Category: Musings (Page 10 of 18)

Legal abortion: the right to move on

13 April, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

With brave new ideas you can astonish the world. In the past months the youth association of the Swedish party, the Liberals, made several proposals that astonished not least the mother party – for example, that incest and necrophilia should be allowed. The state should not control individuals’ love life.

Probably, the young politicians are quite proud of their radicalism. They are more liberal than liberalism itself. But what is their radicalism made of?

In March, another radical proposal was made. This time it was about abortion. Women have the right to choose abortion until the 18th week of pregnancy. But men don’t have a corresponding right to opt out of their parenthood. The proposal is about correcting this unfair distribution of the freedom to decide about parenthood.

How? By giving men the right to disclaim paternity until the 18th week of pregnancy: so-called legal abortion. Through the proposal, men get the same right as women to decide if they want to become parents. Thus, justice is restored.

One can surmise that the mother party dreams of making their own little abortion. But listen to how splendid it can sound when one astonishes the world with brave new ideas:

“It’s about men also being able to choose whether they want to become parents or not.”
“Men should have the same right to opt out of parenthood.”

Indeed, it sounds magnificent: the liberal youth association wants to correct a fundamental asymmetry between the rights of men and women! They are fighting for a more equal society!

I suggest that the “equality” here is purely verbal. It sits on the surface of an individualist language of rights and freedoms, with the words “man,” “woman” and “equal right.” Scratch the surface and the beautiful symmetry disappears.

One thing that is hidden by the jargon, for example, is that the woman’s decision concerns a fetus. But if she doesn’t abort, the man’s abortion decision will be about a child who will be born, and who will live, “legally aborted.”

Another thing that is hidden is that if the woman chooses abortion, neither party becomes a parent, because no child is born. But if she gives birth to the baby, the man will be the father of the child, whether he disclaims legal paternity or not. Law is not everything in life. When a child is born, there is a parenthood that cannot be disclaimed, for the child can say: “My father aborted me.” Only the woman’s abortion decision can completely abolish parenthood.

A third thing that is hidden is that something rings false in the individualist talk about parenthood as my parenthood and your parenthood; as the woman’s parenthood and the man’s. To crown it all, the fetus as well as the child are absent in this reasoning about male and female parenthood – curious! Are they already aborted? Did the young politicians forget something rather central, in their eagerness to develop truly liberal ideas about parenthood?

In order not to be disturbed by all this, in order not hear how false it rings, one must purify an individualist jargon of rights and freedoms, and then lock oneself in it. This is where the youth association’s radicalism lies: in language. It purifies (parts of) the language of liberalism, but as mere linguistic exercises with the words “man,” “woman” and “equal right.”

The radicalism isn’t political, but linguistic. Therefore, one feels instinctively that the discussion that the youth association wants to start up cannot be political, but merely continued exercise of pure concepts – like when schoolchildren plod through grammatical examples to one day be able to speak a language that still is foreign to them.

Ludwig Wittgenstein described such pure conceptual exercises as language that idles, like an engine can idle without doing its work. In this case, it is the language of liberalism that is idling.

I propose a good dose of Wittgenstein.

Pär Segerdahl

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Global bioethics: each culture its own “ethnobioethics”?

6 April, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

With globalization bioethics is spread over the world. The process isn’t without friction, since bioethics is associated with Western philosophy. Is that thinking applicable to other cultures? Parts of the world where bioethics is spread may also have a colonial history, such as Africa. Should they now once again come under Western influence?

In an article in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Sirkku K. Hellsten discusses the role of philosophy in global bioethics. She uses the example of Africa, where discussions about a unique African philosophy have been intense. But she also quotes Henry Odera Oruka, wondering why so much time is spent discussing what distinguishes African philosophy, when so little time is devoted to actually practicing it.

To investigate the role of philosophy in global bioethics, Hellsten distinguishes (inspired by Odera Oruka) four forms of philosophy. I reproduce two of them here:

Ethnophilosophy: Here it is assumed that different cultures often have incommensurable conceptions and worldviews. Bioethical key concepts – personhood, rationality, autonomy, consent, human nature, human well-being – have as many interpretations as there are cultures. The aim seems to be to develop these interpretations of Western ethical concepts and principles, to develop culture specific “ethnobioethics.”
Professional philosophy: Professional philosophers, says Hellsten, are academically trained in critical, impartial, logical argument. (She distinguishes professional philosophy from the ideological tendencies of Peter Singer and John Harris). Although professional philosophers are influenced by their culture, they can recognize these biases and subject them to self-critical examination. Professional philosophy is self-correcting.

