Description
Oxford The Methods of Bioethics An Essay in MetaBioethics 2019 Edition by John Mcmillan
This is the first book in bioethics
that explains how it is that you actually go about doing good bioethics.
Bioethics has made a mistake about its methods, and this has led not only to
too much theorizing, but also fragmentation within bioethics. The unhelpful
disputes between those who think bioethics needs to be more philosophical, more
sociological, more clinical, or more empirical, continue. While each of these claims
will have some point, they obscure
what should be common to all instances of
bioethics. Moreover, they provide another phantom that can lead newcomers to
bioethics down blind alleyways stalked by bristling sociologists and
philosophers. The method common to all bioethics is bringing moral reason to
bear upon ethical issues, and it is more
accurate and productive to clarify what this
involves than to stake out a methodological patch that shows why one discipline
is the most important. This book develops an account of the nature of bioethics
and then explains how a number of methodological spectres have obstructed
bioethics becoming what it should. In the final part, it explains how moral
reason can be brought to bear upon practical issues via an 'empirical,
Socratic' approach.
1: How to find your footing in bioethics
Part I: Bioethics
2: What is bioethics?
3: Good bioethics
Part II: The spectres of bioethics
4: Four spectres of bioethics
5: The fact value spectre
Part III: The methods of bioethics
6: Empirical, Socratic bioethics
7: What is an ethical argument?
8: Speculative argument and bioethics
9: Drawing distinctions: defining, reclaiming and analysing moral concepts
10: Drawing distinctions: novel, sublime and slippery moral concepts
11: What it is to reason about ethics