A Fuzzy-Logic Approach to Bioethics

Abstract

Virtually any term, whether properties or states of affairs, involved in the bioethical debate - as in everyday life and in most sciences - is likely to have fuzzy edges and as regards borderline cases, without precise lines of demarcation. That is the case to face euthanasia, abortion, embryonic research, hybrids, animal experimentation, etc. etc. Thus, there is a profound disagreement between a continuous and gradual reality, riddled with nuances and transitions, a reality in gray, and a logic (an analysis and description of it) bivalent, between sheer truth and complete falsehood, in ”allor- nothing” terms, black or white. As an alternative to the ’principle of bivalence’ that permeates the standard approach to reality in general and bioethics in particular, we maintain the ’principle of gradualism’, which says that everything is a matter of degree and therefore a fuzzy-logic approach is an appropriate theoretical method in bioethics. So, the fuzzy approach to bioethics entitles us to soften the sharp dichotomies usually stated on bioethical issues in three main fields: about facts and definitions; about reasons and arguments, concretely in analogies and slippery slope arguments; and about norms and values (deontics). The main consequence of the fuzzy approach to bioethics is that it allows us to cope with thousands of dilemmas that arise in our discipline in a way less wrenching, traumatic, and arbitrary than the ”all-or-nothing” approach. Consequently, similar behaviours and situations can receive a similar normative (ethical and legal) treatment, in the sense of the elementary principles of fairness and proportionality.