Hellsten points out that ethnophilosophical thinking, in its quest to carve out culture specific “ethnophilosophies,” on the contrary tends to make sweeping generalizations about cultural views, creating false oppositions. Moreover, ethnophilosophical thinking is at risk justifying double standards in biomedical practices. It can make it seem reasonable to ask for individual consent in individualistic cultures but not in collectivist.

Hellsten suggest that what global bioethics needs is professional philosophy. It can impartially scrutinize arguments and reveal contradictions and unclear thinking, and it can keep ethics at arm’s length from politics and rhetoric. It is a universal form of human thought that should be accessible to all cultures. Through professional philosophy, global bioethics can become universal bioethics.

What do think about this? I believe that Hellsten’s emphasis of “universality” does not quite strikingly describe the point I think she actually has. In order to understand in what sense she has a point, I believe we need to understand that bioethics is not only as a form of “thinking,” but also a concrete component of contemporary social structure.

Law (to take another example) isn’t just a form of “thinking” but also an organized part of the social structure: a legal system. During the twentieth century, we saw the birth of bioethics as another part of the social structure: as an organized way to deal with certain issues of health care and biomedical research (other parts of the social structure). Bioethics therefore has an obvious place in the social structure, and that place is: the university, with its resources for research and education.

So where do I locate Hellsten’s point when she claims professional philosophy’s role in global bioethics? Not in the view that professional philosophy supposedly is “universal thinking,” but in the fact that the university is the place of bioethics in the social structure. If we build hospitals and invest in advanced medical research and education, and if we develop legislation for these activities, it is in the university that bioethics finds the resources it needs to play its role.

So why is “professional philosophy” relevant for bioethics in Africa? In my view, precisely because one builds hospitals and makes investments in medical research and education. It would be odd if the efforts to build such a society were combined with an emphasis on tradition-bound “ethnophilosophy.”

We need to be clear about where we are: in the midst of an ongoing construction of society. And we need to be clear about the fact that ethics, in addition to being a personal concern, also has become an important “apparatus” in the social structure. In Africa, and elsewhere, it will certainly be faced with unique bioethical issues, like the legal system is faced with unique problems in different parts of the world.

At the same time, it is important to emphasize, as Hellsten does, the open and self-critical nature of global bioethics.

(I want to thank the Global Bioethics Blog for drawing my attention to Hellsten’s article.)

Pär Segerdahl

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Notebook, not Facebook

30 March, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

I take the liberty of striking a blow for the notebook.

I miss the voices people develop when they use to keep their own notes. The conversation with yourself gives depth – “I have thought about this” – to your conversation with others.

The erosion of collegial structures at universities is worrisome. But what especially concerns me is the notebook culture, which I believe needs to be rediscovered. Without own notebooks, no real education and no real knowledge.

It isn’t about withdrawing to one’s study to write esoteric notes. It is about developing one’s own groundwork in the life with others. It is developed in (temporary) seclusion, in response to life with others. Then you can converse, because you will have something to say, something of your own.

Cultures deepen through the rumination in diaries and notebooks. Without this simple practice, cultures erode and voices sound thinner. We need to carry culture on our own shoulders.

Kafka recorded in one of his notebooks a picture that I often think of. It is the image of messengers rushing around with messages that they received from other messengers. But it turns out that there is no author of these messages. There are only messengers. I see this as an image of a world without notebooks.

Kant spoke of human authority and autonomy. In Kafka’s picture there is no authority and no autonomy, for no one is the author of their own words: just the messengers of words from other messengers. For once being the author, not only the messenger of what other messengers passed on: wouldn’t that be something!

Become the author of your own words by taking notes! The notebook is the origin of all messages worth communicating. I am a notebook individualist.

To think and reflect is not only about having time. It is about using the time to converse with yourself. That conversation is lifelong. When you converse with others, you convey the lifelong conversation with yourself.

Artists have probably more than others retained the practice of using sketchbooks, of regularly practicing music more informally and privately, of making drafts of stories and novels. That practice gives them a basis to create. We have much to learn from the artists. They are the last to maintain culture, through the sketchbooks in which they constantly scribble.

