Abstract

With the growing application of machine learning models in medicine, principlist bioethics has been put forward as needing revision. This paper reflects on the dominant trope in AI ethics to include a new ‘principle of explicability’ alongside the traditional four principles of bioethics that make up the theory of principlism. It specifically suggests that these four principles are sufficient and challenges the relevance of explicability as a separate ethical principle by emphasizing the coherentist affinity of principlism. We argue that, through specification, the properties of explicability are already covered by the four bioethical principles. The paper finishes by anticipating an objection that coherent principles could not facilitate technology induced change and are not well-suited to tackle moral differences.