Responses and Dialogue Rationality and the Genetic Challenge Revisited

What are philosophical ethicists good for when real-life moral problems need to be solved? Two views present themselves. The first is that with their superior wisdom they can tell decisionmakers what to do. The second is that with their analytical skills they can explicate alternative views for decisionmakers to choose from. (The decisionmakers in question can include individuals, groups, societies, governments, ministries, voluntary organizations, pressure groups, labor unions, business executives, and so on.) The first view is prevalent among philosophical bioethicists, who almost invariably think that they have a rational method by which they can tell right from wrong. Nonphilosophers often disagree with this and say that they themselves have alternative and better methods of arriving at good moral and political judgments. Despite the disagreement, both philosophical and nonphilosophical bioethicists seem to agree that the purpose of their work is to change the world for the better, not just to describe people’s opinions and arguments. The second view is defended in my book. I claim that philosophical bioethicists can explicate moral notions and ethical arguments and convey their knowledge concerning these to decisionmakers. I also claim that philosophical bioethicists cannot, in their professional capacity as philosophers, assert that they know what decisionmakers ought to do in contested situations. They can present the arguments in their strongest possible forms, but they cannot harness the authority of philosophy, or reason, to prove that one internally coherent theory or doctrine is, in a universal sense, to be preferred to all others. How can the second view be defended? In the book, I have presented My thanks are due to John Coggon for guest editing the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics special issue on my Rationality and the Genetic Challenge: Making People Better? (CQ 20(2)), to Tuija Takala for overseeing the editorial process for the journal, to Peter Herissone-Kelly for checking my English, and for the colleagues who took the time to read the book and to offer comments on it. The research for this paper was conducted as a part of Improving Humanity? The Role of Rationality and Morality in the Regulation of Genetic and Medical Advances, my personal project at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies during 2009– 2011, and The Human Body, Its Scope, Limits and Future, a Wellcome Strategic Programme at the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation (iSEI), University of Manchester. My thanks are due to these institutions for supporting my work.