Nothing is more responsible and authoritative than keeping your own notes. The notes don’t have to be brilliant or groundbreaking. Only your own sincere words with yourself. That is originality! Through the notebook you develop the integrity that is worth defending. And that is worth sharing with others, who of course also have notebooks.

I don’t want to read your Facebook updates, but perhaps your notes. You read mine here. So get a notebook if you don’t already have one. It is the most radical thing you can do today.

Pär Segerdahl

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Searching for consciousness needs conceptual clarification

15 March, 2016 / Michele Farisco / 2 Comments

Michele Farisco We can hardly think of ourselves as living persons without referring to consciousness. In fact, we normally define ourselves through two features of our life: we are awake (the level of our consciousness is more than zero), and we are aware of something (our consciousness is not empty).

While it is quite intuitive to think that our brains are necessary for us to be conscious, it is tempting to think that looking at what is going on in the brain is enough to understand consciousness. But empirical investigations are not enough.

Neuroscientific methods to investigate consciousness and its disorders have developed massively in the last decades. The scientific and clinical advancements that have resulted are impressive. But while the ethical and clinical impacts of these advancements are often debated and studied, there is little conceptual analysis.

I think of one example in particular, namely, the neuroscience of disorders of consciousness. These are states where a person’s consciousness is more or less severely damaged. Most commonly, we think of patients in vegetative state, who exhibit levels of consciousness without any content. But it could also be a minimally conscious state with fluctuating levels and contents of consciousness.

How can we explain these complex conditions? Empirical science is usually supposed to be authoritative and help to assess very important issues, such as consciousness. Such scientific knowledge is basically inferential: it is grounded in the comparative assessment of residual consciousness in brain-damaged patients.

But because of its inferential nature, neuroscience takes the form of an inductive reasoning: it infers the presence of consciousness starting from data extracted by neurotechnology. This is done by comparing data from brain damaged patients with data from healthy individuals. Yet this induction is valid only on the basis of a previous definition of consciousness, a definition we made within an implicit or explicit theoretical framework. Thus a conceptual assessment of consciousness that is defined within a well-developed conceptual framework is crucial, and it will affect the inference of consciousness from empirical data.

When it comes to disorders of consciousness, there is still no adequate conceptual analysis of the complexity of consciousness: its levels, modes and degrees. Neuroscience often takes a functionalist account of consciousness for granted in which consciousness is assumed to be equivalent to cognition or at least to be based in cognition. Yet findings from comatose patients suggest that this is not the case. Instead, consciousness seems to be grounded on the phenomenal functions of the brain as they are related to the resting state’s activity.

For empirical neuroscience to be able to contribute to an understanding of consciousness, neuroscientists need input from philosophy. Take the case of communication with speechless patients through neurotechnology (Conversations with seemingly unconscious patients), or the prospective simulation of the brain (The challenge to simulate the brain) for example: here scientists can give philosophers empirical data that need to be considered in order to develop a well-founded conceptual framework within which consciousness can be defined.

The alleged autonomy of empirical science as source of objective knowledge is problematic. This is the reason why philosophy needs to collaborate with scientists in order to conceptually refine their research methods. On the other hand, dialogue with science is essential for philosophy to be meaningful.

We need a conceptual strategy for clarifying the theoretical framework of neuroscientific inferences. This is what we are trying to do in our CRB neuroethics group as part of the Human Brain Project (Neuroethics and Neurophilosophy).

Michele Farisco

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Tired of the human?

3 February, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

I have on several occasions encountered what could be called: impatience with the human. Haven’t we been humans long enough? Is it not high time that we stopped to perceive the world from our parochial human perspectives, where the sun “rises” every morning and warms us – as if it cared about us!

We speak of beneficial bacteria in the intestinal flora, as if they took care of us as our inner servants. But what do they care about us? We are grossly anthropocentric. It is time to leave this human idyll and become… posthuman. – At least in serious, intellectual contexts.

The parochial illusion in which we supposedly live is often associated with language. Millennia of human endeavor have been deposited in linguistic structures that constantly repeat the same old spectacle in front of our eyes: the world as seen from a human point of view.

The time is ripe for a revolt against our homespun linguistic tradition; for the construction of new materialistic language, free of inherited folk perspectives on a fundamentally indifferent universe, and on us. – At least in serious, intellectual contexts.

The only problem is that even language, if we are to be consistent, must be a piece of folklore. Entities like language, words, statements, and meanings obviously belong to – if we are to be completely consistent – an oral tradition where we, for utterly mundane purposes, talk about “language,” “words,” “statements,” and “meanings.”

