Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T08:51:49.033Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Don’t Solve the Issues!

A Plea for Ambiguity within Empirical Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

BERT MOLEWIJK  and
GUY A. M. WIDDERSHOVEN
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Special Section: Empirical Ethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 448 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Weaver, GR, Trevino, LK.Normative and empirical business ethics: Separation, marriage of convenience, or marriage of necessity? Business Ethics Quarterly 1994;4(2):129–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Molewijk, B, Stiggelbout, AM, Otten, W, Dupuis, HM, Kievit, Empirical data and moral theory. A plea for integrated empirical ethics. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. A European Journal 2004;7(1):55–69CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Musschenga, AW.Empirical ethics, context-sensitivity, and contextualism. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2005 Oct;30(5):467–90CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Borry, P, Schotsmans, P, Dierickx, K.The birth of the empirical turn in bioethics. Bioethics 2005 Feb;19(1):49–71CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also articles in the thematic issue of Bioethics, May 2009.

2. See, for example, the specific section for empirical ethics articles in the journal Clinical Ethics.

3. Birnbacher, D.Ethics and social science: Which kind of co-operation? Ethical Theory Moral Pract 1999;2:319–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hoffmaster, B. Philosophical ethics and practical ethics—Never the twain shall meet. In: Hoffmaster, B, Freedman, B, Fraser, G, eds. Clinical Ethics: Theory and Practice. Clifton, NJ: Humana Press; 1989:201–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See note 1, Musschenga 2005. Van der Scheer, L, Widdershoven, G.Integrated empirical ethics: Loss of normativity? Medicine, Health Care Philosophy. A European Journal 2004;7(1):71–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Düwell, M.Sozialwissenschaften, Gesellschaftstheorie und Ethik. Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik 2005;10:5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. See, for example, Molewijk, B. Risky business: Individualised evidence-based decision support and the ideal of patient autonomy. An integrated empirical ethics study [Ph.D. thesis]. Leiden University, 2006, Leiden, the NetherlandsGoogle Scholar; Molewijk, AC, Stiggelbout, AM, Otten, W, Dupuis, HM, Kievit, J.Implicit normativity in evidence-based medicine: A plea for integrated empirical ethics research. Health Care Analysis 2003 Mar;11(1):69–92CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Widdershoven, G, Abma, T, Molewijk, B.Empirical ethics as dialogical practice. Bioethics 2009;23(4):236–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Widdershoven, G, Molewijk, B, Abma, T.Improving care and ethics: A plea for interactive empirical ethics. American Journal of Bioethics 2009;9(6 & 7):99–101CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Lindemann, HM, Verkerk, M, Walker, MU.Naturalized Bioethics: Toward Responsible Knowing and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2009Google Scholar; Abma, TA, Baur, VE, Molewijk, B, Widdershoven, GA.Inter-ethics: Towards an interactive and interdependent bioethics. Bioethics 2010 Jun;24(5):242–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

5. “The program’s mission is to train researchers to conceptualize, design, and conduct both normative ethical analyses and empirical research on bioethics issues.” Available at http://www.case.edu/med/bioethics/phd/index.htm (new citation 2 Feb 2011).

6. “The course in 2011, open for PhD students and research master students, aims to give an overview of current debates in practical philosophy, with a special emphasis on the role of different normative theories in applied contexts.” Available at www.osze.nl (last accessed 2 Feb 2011).

7. For that reason we do not refer here to papers, however interesting, that give sociological descriptions of how the field of ethics, and later bioethics, has turned into a more empirically focused discipline.

8. Molewijk, B, Stiggelbout, AM, Otten, W, Dupuis, HM, Kievit, J.Empirical data and moral theory: A plea for integrated empirical ethics. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. A European Journal 2004;7(1):55–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

9. See note 1, Musschenga 2005.

10. This criticism applies, of course, only to those moral theories that state that they have a normative and prescriptive aim for social practices.

11. See, for example, Zussman, R.Intensive Care: Medical Ethics and the Medical Profession. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press; 1992.Google Scholar

12. Flanagan, O.Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1991Google Scholar, at 32.

13. See note 1, Borry et al. 2005.

14. Latour, B.Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1989.Google Scholar

15. See note 4, Molewijk et al. 2003.

16. See note 4, Molewijk 2006.

17. Schneider, CE.The Practice of Autonomy: Patients, Doctors, and Medical Decisions. New York: Oxford University Press; 1998Google Scholar. See note 4, Abma et al. 2010.

