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The origin of speciesism.
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Bioethics and the problem of pluralism.
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Pragmatism in bioethics: been there, done that.
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The ordination of bioethicists as secular moral experts.
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Bioethics as social philosophy.
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Anchor and course for the modern ship of casuistry.
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Casuistry and principlism: the convergence of method in biomedical ethics.
Casuistry and principlism are two of the leading contenders to be considered the methodology of bioethics. These methods may be incommensurable since the former emphasizes the examination of cases while the latter focuses on moral principles. Conversely, since both analyze cases in terms of mid-level principles, there is hope that these methods may be reconcilable or complementary. I analyze the role of principles in each and thereby show that these theories are virtually identical when interpreted in a certain light. That is, if the gaps in each method are filled by a concept of judgment or Aristotelian practical wisdom, these methods converge.
What the philosophy of medicine is.
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Clinical ethics: theory or practice?
This article starts with a brief historical account of the ongoing debate about the status of clinical ethics: theory of practice. The author goes on to argue that clinical ethics is best understood as a practice. However, its practicality should not be measured by the extent to which clinical-ethical consultants manage to mediate or negotiate resolutions to ethical conflicts. Rather, clinical ethics is practical because it is characterized by a profound concern for the well-being of individual patients as well as the moral parameters of swift and urgent medical action in the face of limited supportive information.
Animal experimentation: pro and con arguments using the theory of evolution.
The theory of evolution has been used in arguments regarding animal experimentation. Two such arguments are analyzed, one against and one in favor. Each argument stresses the relevance of the theory of evolution to normative ethics but attempts explicitly to avoid the so-called naturalistic fallacy. According to the argument against animal experimentation, the theory of evolution 'undermines' the idea of a special human dignity and supports 'moral individualism'. The latter view implies that if it is wrong to use humans in experiments, then it is also wrong to use animals, unless there are relevant differences between them that justify a difference in treatment. No such differences can be found with regard to animals which lead 'biographical lives'. The argument in favor of animal experimentation is based on evolutionary psychology. It states that humans, as all social animals, are speciesist by nature and stresses that this should be taken seriously in normative ethics. This does not mean that animal interests should not be considered, only that vital human interests may outweigh them. In order to assess the arguments, one has to take a stand on certain more basic issues: 'is' versus 'ought', impartiality versus special obligations, and feelings/intuitions versus reason. Given the author's own position with regard to these more basic considerations, the-evolutionary argument in favor of animal experimentation is judged to be more convincing than the one against but not decisive. It is also maintained that not all animal experiments are acceptable. Which animal experiments are acceptable and which are not has to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
A meta-ethical critique of care ethics.
A meta-ethical analysis demonstrates that care ethics is a grounded in a distinct mode of moral reasoning. This is comprised primarily of the rejection of principles such as impartiality, and the endorsement of emotional or moral virtues such as compassion, as well as the notion that the preservation of relations may override the interests of the individuals involved in them. The main conclusion of such a meta-ethical analysis is that such meta-ethical foundations of care ethics are not sound. Reasonable alternatives for care ethics may be its formulation as an additional principle within an established principlist framework, or the move to a dialogical ethics, where the good to be acted upon is not decided in advance but rather critically discussed and established within the encounter of the parties involved.
Feminist perspectives on empathy as an epistemic skill and caring as a moral virtue.
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Normal and normative ethics in behavioral sciences.
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Kuhse on caring.
After a brief description of Helga Kuhse's arguments on the place of caring in moral decision-making in her recent book, Caring: Nurses, Women and Ethics, the author suggests that Kuhse is committed to reasons externalism and to a moderate form of motivational externalism. This compartmentalizes the psychology of moral agency and fails to see caring as the holistic stance toward patients which some nursing theorists have been espousing. The author then goes on to sketch such a holistic conception and to overcome difficulties relating to objectivity, the place of practical reason, and to weakness of will, which the new conception raises.
What would John Dewey do? The promises and perils of pragmatic bioethics.
Recent work done at the intersection of classical American pragmatism and bioethics promises much: a clarified self-understanding for bioethics, a modus vivendi for progress, and liberation from misguided and misguiding theories and principles. The revival of pragmatism outside bioethics in the past twenty years, however, has been of a distinctly anti-realist orientation. Richard Rorty, for example, has urged that there is no objective truth or good for philosophy to be concerned with. I ask whether the work in Pragmatic Bioethics follows this perilous Rortyan trend. It will move towards anti-realism if its account of the good abandons any notion of truth or objectivity, and if, in its discussion of specific problems, it divides these problems into public and the private, urging consensus as the goal of the one, and an unconstrained notion of happiness as the goal of the other. In a final section, I suggest that bioethics done in the spirit of Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty might have much to offer to those dissatisfied with anti-realism.
Specifying, balancing, and interpreting bioethical principles.
The notion that it is useful to specify norms progressively in order to resolve doubts about what to do, which I developed initially in a 1990 article, has been only partly assimilated by the bioethics literature. The thought is not just that it is helpful to work with relatively specific norms. It is more than that: specification can replace deductive subsumption and balancing. Here I argue against two versions of reliance on balancing that are prominent in recent bioethical discussions. Without meaning to address the substance or the overall merits of either view I criticize, I attack Gert, Culver and Clouser's implicit reliance on some overall dimension of balancing as a basis of resolving conflicts among norms and Beauchamp and Childress's residual acceptance of 'justified balancing'. The former authors' description of resolving conflicts depends upon a type of value commensurability that (as they otherwise seem to admit) does not obtain, while the latter authors' role for justified balancing would be better served by continued specification.
Common morality versus specified principlism: reply to Richardson.
In his article 'Specifying, balancing and interpreting bioethical principles' (Richardson, 2000), Henry Richardson claims that the two dominant theories in bioethics--principlism, put forward by Beauchamp and Childress in Principles of Bioethics, and common morality, put forward by Gert, Culver and Clouser in Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals--are deficient because they employ balancing rather than specification to resolve disputes between principles or rules. We show that, contrary to Richardson's claim, the major problem with principlism, either the original version or the specified principlism of Richardson, is that it conceives of morality as being composed of free-standing principles, rather than as common morality conceives it, as being a complete public system, composed of rules, ideals, morally relevant features, and a procedure for determining when a rule can be justifiably violated.