It suddenly seems unexpectedly difficult to go beyond the human. There is no language to rebel against. Or the illusion is too powerful: we cannot even speak of resisting it without relying on it. For the very idea of a revolt, the exciting feeling of being near the truth or on its track… is this not all too familiar, all too human? Even more folklore, then?

Perhaps we should rather be impatient with this metaphysical intellectualism, which not very clear-sightedly – it seems – dreams of beholding an absolutely pure reality.

We continue to be humans who sometimes, for various purposes, describe a material reality and take it into account. – Even in serious, intellectual contexts.

Pär Segerdahl

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How are ethical policies justified?

20 January, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Ethical policies for practices such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research should, of course, be well justified. But how does one justify that activities involving the destruction or killing of human embryos and fetuses should be allowed? How does one justify that they should be banned?

Just because the issues are so sensitive and important, they awaken a desire to find the absolutely conclusive justification.

The questions arouse our metaphysical aspirations. Ethicists who discuss them can sometimes sound like the metaphysicians of the seventeenth century who claimed they had conclusive arguments that the soul affects the body, or that it absolutely cannot affect it; who thought they could prove that God is the soul of the world, or that such a view detracts from God’s perfection.

Since both parties claim they have absolutely conclusive proofs, it becomes impossible to exhibit even the smallest trace of uncertainty. Each objection is taken as a challenge to prove the superiority of one’s own proofs, which is why metaphysical debates often resemble meetings between two hyper-sensitive querulants.

This is how I perceive many of the arguments about the embryo’s “moral status,” which are believed to provide conclusive evidence for or against moral positions on abortion and embryonic research – based on the nature of things (i.e., of the embryo).

Others, who want to reason more rigorously before drawing conclusions, instead scrutinize the arguments to demonstrate that we haven’t yet found the metaphysical basis for a policy (you can find an example here). From metaphysical dogmatism to metaphysical pedantry.

The metaphysical vision of an absolute path through life does not seem to give us any walkable path at all. It does not even allow meaningful conversations about what we find sensitive and important. But isn’t that where we need to begin when we look for a justification?

Pär Segerdahl

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Gene editing: a threat to the moral ecosystem?

13 January, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

A few years ago it was discovered that bacteria can protect themselves against viruses by cutting the viruses’ DNA at specific positions. The discovery is the basis for new, easier and more precise ways to make changes in the genome. Researchers have begun to talk about “cutting and pasting” in the genome; about “editing” the genome.

The new gene-editing technique has been applied to plant breeding. But it can, of course, be applied elsewhere too. And as often is the case, the issues appear extra controversial when applications to humans are considered.

I read an intellectual debate between a proponent of therapeutic use of the technique on humans (Julian Savulescu), and an opponent (Margaret Somerville). (You find it here.) The opponent used an analogy to summarize her position, which I cannot resist commenting upon here on the Ethics Blog. Here is the analogy (as I render it):

Today we are acutely aware that we must take responsibility for our environment, for the physical ecosystem. But the same can be said of our metaphysical or moral ecosystem. We must care about our values, beliefs, attitudes, principles and narratives. Genetically editing a human embryo, perhaps to remove a disease gene, may have good consequences from an individual perspective. But it threatens the moral ecosystem at its roots: it contradicts the respect for human life.

Say what you want, but it is a dramatic analogy! Maybe a little too dramatic. For essentially the same threat has been depicted many times before, when new forms of biotechnology appeared on the horizon. If this kind of threat was real, morality should lie in ruins since long ago. But we quickly forget and it is always only the latest techniques that Threaten Morality at its Foundation.

I believe that the idea of a major technological threat to morality is based on intellectualizing both technology and morality. One attaches enormous significance to the fact that aspects of the technology can be described with certain words, such as “editing” or “designing.” The description, ”designing a child,” sounds like it logically clashed with another intellectualization – of morality as a system of propositions about what a “person” is, about what “respect” is, and about what is “right and wrong.”

The idea of an apocalyptic threat is thus based on reading the new technique and morality literally, so that it sounds as if the technique contradicted the basic tenets of morality.

Is there nothing to worry about, then? Should we not care about important values? Of course we should. My point is that in practice this looks differently than it verbally sounds like.

