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- Title
Keeping it Ethically Real.
- Authors
DIEN HO; Ho, Dien
- Abstract
Many clinical ethicists have argued that ethics expertise is impossible. Their skeptical argument usually rests on the assumptions that to be an ethics expert is to know the correct moral conclusions, which can only be arrived at by having the correct ethical theories. In this paper, I argue that this skeptical argument is unsound. To wit, ordinary ethical deliberations do not require the appeal to ethical or meta-ethical theories. Instead, by agreeing to resolve moral differences by appealing to reasons, the participants agree to the Default Principle-a substantive rule that tells us how to adjudicate an ethical disagreement. The Default Principle also entails a commitment to arguments by parity, and together these two methodological approaches allow us to make genuine moral progress without assuming any deep ethical principles. Ethical expertise, in one sense, is thus the ability and knowledge to deploy the Default Principle and arguments by parity.
- Subjects
ETHICISTS; MEDICAL personnel; MEDICAL ethics; PARITY (Social sciences); EXPERTISE -- Social aspects; ETHICS
- Publication
Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, 2016, Vol 41, Issue 4, p369
- ISSN
0360-5310
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1093/jmp/jhw010