Baker Robert
Center for Bioethics and Clinical Leadership, Union College Schenectady, New York 12308, USA.
J Med Philos. 2002 Aug;27(4):447-74. doi: 10.1076/jmep.27.4.447.8606.
Standard bioethics textbooks present the field to students and non-experts as a form of "applied ethics." This ahistoric and rationalistic presentation is similar to that used in philosophy of science textbooks until three decades ago. Thomas Kuhn famously critiqued this self-conception of the philosophy of science, persuading the field that it would become deeper, richer, and more philosophical, if it integrated the history of science, especially the history of scientific change, into its self-conception. This essay urges a similar reconceptualization for bioethics, arguing that the analysis of moral change ought to be integral to bioethics (and to ethics generally). It proceeds by suggesting the sterility of the ahistoric, rationalist applied ethics model of bioethics embraced by standard bioethics textbooks. It also suggests the fecundity of alternative conceptions of the bioethics that focus on the history of successful and failed attempts to negotiate moral change, and the history of multifaceted relations between moral philosophy and practical ethics.
标准的生物伦理学教科书向学生和非专业人士介绍该领域时，将其作为一种“应用伦理学”的形式。这种缺乏历史感和理性主义的呈现方式，与三十年前科学哲学教科书中使用的方式类似。托马斯·库恩对科学哲学的这种自我认知进行了著名的批判，使该领域相信，如果将科学史，尤其是科学变革的历史，融入其自我认知中，它将变得更深刻、更丰富、更具哲学性。本文敦促对生物伦理学进行类似的重新概念化，认为对道德变化的分析应该是生物伦理学（以及一般伦理学）不可或缺的一部分。它首先指出标准生物伦理学教科书所采用的缺乏历史感、理性主义的生物伦理学应用伦理学模式是毫无成果的。它还指出了生物伦理学其他概念的丰富性，这些概念关注协商道德变化的成功与失败尝试的历史，以及道德哲学与实践伦理学之间多方面关系的历史。
