From applied ethics to empirical ethics to contextual ethics

Bioethics became applied ethics when it was assimilated to moral philosophy. Because deduction is the rationality of moral philosophy, subsuming facts under moral principles to deduce conclusions about what ought to be done became the prescribed reasoning of bioethics, and bioethics became a theory comprised of moral principles. Bioethicists now realize that applied ethics is too abstract and spare to apprehend the specificity, particularity, complexity and contingency of real moral issues. Empirical ethics and contextual ethics are needed to incorporate these features into morality, not just bioethics. The relevant facts and features of problems have to be identified, investigated and framed coherently, and potential resolutions have to be constructed and assessed. Moreover, these tasks are pursued and melded within manifold contexts, for example, families, work and health care systems, as well as societal, economic, legal and political backgrounds and encompassing worldviews. This naturalist orientation and both empirical ethics and contextual ethics require judgment, but how can judgment be rational? Rationality, fortunately, is more expansive than deductive reasoning. Judgment is rational when it emanates from a rational process of deliberation, and a process of deliberation is rational when it uses the resources of non‐formal reason: observation, creative construction, formal and informal reasoning methods and systematic critical assessment. Empirical ethics and contextual ethics recognize that finite, fallible human beings live in complex, dynamic, contingent worlds, and they foster creative, critical deliberation and employ non‐formal reason to make rational moral judgments.     

Evolutionary ethics,Darwinian ethics and ethical naturalism

The relevance of evolutionary theory to ethics goes back to Darwin but until recently discussion employed evolutionary theory to justify ethical, social and political positions. Recently, evolutionary theory has been used to explain the existence of moral systems and moral propensities and, thereby, to provide a naturalistic basis for ethics. I argue that this approach has advanced our understanding of the basis of moral systems and moral propensities but does not as yet adequately incorporate the role of cognition in its account. Cognition has the effect of decoupling to some extent — though, of course, far from fully — human moral systems from their evolutionary origins. In an adequate account, evolutionary theory will play a crucial role but so also will our evolved cognitive abilities.     

The biology of ethics or the ethics of biology? The biologist's quest for meaning

The biologist's involvement in value issues concerning the methodology of biological sciences, in establishing the biological basis of ethics and in creating a value system based on biological knowledge is examined. It is proposed that the roots of this involvement are in the conflict of the knowledge-ethic with the established system of values and in the need for metaphysical explanation.This essay is dedicated to the memory of I. Michael Lerner, formerly Professor of Genetics University of California, Berkeley.     

Psychiatric ethics

Psychiatric ethics spans several overlapping domains, including the guidelines for ethical research in psychiatry, the professional ethics required in the practice of psychiatry, and a broader set of moral and ethical problems and dilemmas distinctive to, or at least magnified by, the mental health care setting. Reviewed here are selected issues arising in the last two domains, some seemingly inevitable components of mental disorder and its cultural history and others resultant from recent changes and discoveries. Even as science explains and demystifies mental disorder, it is concluded, new ethical problems will continue to arise in psychiatry and certain recalcitrant problems will likely persist.     

Viable ethics

The Ethics of Life (1998). Noble D and Vincent J-D (Eds). Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 238 pp, 135 SFF. paperback; ISBN 92 3 103422 7     

Barriers and challenges in clinical ethics consultations: the experiences of nine clinical ethics committees

Clinical ethics committees have recently been established in nearly all Norwegian hospital trusts. One important task for these committees is clinical ethics consultations. This qualitative study explores significant barriers confronting the ethics committees in providing such consultation services. The interviews with the committees indicate that there is a substantial need for clinical ethics support services and, in general, the committee members expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the committee work. They also reported, however, that tendencies to evade moral disagreement, conflict, and 'outsiders' are common in the hospitals. Sometimes even the committees comply with some of these tendencies. The committees agree that there is a need to improve their routines and procedures, clarify the committees' profile and field of responsibility, to make the committees well-known, to secure adequate operating conditions, and to develop organizational integration and support. Various strategies to meet these challenges on a local, regional or national level are also explored in this paper.     

Plural media ethics? Reformist Islam in India and the limits of global media ethics

Dialectical Anthropology - The transatlantic field of global media ethics is premised on a search for the conceptual foundations of plurality. This article is a critique of this very endeavor. I...