When new biotechnologies are implemented in society and put to use, this occurs in specific practical contexts where there are recognized problems that one wants to solve or treat. These applications are regulated, ethically and legally.

In vitro fertilization (IVF), another technique, is embedded in its specific contexts. Within these contexts, the technique solves problems for people. But it hardly threatens morality by, on some general and verbal level, contradicting the basic tenets of a moral system – such as “the respect for human life.” Rather, the technology has become a new way to concretely respect people and take their problems seriously.

The practical aspects disappear in the intellectualization of the issues, with its focus on words and theses. But it is the living contexts we have to take responsibility for. That is where we find the respect and the disrespect. That is where the problem lies.

Some moral problems are just false readings, overinterpretations of words.

Pär Segerdahl

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Ethical questions raised by experiencing another culture (By Amal Matar)

16 December, 2015 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

When I first moved to Sweden, I was pretty excited to explore a new country and experience Swedish culture and life. In many ways I had not expected the extent of the difference between what I was familiar with and Swedish culture. I assumed, naively, that I would be in a familiar setting because I had been to other countries. One of my preconceptions was seeing all Western countries as similar, another was believing that European countries shared the same values and culture. But I was proven wrong.

Being brought up in Cairo, Egypt, I was raised in a comparatively restrictive patriarchal family-oriented environment where gender roles are very specific. Although this is by no means uniform and there are exceptions to the rule as well as big variation among Egyptian urban and rural contexts, the overarching tendencies in terms of law and societal expectations are quite gender specific. For example, modesty is expected from women at all times in terms of dress and behavior, even when they are ill or seeking reproductive health advice.

Another dominant aspect is hierarchy. It exists not only in the academia and other working environments but also at family levels and even between spouses and between siblings. The older expect respect and obedience and should not be challenged even politely.

In contrast, Swedish culture is based on gender equality, where paternal leave is encouraged, and women’s representation is sometimes ensured by affirmative action. In addition, personal autonomy is embedded in the culture and laws are set to emphasize autonomy particularly in healthcare contexts. Hierarchy is not prominent and obedience is not expected. Respect and politeness are appropriate for all ages.

Navigating the healthcare system was a challenge I faced. It is quite structured and systematic, which in a way ensured efficiency, but this was novel to me. In addition, I had difficulty explaining my symptoms to my GP because of language barriers. She spoke neither English nor Arabic. Later, this was resolved because I was transferred to another GP who spoke English fluently.

This made me ponder on the challenges immigrants and refugees coming from the Middle East encounter upon arrival and the conflict they feel between their value system and the Swedish one. Might this be the reason why migrant women use less healthcare services compared to their counterpart? How culturally sensitive does Swedish healthcare need to be to accommodate the growing numbers of refugees? And would healthcare professionals, in order to be culturally sensitive, be expected to rethink and readdress their cultural norms? Is there a line to be drawn between being culturally sensitive and advocating beneficence? Are these two values (cultural sensitivity and beneficence) culturally relative? Which values should take the upper hand?

These are questions that my experience of moving to Sweden raised. I’m not sure how to answer them but I tend to think that there are possibly two scenarios that can ensue. Either the encounter of these two value systems can, over the long run, evolve into a third one. Or each party accepts their counterpart’s value system even when they don’t fully approve.

You can read more about my pondering in a more specific bioethical field, namely, reproductive ethics, by following this link.

Amal Matar

Trust, responsibility and the Volkswagen scandal

15 December, 2015 / jessicanihlenfahlquist / 0 Comments

Volkswagen’s cheating with carbon emissions attracted a lot of attention this autumn. It has been suggested that the cheating will lead to a decrease in trust for the company, but also for the industry at large. That is probably true. But, we need to reflect on the value of trust, what it is and why it is needed. Is trust a means or a result?

It would seem that trust has a strong instrumental value since it is usually discussed in business-related contexts. Volkswagen allegedly needs people’s trust to avoid losing money. If customers abandon the brand due to distrust, fewer cars will be sold.

This discussion potentially hides the real issue. Trust is not merely a means to create or maintain a brand name, or to make sure that money keeps coming in. Trust is the result of ethically responsible behaviour. The only companies that deserve our trust are the ones that behave responsibly. Trust, in this sense, is closely related to responsibility.

What is responsibility then? One important distinction to make is the one between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility. We are now looking for the one who caused the problem, who is to blame and therefore responsible for what happened. But responsibility is not only about blame. It is also a matter of looking ahead, preventing wrongful actions in the future and doing one’s utmost to make sure the organisation, of which one is a member, behaves responsibly.

