Philosophers in research ethics committees—what do they think they’re doing? An empirical-ethical analysis

Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 24 (4):609-619 (2021)
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Abstract

Research ethics committees in Germany usually don’t have philosophers as members and if so, only contingently, not provided for by statute. This is interesting from a philosophical perspective, assuming that ethics is a discipline of philosophy. It prompts the question what role philosophers play in those committees they can be found in. Eight qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the self-perception of philosophers regarding their contribution to research ethics committees. The results show that the participants generally don’t view themselves as ethics experts. They are rather unanimous on the competencies they think they contribute to the committee but not as to whether those are philosophical competencies or applied ethical ones. In some cases they don’t see a big difference between their role and the role of the jurist member. In the discussion section of this paper I bring up three topics, prompted by the interviews, that need to be addressed: (1) I argue that the interviewees’ unwillingness to call themselves ethics experts might have to do with a too narrow understanding ofethics expertise. (2) I argue that the disagreement among the interviewees concerning therelationship between moral philosophy and applied ethicsmight be explained on a theoretical or on a practical level. (3) I argue that there is some lack of clarity concerning therelationship between ethics and lawin research ethics committees and that further work needs to be done here. All three topics, I conclude, need further investigation.

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Charlotte Gauckler
University of Greifswald

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References found in this work

Empirical ethics, context-sensitivity, and contextualism.Albert Musschenga - 2005 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (5):467 – 490.
Autonomy and the Asymmetry Problem for Moral Expertise.Julia Driver - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 128 (3):619-644.
Moral Experts.Peter Singer - 1972 - Analysis 32 (4):115 - 117.
Moral Expertise and the Credentials Problem.Michael Cholbi - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (4):323-334.

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