Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (5):467 – 490 (2005)
Abstract |
In medical ethics, business ethics, and some branches of political philosophy (multi-culturalism, issues of just allocation, and equitable distribution) the literature increasingly combines insights from ethics and the social sciences. Some authors in medical ethics even speak of a new phase in the history of ethics, hailing "empirical ethics" as a logical next step in the development of practical ethics after the turn to "applied ethics." The name empirical ethics is ill-chosen because of its associations with "descriptive ethics." Unlike descriptive ethics, however, empirical ethics aims to be both descriptive and normative. The first question on which I focus is what kind of empirical research is used by empirical ethics and for which purposes. I argue that the ultimate aim of all empirical ethics is to improve the context-sensitivity of ethics. The second question is whether empirical ethics is essentially connected with specific positions in meta-ethics. I show that in some kinds of meta-ethical theories, which I categorize as broad contextualist theories, there is an intrinsic need for connecting normative ethics with empirical social research. But context-sensitivity is a goal that can be aimed for from any meta-ethical position.
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DOI | 10.1080/03605310500253030 |
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References found in this work BETA
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory.Alasdair C. MacIntyre - 1983 - University of Notre Dame Press.
Wide Reflective Equilibrium and Theory Acceptance in Ethics.Norman Daniels - 1979 - Journal of Philosophy 76 (5):256-282.
Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism.Owen FLANAGAN - 1991 - Harvard University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
The Ethics of ‘Public Understanding of Ethics’—Why and How Bioethics Expertise Should Include Public and Patients’ Voices.Silke Schicktanz, Mark Schweda & Brian Wynne - 2012 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 15 (2):129-139.
Research Across the Disciplines: A Road Map for Quality Criteria in Empirical Ethics Research.Marcel Mertz, Julia Inthorn, Günter Renz, Lillian Geza Rothenberger, Sabine Salloch, Jan Schildmann, Sabine Wöhlke & Silke Schicktanz - 2014 - BMC Medical Ethics 15 (1):17.
Charting Moral Psychology’s Significance for Bioethics: Routes to Bioethical Progress, its Limits, and Lessons From Moral Philosophy.Michael Klenk - 2020 - Diametros 17 (64):36-55.
An Update on the “Empirical Turn” in Bioethics: Analysis of Empirical Research in Nine Bioethics Journals.Tenzin Wangmo, Sirin Hauri, Eloise Gennet, Evelyn Anane-Sarpong, Veerle Provoost & Bernice S. Elger - 2018 - BMC Medical Ethics 19 (1):6.
The Use of Empirical Research in Bioethics: A Survey of Researchers in Twelve European Countries.Tenzin Wangmo & Veerle Provoost - 2017 - BMC Medical Ethics 18 (1):79.
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