Norbert L Steinkamp , Bert Gordijn , and Henk A . J . M . ten Have Ethical Expertise Revisited : Reply to Giles Scofield

This reply to Giles Scofield’s critique of the authors’ article in the June 2008 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal highlights two main topics. First, contrary to what Scofield suggests, using the terms “ethics” and “morality” interchangeably constitutes an oversimplification that blurs important distinctions. Second, in a representative democracy, ethical expertise and consultation need not generate a “tragic choice” of the kind Scofield has in mind. In his response to our paper “Debating Ethical Expertise” (Steinkamp, Gordijn, and ten Have 2008) published in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Giles Scofield (2008a) suggests that the concept of ethical expertise implies leaving moral judgment to professional experts. Leaving moral judgment to an expert, however, would undermine individual citizens’ autonomy by prescribing what they should decide, and how. Therefore, he argues that ethical expertise and democracy are incompatible. The alleged incompatibility results in the debate being intractable as it finally constitutes a “tragic choice”: Because there are problems associated with allowing everyone to choose as seems best to them and problems with permitting everyone to choose only as seems best to others, we understandably come to see that there are problems associated with our having ethics consultants and problems associated with our not having ethics consultants. (Scofield 2008a, p. 379) Scofield considers our moderate, dialogic model of ethical expertise and moral competence a failed attempt to solve this dilemma. His critique aims at our interpretation of the theory of expertise by Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus (1990); our depiction and use of discourse ethics; and our interactive model of clinical ethics (Steinkamp and Gordijn 2001), which the author finds idealistic. The critique stems from serious concern kennedy inStitute of etHicS journal • december 2008 [ 386 ] about, first, antiegalitarian implications that the author thinks the very idea of ethics consultation might set off and, second, the omission of professional ethics consultants to define binding professional standards (Scofield 2008b). Several aspects of Scofield’s argument deserve closer analysis and discussion. In our reply, we limit ourselves to two of those topics. First, we argue that, contrary to what Scofield suggests, using the terms “ethics” and “morality” interchangeably constitutes an oversimplification that blurs important distinctions. Second, we argue that, in a representative democracy, ethical expertise and consultation need not generate a “tragic choice” of the kind Scofield has in mind.