Submitted by: Sanjay kaushal

Assignment- II

The Emergence of Bioethics As Discipline and Discourse

Daniel Callahan

In this article, Daniel Callahan has talked about the need of the emergence of

Bioethics as a Discipline and what role should an ethicist play to bring it up as a

discipline. Callahan has basically focused the need of solving the problems in Bio-

sciences and medicine that involve ethical questions regarding Bioethics.

While solving the bioethical problems and ethicist should do three important

tasks as follows;

a. Ethicist should try to point out and define which problems raise moral

issues.

b. Ethicist should provide some systematic means of thinking about, and

thinking through the moral issues which have been recognized.

c. And, should help scientists and physicians to make right decisions.

Philosophy and Theology do not compatibly lay open the ethical issues in

medicine and biology. There is a slot between the conceptual world and real

world, and this space is to be bridged through the Bioethics.

Challahan has discussed the notion “disciplinary reductionism”, which means, first

picking up the problem and then minus all technical jargons, and then reducing it

(but not the issue) to that language which is commonly comprehensive. In this

situation, the language which consists all jargons of a particular field is

transformed into other language. Challahan has stressed the problem of

disciplinary reductionism; i.e. transforming one language into other is a way of

reducing many elements of that language, though this helps methodologists and

professional ethicists. Therefore, disciplinary reductionism is also an unavoidable

difficult task. As he has explained, “if a discipline of Bioethics is to be created, it

must be created in a way which does not allow this form of evading responsibility,

of blaming the students for the faults of the teacher, of changing the nature of the

problems to suit the methodologies of professional ethicists.”

In trying to create the discipline of Bioethics, it is vital to understand the meaning

of “rigorous” and “serious” regarding Bioethics on which most of the questions

are based. And there can be two options to understand these words.

One way is to stick to traditional notions of philosophical and theological rigor, in

which case one will rarely if ever encounter it in the interdisciplinary work of

Bioethics. And according to other way, the thought may occur that its definitions

of “rigor” which needs adaptation. Therefore, basically the methodological rigor

should be appropriate to the subject matter.

The first task and ethicist is entrusted with is to have the ability to see in, through,

and under the surface appearance of things; to envision alternatives; to get under

the skin of people’s ethical agonies or ethical insensitivities, to envision across

social issues, faiths and values. Secondly, methodological strategies require a rigor

which can and should come into play, bearing on logic, consistency, careful

analysis of terms, and the like. Simultaneously they have to be adapted to the

subject matter at hand, and that subject matter is not normally, in concrete

ethical cases of medicine and biology, one which can be stuffed into a too-rigidly

structured methodological mold.

Traditionally, the methodology of ethics has concerned itself with ethical thinking

about ethical problems. Callahan has talked about three areas of ethical activity

as follows;

a. Thinking

b. Feeling (attitudes)

c. And behavior

The case for including feeling and behavior along with thinking rests on the

assumptions,

i. that in life both feelings and behavior shape thinking helping to explain

why defective arguments are persuasive and pervasive

ii. and, that it is legitimate for an ethicist to worry about what people do

and not just what they think and say.

Callahan has offered one negative and one positive criterion for ethical

methodology. He says, the wrong methodology will be used if it is not a

methodology which has been specifically developed for ethical problems of

medicine and biology. His positive criterion for positive methodology is that it

must display the fact that bioethics is an interdisciplinary field in which the purely

“ethical” dimensions neither can nor should be factored out without remainder

from the legal, political, psychological and social dimensions.

The third task as a bioethicist is the decision-making. Callahan has offered a

second positive criterion as a test of a good bioethical methodology.

Methodology ought to be such that it enables those who employ it to reach

reasonably specific, clear decisions in those instances which require them. Good

methodology should make it possible to reach specific conclusions at specific

times. And only deductive kind of ethical systems makes it possible.

Callahan has drawn a distinction between “ethics” understood broadly and ethics

understood narrowly. In its narrow sense, “to do ethics is to be good at doing

what well-trained philosopher and theologians do – such as analyze concepts,

clarify principles, see logical entailments, spot underlying assumptions, and build

theoretical systems. Callahan explains, if Bioethics is to be understood as a

discipline, it has to be designed and practitioners should be trained so that it will

directly serve those physicians and biologists whose position calls them to make

the practical decisions. One important test for acceptance of bioethics as a

discipline will be the extent to which it is called upon by scientists and physicians.

This means that it should be developed inductively, working at least initially from

the kinds of problems scientists and physicians believe they face and need

assistance on.