Bioethics and NOMA Flashcards
What is ethics? What is bioethics?
Ethics: a principled set of right consuct or the branch of philosophy that deals with morality.
Bioethics: the study of the ethical and moral implications of new biological discoveries and biomedical advances.
Deonotological ethical theory.
Ethical theory concerned with duty and rights, moral obligations, and rules, no matter what the outcome.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) believed in the power of reason to solve human problems.
There is only one correct motive in Kantian ethics and that is the desire to be a good person, to do what is right, to have a “pure will.”
Rule of thumb. Binding rules. Absolute rules.
Utilitarian ethical theory.
Ethical theory that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its usefulness in providing happiness or pleasure as summed by all sentient beings.
The ends justify the means.
Promote the greatest good for the greatest number.
What is right is what is most useful.
Utilitarianism’s teaching can be summed up in four basic tenets.
- Consequentialism*: consequences count, NOT motives or intentions.
- Maximization*: the number of beings affected by consequences matters; the more beings affected, the more important the result.
A theory of value: good consequences are defined by pleasure (hedonic) or what people prefer (preference) or by some other good thing.
A scope-of-morality premise: each being’s happiness is to count as one and no more, and beings who count are to be made explicit, whether these are only humans or all sentient creatures.
Rights ethical theory.
A claim that can be made on society, which include moral rights, positive rights and negative rights.
A right is an entitlement to be treated in a certain way.
Moral rights are importantly distinct from legal rights.
Moral rights are natural (doscovered, but not created - moral realism), equal, inalienable (cannot be taken away without consent), universal.
Legal rights are created, potentially unequal, alienable, and local.
Casuist ethical theory.
Ethical theory of case-based reasoning.
Virtue.
A trait or quality deemed morally excellent.
Temperance, prudence, fortitude (courage, bravery), justice.
Stepher Jay Gould (1941-2002).
Paleontologist, scientist, author.
Punctuated equilibrium: evolution proceeds rapidly at crucial points with speciation occurring almost immediately (possibly due to quite sudden genetic changes).
Panda’s thumb: a modification (adjustment) of the wrist bone that allows pandas to strip leaves from bamboo shoots. Such a transformation must have occurred all at once, or it would not have been preserved by natural selection.
Rocks of Ages, Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life.
Presents a simple and conventional resolution to an issue laden with emotion.
NOMA.
Principled position on moral and intellectial grounds.
NOT a diplomatic solution.
Infusing nature with knowable factuality of godliness. Tooling up the logic of religion to an invincibility that will finally make atheism impossible.
Doubting Thomas.
Doubting Thomas was using the key principles of science while operating within the different magisterium of faith.
Reverend homas Burnet (1635-1715).
Assumed that the Bible told a truthful story about the history of the earth (sacred theory of the Earth).
Archibald Geikie, authour of Founders of Geology (1905), describes sacred theory of the Earth as monstrous, queer, and pseudoscientific.
