Abstract
Principlism, the account of Bioethics proposed by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in their work Principles of Biomedical Ethics, is presented by the authors as a guide to the practice of biomedical Ethics resulting from the determination of four basic moral principles that are part of the common morality, understood, in its turn, as a set of universally shared moral beliefs. In spite of the appeal of the proposal, some objections can be made. This paper seeks to introduce the following question: what authority does the common morality confer to Principlism? Because, if Principlism does not pretend the background of the authority of the common morality, in what way does Principlism contribute to Bioethics?
This chapter is one of the results of the research project DER2010-17357, financially supported by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation, and the research project DER2014-52811-P, financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
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Notes
- 1.
This criterion is somewhat problematic, and may even be circular: common morality is the set of norms accepted by all morally serious people, i.e. the set of norms accepted by everyone who accepts the norms of common morality. Herissone-Kelly holds that Beauchamp and Childress’s understanding of common morality is not descriptive—in which case the issue of circularity would arise—but conceptual (Herissone-Kelly 2003, 65–78; Herissone-Kelly 2011, 584–587). Beauchamp and Childress offer their reply to this issue (Beauchamp and Childress 2013, 416–417, 420 ff).
- 2.
Although ethics is by definition practical, the authors refer to their study as an “ethical theory”, to convey the knowledge that aims to identify and justify the norms that guide behaviour and allow it to be evaluated (Beauchamp and Childress 2013, 1); they later go on to define other possible meanings of the term (Beauchamp and Childress 2013, 351 ff.).
- 3.
If Beauchamp and Childress’ reference to common morality is merely descriptive, then “bioethics […] is reduced to the pure description of what people think about different topics, a far cry from the serious systematic study of the reasons that lead us to think of different behaviours as good or bad” (Requena 2008, 21; DeGrazia 2003, 224).
- 4.
This claim to limiting themselves to describing moral norms is a problematic one. As stated in footnote 1, the criterion of a morally serious person may be considered to be circular. This question is a recurring issue when attempting to make “value-free” practical philosophy. Beauchamp and Childress need some kind of value criterion to determine who morally serious people are. A parallel could be drawn between Hart’s view on law and the principlist view on morality: in Hart’s opinion, law is ultimately what judges consider to be law; for Principlism, common morality is what morally serious people share. The problem is that in order to know who is a judge we have to know what law is, and in order to know who is a morally serious person we have to know what morality is. On the insufficiency of this value-free perspective for the purposes of practical philosophy, see Pereira-Sáez 2007, passim.
- 5.
In the latest edition they put forward a different argument: universal agreements about a norm do not justify its authority, but are qualified considered judgments, and thus serve as effective justification, since the justification of a normative theory lies in its overall coherence, which to a great extent depends on its fit with considered judgments (Beauchamp and Childress 2013, 418). In this case the solidity of the justification will depend on our judgment of the method, which will be analysed in a subsequent section of this article.
- 6.
According to A. Dawson and E. Garrard, the compatibility between moral “imperialism” with regard to common morality and relativism with regard to private moralities—put forward by Gillon (the European proponent of North American Principlism)—is unsustainable: see Dawson and Garrard (2006, 200–204) and Gillon (2003), passim.
- 7.
The authors consider that situations might arise in which even the morally preferable action does not enable a person to fulfil all his or her moral obligations and will be deplorable (from the standpoint of moral obligation, not of sentiment, as they take pains to clarify): Beauchamp and Childress (2013, 16).
- 8.
John Finnis states that the first principles of practical reasoning are pre-moral, and the failure to attend to at least one of them is irrational rather than immoral (Finnis et al. 1987, passim).
- 9.
- 10.
The authors relate this capacity to balance the different moral considerations with moral character, and refer to moral virtues, which they consider to be more in the nature of character traits than habits that can be acquired through conduct (Beauchamp and Childress 2009, 30–63).
- 11.
The ethical code of pirates, for example, may be perfectly coherent (see Beauchamp and Childress 2013, 407). That the coherence of reasoning with a set of substantive principles should lead to the abandoning of these very principles seems somewhat problematic; if so, then the reasoning is not coherent, but this is not enough to deny the justificatory efficacy of the said principles.
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Pereira-Sáez, C. (2016). Philosophical Imperialism? A Critical View of North American Principlist Bioethics. In: Serna, P., Seoane, JA. (eds) Bioethical Decision Making and Argumentation. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 70. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43419-3_4
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