How to Deal with Counter-Examples to Common Morality Theory: A Surprising Result

Tom Beauchamp and James Childress are confident that their four principles—respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—are globally applicable to the sorts of issues that arise in biomedical ethics, in part because those principles form part of the common morality (a set of gener...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Herissone-Kelly, Peter (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2022
In: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Year: 2022, Volume: 31, Issue: 2, Pages: 185-191
Further subjects:B counter-examples
B principlism
B four principles approach
B Common morality
B global applicability thesis
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Summary:Tom Beauchamp and James Childress are confident that their four principles—respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—are globally applicable to the sorts of issues that arise in biomedical ethics, in part because those principles form part of the common morality (a set of general norms to which all morally committed persons subscribe). Inevitably, however, the question arises of how the principlist ought to respond when presented with apparent counter-examples to this thesis. I examine a number of strategies the principlist might adopt in order to retain common morality theory in the face of supposed counter-examples. I conclude that only a strategy that takes a non-realist view of the common morality’s principles is viable. Unfortunately, such a view is likely not to appeal to the principlist.
ISSN:1469-2147
Contains:Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S096318012100058X