The Reasonable Content of Conscience in Public Bioethics.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-12-2024

Publication Title

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics

Abstract

Bioethicists aim to provide moral guidance in policy, research, and clinical contexts using methods of moral analysis (e.g., principlism, casuistry, and narrative ethics) that aim to satisfy the constraints of public reason. Among other objections, some critics have argued that public reason lacks the moral content needed to resolve bioethical controversies because discursive reason simply cannot justify any substantive moral claims in a pluralistic society. In this paper, the authors defend public reason from this criticism by showing that it contains sufficient content to address one of the perennial controversies in bioethics-the permissibility and limits of clinician conscientious objection. They develop a "reasonability view" grounded in public reason and apply it to some recent examples of conscientious objection.

First Page

1

Last Page

13

DOI

10.1017/S0963180124000070

ISSN

1469-2147

PubMed ID

38469878

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