Researchers in applied ethics, and some areas of bioethics particularly, aim to develop concrete and appropriate recommendations for action in morally relevant real-world situations. When proceeding from more abstract levels of ethical reasoning to such concrete recommendations, however, even with regard to the very same normative principle or norm, it seems possible to develop divergent or even contradictory recommendations for action regarding a certain situation. This may give the impression that such recommendations would be arbitrary and, hence, not well justified. (...) Against this background, we, first, aim at showing that ethical recommendations for action, although being contingent in some sense, are not arbitrary if developed appropriately. For this purpose, we examine two types of contingencies arising in applied ethics reasoning based on recent examples of recommendations for action in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, we refer to a three-step model of ethical reasoning towards recommendations for actions. This, however, leaves open the question of how applied ethics may cope with contingent recommendations for action. Therefore, in a second step, we analyze the role of bridge principles for developing ethically appropriate recommendations for action, i.e., principles which connect normative claims with relevant empirical information to justify certain recommendations for action in a given morally relevant situation. Finally, we discuss some implications for reasoning and reporting in empirically informed ethics. (shrink)

Bioethics has developed approaches to address ethical issues in health care, similar to how technology ethics provides guidelines for ethical research on artificial intelligence, big data, and robotic applications. As these digital technologies are increasingly used in medicine, health care and public health, thus, it is plausible that the approaches of technology ethics have influenced bioethical research. Similar to the “empirical turn” in bioethics, which led to intense debates about appropriate moral theories, ethical frameworks and meta-ethics due to the increased (...) use of empirical methodologies from social sciences, the proliferation of health-related subtypes of technology ethics might have a comparable impact on current bioethical research. This systematic journal review analyses the reporting of ethical frameworks and non-empirical methods in argument-based research articles on digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health that have been published in high-impact bioethics journals. We focus on articles reporting non-empirical research in original contributions. Our aim is to describe currently used methods for the ethical analysis of ethical issues regarding the application of digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health. We confine our analysis to non-empirical methods because empirical methods have been well-researched elsewhere. Finally, we discuss our findings against the background of established methods for health technology assessment, the lack of a typology for non-empirical methods as well as conceptual and methodical change in bioethics. Our descriptive results may serve as a starting point for reflecting on whether current ethical frameworks and non-empirical methods are appropriate to research ethical issues deriving from the application of digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health. (shrink)

Der Erwerb von Fach- und Forschungskompetenzen kann im besonderen Maße in Lehrveranstaltungen gefördert werden, die Studierende mit der Bewältigung komplexer Probleme konfrontieren. In diesem Artikel stellen wir didaktische Überlegungen zum Forschenden Lernen in der Empirischen Medizinethik dar. Ausgehend von der Theorie des Pragmatismus zeigen wir auf, wie Forschendes Lernen in Lehrangeboten verwirklicht und für die Förderung medizinethischer Kompetenzen genutzt werden kann. Wir fokussieren dabei auf Lehr- und Lernprojekte, in denen die selbstorganisierte Durchführung empirisch-ethischer Forschung für Studierende prozesshaft erfahrbar gemacht werden (...) kann. Solche Lehrangebote bieten große Potenziale, vor allem im Hinblick auf die Erweiterung von Reflexionskompetenzen der Studierenden. Eine Aufnahme solcher Lehrangebote in die fakultative Medizinethik-Lehre wird im Hinblick auf kontextuelle Herausforderungen diskutiert. (shrink)