Ethics, expertise and human terrain

2015 ◽  
pp. 220-243
Keyword(s):  
2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 649-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Rasmussen

A major obstacle to broad support of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) is suspicion regarding the nature of the moral expertise it claims to offer. The suspicion seems to be confirmed when the field fails to make its moral expertise explicit. In this vacuum, critics suggest the following:(1)Clinical ethics consultation's legitimacy depends on its ability to offer an expertise in moral matters.(2)Expertise in moral matters is knowledge of a singular moral truth which applies to everyone.(3)The claim that a clinical ethics consultant can offer knowledge of a singular moral truth in virtue of her professional training is absurd, false, or gravely immoral.Therefore,(4)The field is illegitimate.


Author(s):  
Ana Frunza

The chapter proposes to philosophically ground the ethics expertise in social work, starting from a series of ethics theories: utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics and ethics of virtues. During the foundation of ethics expertise we made conceptual distinctions between the theoretical and practical nature of expertise, between the ethical and the moral one, in order to justify the need for a new model of ethics expertise. In our approach, we debate the influence of such theories in the field of social services, which we consider to be representative in the context of the construction of a new model of ethics expertise, which underlies the constitutive values of social practice. The normativity of the ethical theories is extended to the level of certain different behavioural models and moral reasoning, summing up in practice the frameworks of the moral conduct the individuals can apply, when making an ethical decision, in social or organisational context, namely to determine whether the decision is morally acceptable or not.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Ben Almassi ◽  

Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical (there is no such thing as ethics expertise), epistemological (we cannot know who has ethics expertise) or social-political (we should not treat anyone as having ethics expertise). Here I identify three common, contestable assumptions about ethics expertise which underwrite skepticism of one form or another: (1) a singular conception of ethics expertise constituted by a core property or unity among multiple properties, (2) equivocation of ethics expertise and ethicists’ expertise, and (3) priority of moral deference as an unavoidable implication of ethics expertise. Taken separately, each assumption can have unpalatable implications for ethics expertise that make skepticism seem more attractive; taken together, the resulting picture of ethics expertise is that much worse. Each of these assumptions is vulnerable to criticism, however, and jettisoning them enables a pluralist approach to ethics expertise less prone to skepticism and better suited for the ranging functions of ethics expertise in healthcare and other contexts.


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