One problem in our time is that so many activities take place in such large contexts. Organisations are global and complex and it is hard to pinpoint who is responsible for what. All the individuals involved only do a small part, like cogs in a wheel. When a gigantic actor like Volkswagen causes damage to health or the environment, it is almost impossible to know who caused what and who should have acted otherwise. In order to avoid this, we need individuals who take responsibility and feel responsible. We should not conceive of people as powerless cogs in a wheel. The only companies who deserve our trust are the ones in which individuals at all levels take responsibility.

What is most important now is not that the company regains trust. Instead, we should demand that the individuals at Volkswagen raise their ethical awareness and start acting responsibly towards people, society and the environment. If they do that, trust will eventually be a result of their responsible behaviour.

Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist

(This text was originally published in Swedish, in the magazine, Unionen, industri och teknik, December 2015.)

Further reading:

Nihlén Fahlquist, J. 2015. “Responsibility as a virtue and the problem of many hands,” In: Ibo van de Poel, Lambèr Royakkers, Sjoerd Zwart. Moral Responsibility in Innovation Networks. Routledge.

Nihlén Fahlquist J. 2006. “Responsibility ascriptions and Vision Zero,” Accident Analysis and Prevention 38, pp. 1113-1118.

Van de Poel, I. and Nihlén Fahlquist J. 2012. “Risk and responsibility.” In: Sabine Roeser, Rafaela Hillerbrand, Martin Peterson, Per Sandin Handbook of Risk Theory, 2012, Springer, Dordrecht.

Nihlén Fahlquist J. 2009. “Moral responsibility for environmental problems – individual or institutional?” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 22(2), pp. 109-124.

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Why are bioethicists conducting empirical studies?

8 December, 2015 / Pär Segerdahl / 2 Comments

Bioethicists often make empirical studies of how the public, or relevant groups, perceive organ donation, euthanasia, or research participation; or how they perceive research that can be considered controversial, like embryonic stem cell research.

An objection to empirical bioethics sometimes made is that empirical evidence cannot settle ethical issues. Suppose a survey shows strong support for euthanasia among the public. Does that make euthanasia right?

No, it would be a joke to reason as if a survey gave evidence that euthanasia probably is right (but more studies are needed before we can be sure). Ethical issues are determined neither by vote nor by questionnaires or focus-group interviews.

So why are such studies conducted? How can empirical data serve as a basis for ethical reasoning? Have bioethicists begun to make the mistake of drawing conclusions from what is the case to what should be the case?

These questions appear fundamental. Are empirical methods legitimately used in ethics?

I think that examples of good uses can be given. A questionnaire or interview study with medical staff can exhibit ethical problems in health care practices that otherwise would have been unnoticed (like Mona Pettersson’s study of nurses’ experiences of do not to resuscitate orders). Empirical studies can also show how more values are at stake than those traditionally taken into account in bioethics. Many examples could be given, but let me instead use an analogy:

Suppose someone asks you for advice on a delicate matter. Will you not ask questions to that person, to better understand the context; what is at stake; what the actual problem is? Simplified, one could say that this is what empirical bioethics does. It is not about obtaining empirical evidence of what is right and wrong. It is about getting a better grasp of the problem: what is at stake, what it is about.

The words “empirical,” “facts” and “evidence” are often used rhetorically in debates: to support views and positions. Probably it is such intellectual debate rhetoric one thinks of when empirical bioethics is questioned. Bioethicists are seen as shrewd debaters who try to conjure forth empirical support for ideas of right and wrong. But empirical work is not primarily about answering questions, but about asking questions (as in the analogy).

Empirical bioethics deepens the question, rather than seeks artful shortcuts to the answer. The deepening of the question gives friction to move forward through the real problem. We must not be fooled by the intellectual rhetoric of empirical justification when bioethicists make empirical studies to reason more sensitively about the actual problem.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Category: Musings (Page 10 of 18)

Legal abortion: the right to move on

Notebook, not Facebook

Searching for consciousness needs conceptual clarification

Tired of the human?

How are ethical policies justified?

Gene editing: a threat to the moral ecosystem?

Ethical questions raised by experiencing another culture (By Amal Matar)

Trust, responsibility and the Volkswagen scandal

Why are bioethicists conducting empirical studies?

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