Respect for cultural diversity and the empirical turn in bioethics: a plea for caution
نویسنده
چکیده
In the last two decades, there have been numerous calls for a culturally sensitive bioethics. At the same time, bioethicists have become increasingly involved in empirical research, which is a sign of dissatisfaction with the analytic methods of traditional bioethics. In this article, I will argue that although these developments have broadened and enriched the field of bioethics, they can easily be construed to be an endorsement of ethical relativism, especially by those not well grounded in academic moral philosophy. I maintain that bioethicists must resist the temptation of moving too quickly from cultural relativism to ethical relativism and from empirical findings to normative conclusions. Indeed, anyone who reasons in this way is guilty of the naturalistic fallacy. I conclude by saying that properly conceptualized, empirical research and sensitivity to cultural diversity should give rise to objective rational discourse and criticism and not indiscriminate tolerance of every possible moral practice. Bioethics must remain a normative discipline that is characterized by rigorous argumentation.
منابع مشابه
University of Birmingham IEEN workshop report : teaching and learning in interdisciplinary and empirical ethics
Bioethics is an interdisciplinary field that accommodates a broad range of perspectives and disciplines. This inherent diversity sets a number of challenges for both teachers and students of bioethics, notably in respect to the appropriate aims and methods of bioethics education, standards and criteria for evaluating performance and disciplinary identity. The Interdisciplinary and Empirical Eth...
متن کاملIEEN workshop report: Teaching and learning in interdisciplinary and empirical ethics
Bioethics is an interdisciplinary field that accommodates a broad range of perspectives and disciplines. This inherent diversity sets a number of challenges for both teachers and students of bioethics, notably in respect to the appropriate aims and methods of bioethics education, standards and criteria for evaluating performance and disciplinary identity. The Interdisciplinary and Empirical Eth...
متن کاملصلاحیت فرهنگی در آموزش پرستاری: مقاله مروری
Nurses face numerous patients with different cultural backgrounds and needs on a daily basis. Cultural diversity can be an obstacle in the way of providing quality healthcare services. Cultural competency is the proper response to cultural and ethnic diversity in the society. This research was conducted to define the concept of cultural competency in nursing education. In this study, Persian...
متن کاملBetween Relativism and Imperialism: Navigating Moral Diversity in Cross-Cultural Bioethics.
The need for explicit theoretical reflection on cross-cultural bioethics continues to grow as the spread of communication technologies and increased human migration has made interactions between medical professionals and patients from different cultural backgrounds much more common. I claim that this need presents us with the following dilemma. On the one hand, we do not want to operate accordi...
متن کامل