1. Ethics, Bioethics, and Moral Reasoning:
How to Think Well in a Complex World
Jonathan Beever, Purdue University Department of Philosophy

2. What are we doing?
1. Personal, Societal, and Professional Ethics
2. Ethics vs. RCR
3. Bioethics
4. Arguments and Moral Reasoning
5. Applying Moral Reasoning
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

3. What is Ethics?
1. Personal, Societal, and Professional Ethics
What is ethics?
the systematic study of the coherence
and consistency of our moral beliefs.
moral beliefs = our intuitions concerning
right and wrong, good and bad, just and
unjust. The Subject
Society
Intuitions? … Professions
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

4. What is RCR?
2. Ethics vs. RCR
RCR vs. ethics education
RCR = Responsible Conduct Ethics Education
of Research - Education in moral
- training in legal codes of reasoning
appropriate behavior - “how to think critically
- “how not to get sued” and ethically” model
models
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

5. What is RCR?
2. Ethics vs. RCR
RCR vs. ethics education
Role of philosophy and policy in science education and
moral education
The Hastings Center
The need (NIH and NSF) and The IU Center for Bioethics
NIH Guide 23.23 required that applications for The responsible and ethical conduct of
institutional research training grants lacking a plan for research (RCR) is critical for excellence, as well as
instruction in responsible conduct of research be public trust, in science and engineering.
returned without review… (NIH 1994) Consequently, education in RCR is considered
essential in the preparation of future scientists and
engineers. (NSF 2009)
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

6. What is Bioethics?
3. Bioethics
Hellegers:
1. Rights and duties of patients and health professionals
2. Rights and duties of research subjects and researchers
3. Formulation of public policy guidelines for clinical care and biomedical research
Potter:
1. long-range environmental concerns
2. Prevention, not just therapy
3. Search for wisdom
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

7. Why care?
3. Bioethics
df. Bioethics: The proactive study of the relationship between
biotechnologies and “societal ethics,” or our codified moral beliefs.
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

8. Why care?
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

9. What issues?
3. Bioethics
• Animals • Health
• Cloning • Personalized Medicine
• Biotechnologies • Nanotechnologies
• Environment • Genomic revolution
• Energy and • Genetic testing
Climate • Stem Cell research
• Euthanasia • Policy issues
• Et cetera…
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

10. Why Reason?
4. Arguments and Moral Reasoning
ARGUMENT – a set of statements (or propositions)
such that one of the statements is supposed to be
supported by the others.
Deductive – Inductive – Abductive – hypothetical
necessary inference probable inference inference from a fact to the
from population to from sample to truth of a premise.
sample. population.
1. All dice in this bag are A’s; 1. All dice in this particular 1. All dice in this bag are A’s;
2. all dice in this particular random sample are A’s; 2. all dice in this particular random
random sample are taken from 2. all dice in this particular random sample are A’s;
this bag; sample are taken from this bag; 3. therefore, all dice in this particular
3. therefore, all dice in this 3. therefore, all dice in this bag are random sample are taken from this
particular random sample are A’s. bag.
A’s.
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

11. Why Reason?
4. Arguments and Moral Reasoning
Are ethical arguments of the same sort as other arguments?
Does moral reasoning work like other reasoning?
(what are we reasoning about?)
Descriptive vs. Normative claims
Taxonomy of Ethical Theories (non-exclusive)
Deontological Consequentialist Pragmatic
Rene Descartes Jeremy Bentham C.S. Peirce
Immanuel Kant John Stuart Mill James Dewey
John Rawls G.E. Moore
Thomas Scanlon Peter Singer
FMI – see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-moral/
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

12. How to Decide?
4. Arguments and Moral Reasoning
Top-down
Principlism:
1. Autonomy
2. Non-maleficence
3. Beneficence
Moral 4. Justice
Decision
FMI – see Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

13. How to Decide?
4. Arguments and Moral Reasoning
Top-down
Principlism:
1. Autonomy
2. Non-maleficence
3. Beneficence
Moral 4. Justice
Decision
Bottom-up
Casuistry
FMI – see Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

14. How to Decide?
4. Arguments and Moral Reasoning
Top-down
Principlism:
1. Autonomy
2. Non-maleficence
3. Beneficence
Moral 4. Justice
Decision
Reflexive Equilibrium
Bottom-up
Casuistry
FMI – see Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics
© 2012 Jonathan Beever

15. What to Decide?
5. Applying Moral Reasoning
1. Pharmacogenomic testing
2. End-of-life care for PVS patient
3. Animal Testing on GMO Mice
4. ….
How are we to best apply ethical theory and moral reasoning to real-world cases?
Questions?
Jonathan Beever, beeverj@purdue.edu
© 2012 Jonathan Beever