Fact–value distinction

Abstract: This paper challenges the traditional assumption that descriptive and prescriptive sciences are essentially distinct by presenting a study on the implicit normativity of the production and presentation of biomedical scientific facts within evidence-based medicine. This interdisciplinary study serves as an illustration of the potential worth of the concept of implicit normativity for bioethics in general and for integrated empirical ethics research in particular. It demonstrates how both the production and presentation of scientific information in an evidence-based decision-support contain implicit presuppositions and values, which pre-structure the moral environment of the clinical process of decision-making. As a consequence, the evidence-based decision support did not only support the clinical decision-making process; it also transformed it in a morally significant way. This phenomenon undermines the assumption within much of the literature on patient autonomy that information disclosure is a conditional requirement before patient autonomy even starts; patient autonomy is already influenced during the production and presentation of information. These results imply an increased responsibility of those who produce and present evidence-based facts(i.e. scientists in general and physicians in particular). The insights of this study not only involve a different focus on both theory and practice of patient autonomy and informed consent, but they also call for a broader scope of morality than does traditional empirical research in bioethics. The concept of implicit normativity within integrated empirical ethics research calls for a strong cooperation between bioethicists and descriptive scientists, i.e., a cooperation that goes beyond the discipline-specific epistemic values and that takes place during all phases of the research process.

Abstract: Letting students deliberate on socio-scientific issues is a tricky affair. It is yet unclear how to assess whether, or even support that, students weave science facts into value-laden socio-scientific deliberations without committing the naturalistic fallacy of deducing ‘ought’ from ‘is’. As a preliminary step, this study investigated how Danish upper secondary biology students actually interwove science facts and values in socio-scientific discussions. In particular, the focus was the argumentative effects of different ways of blurring the fact–value distinction. The data consisted of the transcriptions of three 45–60 minute discussions among 4–5 students about whether human gene therapy should be allowed. The data were analysed from a normative pragmatics perspective—with a focus on how the students designed and elicited messages to influence the decisions of others. It was found that the students regularly co-opted science to make it appear that their evaluative claims were more solidly supported than ...

Abstract: The turn to empirical ethics answers two calls The first is for a richer account of morality than that afforded by bioethical principlism, which is cast as excessively abstract and thin on the facts The second is for the facts in question to be those of human experience and not some other, unworldly realm Empirical ethics therefore promises a richer naturalistic ethics, but in fulfilling the second call it often fails to heed the metaethical requirements related to the first Empirical ethics risks losing the normative edge which necessarily characterizes the ethical, by failing to account for the nature and the logic of moral norms I sketch a naturalistic theory, teleological expressivism (TE), which negotiates the naturalistic fallacy by providing a more satisfactory means of taking into account facts and research data with ethical implications The examples of informed consent and the euthanasia debate are used to illustrate the superiority of this approach, and the problems consequent on including the facts in the wrong kind of way