice, but only in a way that strips it of its affectivity and thus prevents other affects, like sympathy, from being accepted. As part of a larger project that aims at revaluing the importance of affectivity in medical practice, the purpose of this paper is to develop a clinical sympathy that can serve as a trainable skill for medical professionals. While everyday sympathy may be problematic as a professional skill for physicians, this does not imply that sympathy should be entirely rejected. As a natural part of our moral psychology, sympathy is an intersubjective affect that aids in our interactions with others and our decision-making abilities. I present here a theory of clinical sympathy as an affective response to patients, in which physicians are both attuned to their affective response and understand how their affects are influencing their beliefs and judgments. In this way, clinical sympathy serves as a trainable skill that can aid physicians in their interactions with their patients.
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Philosophia

Commentary: Three Problems for Contagion Empathy

In this commentary on Michael Slote’s paper “The Many Faces of Empathy,” I assess the ways in which his theory of empathy aligns with simulation theory, as well as the problems that he needs to address because of this. Overall, I present three problems that need to be addressed: (1) How do we know that we have caught the other’s emotion and not merely reacted on our own; (2) What exactly is it about the other’s emotion or attitude that I am mimicking and catching; and (3) Does empathy provide us with objective or subjective ethical knowledge?
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