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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Say twenty hail Autonomy’s and reflect on what you have done – bioethicists as having some, but not priestly authority

By David Hunter
BMJ Group Blogs
Originally published May 17, 2013

Nathan Emmerich, occasional commentator here at the JME blog has recently published an interesting piece in the Guardian which argues against us taking bioethicists as having a particular type of expertise. While I enjoyed and agree with much of what he argues I do have a couple of quibbles – in particular I worry that the emphasis on inclusiveness and democracy could in effect lead to the exclusion of the bioethicist, which I think would be a mistake.

The type of expertise he argues against bioethicists having is basically what I will refer to as authoritative expertise – someone who has authoritative expertise in a particular field ought to be deferred to when there is a disagreement – their opinion is “better” than ours as lay decision makers. So for example when deciding how long an object is, and whether it will fit in the boot of our car, we ought to defer to the chap with the tape measure, since their measured judgement is better than ours.

I use this example for a reason – Emmerich focuses on knowledge based expertise (no doubt because it is easier to explain to the lay public…) but this isn’t the only form of expertise that warrants some deference there is also expertise which is performative (in this case the act of measuring well). I’m inclined to think that if bioethicists deserve any deference it will be due to their performative expertise, rather than their knowledge.

Emmerich suggests however that bioethicists should not be taken as having authoratative expertise because he thinks knowledge about morality is more like knowledge about aesthetics than knowledge about facts. Hence we ought to give no more weight to the bioethicists opinion about an ethical issue, than we do someone heavily steeped in the Art’s worlds opinion about a piece of modern art – they have a “sophisticated” view but that doesn’t tell me what I should think about the piece.

(cut)

I think the bioethicist is in a position to contribute something useful to such deliberation, debate and discussion in two ways, both of which require some expertise – even if it is not totally authorative expertise. The first way is this, the bioethicist I assume will have access to more knowledge both about what has been argued in regards to ethical theory and in regards to moves in applied ethics. Knowing these moves can short-cut some discussion and debate by showing paths that will lead nowhere – the implications and consequences of particular arguments.

The entire response is here.