Abstract
Empirical bioethics can no longer be thought of as new. However, there are challenges to describing it as a maturing field of enquiry. A recent workshop, organized under the auspices of the AMIE (aims and methods in interdisciplinary and empirical ethics) programme, 1 brought together participants from a range of disciplinary backgrounds to debate the questions: ‘What would a mature field of empirical bioethics look like?’ ‘How would it define itself?’ ‘And what would its methodologies be?’
A number of difficulties with the potential maturing of empirical bioethics can be noted. First, empirical bioethics has often been seen in the shadow of philosophical bioethics, having to work to justify its very existence, and has consequently tended to produce rather defensive self-definitions. Second, even where scholars have produced positive accounts of the role and value of empirical bioethics these have been very diverse – encompassing a constellation of different theoretical and practical concerns and projects. Third, there is no established methodology for empirical bioethics. Indeed, there is extensive scope for methodological disagreement given both the diversity of philosophical positions on empirical bioethics and the inherent methodological contestation in all social science. As an invitation to the workshop, participants were invited to reflect on their own practices as empirical bioethics scholars, encompassing institutional and practical as well as theoretical and epistemological considerations, and to use these reflections to prompt discussion on the direction of the field.
In this vein, in the first part of the day speakers described the issues that have arisen for them in the practices of doing empirical bioethics research. The first session examined the engagement between the researcher and health-care practitioners working ‘in the field’. It was noted that practitioners are commonly enthusiastic about having an opportunity to reflect on the ethical issues arising in their work. For the researcher, there is a need to respect the priorities of those she/he is researching. The ethical issues on which practitioners are encouraged to reflect have to be of practical relevance for them. While any ethical inconsistencies in practitioner accounts can be challenged in a way that is perhaps uncomfortable for a traditional social scientist, the empirical ethics researcher cannot push this to the extent that a traditional philosopher might like (Bobbie Farsides; Brighton & Sussex Medical School). Further, the researcher has to be sensitive to the potential conflict between their own values and those of practitioners, and avoid imposing a view that what is good is ‘living a life like mine’ (Mikey Dunn; Oxford).
The second session expanded on the practical issues of empirical bioethics research to cover the difficulties of working in a field that is still in the process of establishing its identity. Lucy Frith (Liverpool) pithily summed up the structural problems facing an empirical bioethics that defines itself in relation to existing established fields of academic practice: it is too philosophical for social science but too sociological for philosophy; it is too practical for real philosophers but not practical enough for health service researchers. It was suggested that these difficulties might be overcome by moving beyond an account of empirical bioethics that situates it as drawing on or combining elements of both sociology and philosophy as they currently exist. Rather, a reshaping of the two disciplines might be required: both sociology and philosophy must change (Mike Parker; Oxford).
The third and final session focused on the ‘ethical’ element of empirical bioethics, with speakers offering perspectives on the normative contributions that sociology (Alison Harvey; King's College London) and philosophy (James Wilson; University College London) might make to empirical bioethics.
Offering concluding remarks, Jon Ives (Birmingham) proposed that moving on from debate on the methodological issues in empirical bioethics, it would be useful to reflect on what the discipline is trying to do. He offered a number of potential aims for empirical bioethics: (a) shining a light on a matter; (b) identifying whether and how the matter is a problem; (c) if it is a problem, considering what is to be done about it; and (d) helping to bring about a solution to the problem. Different researchers, from different disciplinary backgrounds, might have different perspectives on the proper focus of empirical bioethics and hence on the proper balance between these potential aims. The second AMIE workshop, planned for Spring 2011, will take up this theme, offering an opportunity to discuss the nature of the normative element of empirical bioethics.