18. Gergen, KJ. Organization theory in the postmodern era. In: Reed, M, Hughes, M, eds. Rethinking Organization: New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis. London: Sage; 1992.Google Scholar

19. We do not mean that it is necessary to write a theoretical justification of empirical ethics and its metaethical fallacies as such. For a description of three distinctive metaethical fallacies with respect to empirical ethics, see Dodd, J, Stern-Gillet, S.The is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy. Dialogue 1995;34:727–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Vries, R, Gordijn, B.Empirical ethics and its alleged meta-ethical fallacies. Bioethics 2009 May;23(4):193–201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

20. See, for example, Brody, B.Assessing empirical research in bioethics. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 1993;14:211–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Pellegrino, ED.The limitation of empirical research in ethics. The Journal of Clinical Ethics 1995;6:161–2Google ScholarPubMed; see note 3, Düwell 2005.

21. Goldenberg, MJ.Evidence-based ethics? On evidence-based practice and the “empirical turn” from normative bioethics. BioMedCentral: Medical Ethics 2005 Nov 8;6:E11Google ScholarPubMed; Stretch, D.Evidence-based ethics. What it should be and what it shouldn’t. BMC Med. Ethics 2008 Oct:9–16.Google Scholar

22. See note 8, Molewijk et al. 2004, at 57.

23. See note 1, Weaver, Trevino 1994.

24. See note 1, Weaver, Trevino 1994.

25. See note 4 Molewijk, 2006; Lindemann NJ. Moral teachings from unexpected quarters: Lessons for bioethics from the social sciences and managed care. Hastings Center Report 2000;30(1):12–7.Google Scholar

26. McMillan, J, Hope, T. The possibility of empirical psychiatric ethics. In: Widdershoven, G, McMillan, J, Hope, T, van der Scheer, L.Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2008:9–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. See note 1, Musschenga 2005.

28. See also Hurst, S.What “empirical turn in bioethics”? Bioethics 2010;24(8):439–44CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Frith, L.Symbiotic empirical ethics: A practical methodology. Bioethics 2010 Oct 6Google ScholarPubMed; available online.

29. For example, see note 8, Molewijk et al. 2004; Molewijk and colleagues have distinguished and described the following goals: description, interpretation, explanation, evaluation, reform, development of moral theory, and development of methodology.

30. Van der Scheer, Thiel, Delden, and Widdershoven (2004) studied 33 completed empirical ethics research projects and found that fewer than half of the original empirical ethics project descriptions explicitly contained information on the relationship between the empirical and the normative. Furthermore, even the projects that explicitly mentioned the problematic relationship between the empirical and the normative often remained unclear about the specific features of that relationship. During the interviews with empirical ethics researchers, the researchers often could not state whether something was a purely empirical or normative distinction. See van der Scheer L, van Thiel G, van Delden J, Widdershoven G. Ethiek en empirie: Theorie en methodologie van empirisch ethisch onderzoek [Ethics and empiricism: Theory and methodology of empirical ethics research]. Report of the Caphri Research School funded by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Maastricht University; 2004.

31. “Ideally, empirical research in bioethics should meet standards for empirical and normative validity similar to those used in the source disciplines for these methods, and articulate these aspects clearly and appropriately. More modestly, criteria to ensure that none of these standards are completely left aside would improve the quality of empirical bioethics research and partly clear the air of critiques addressing its theoretical justification, when its rigour in the particularly difficult context of interdisciplinarity is what should be at stake.” See note 28, Hurst 2010:444.

32. Van Willigenburg, T, van den Burg, W, eds. Reflective Equilibrium: Essays in Honour of Robert Heeger. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic; 1998Google Scholar; Rawls, J.A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Press of Harvard University; 1971Google Scholar; van Delden, JJM, van Thiel, GJM. Reflective equilibrium as a normative-empirical model in bioethics. In: van den Burg, W, van Willigenburg, T, eds. Reflective Equilibrium. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic; 1998:251–9.Google Scholar

33. Gadamer, HG.Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr; 1960Google Scholar. See note 3, van der Scheer, Widdershoven 2004. See note 4, Widdershoven, Abma, Molewijk 2009 and Widdershoven, Molewijk, Abma 2009.

34. Daniels, N.Justice and Justification: Reflective Equilibrium in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. de Vries, M, van Leeuwen, E.Reflective equilibrium and empirical data: Third person moral experiences in empirical medical ethics. Bioethics 2010;24(9):490–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

36. Abma, TA, Molewijk, B, Widdershoven, GAM.Good care in ongoing dialogues: Responsive evaluation and moral deliberation. Health Care Analysis 2009;17(3):217–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed