“Conceptual Construals” vs. Moral Experience: A Rejoinder

Abstract

For Engelhardt, the parable of EmergiMedVan simply presents one dilemma (the allocation of critical-care medicine), which we then must resolve by rational analysis, whereas I, in the parable, wanted to look beneath the surface of our critical-care system to dimensions of attitude and culture where the task was not so much to call attention once again to a standard problem of bioethics as to find a massive interplay of moral puzzlements and give voice to them. For there are situations in which only a narrative can adequately probe the nature of a moral problem that might too easily be taken for granted in the customary, “case”-oriented, analytic approach.

Article Note

Professor Engelhardt’s response [1] is constructive, and the reader may find the differences between our approaches instructive.