Institute for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, Ruhr-University Bochum, Markstrasse 258a, Bochum, Germany.
J Med Ethics. 2011 Oct;37(10):592-6. doi: 10.1136/jme.2010.039214.
Specification is an integral part of Tom L Beauchamp and James F Childress' principlist approach to biomedical ethics. At the same time, the authors give much space conceding to critics that the method has significant limits. Although their pointing to limitations is not unreasonable as such, the emphasis Beauchamp and Childress put on them does not serve countering the critics' view that specification is insufficient for its intended purpose in applied ethics. This paper defends specification against Carson Strong's critique, showing that his casuistic approach shares strong structural and functional similarities with specification. It concludes with the more general point that specification or some closely related method for determining morally relevant facts of concrete cases and issues is indispensable for any account of applied ethics. Beauchamp and Childress should endorse and defend specification more vigorously than they appear to do.
规范是汤姆·L·比彻姆（Tom L Beauchamp）和詹姆斯·F·克里尔（James F Childress）的原则主义生物医学伦理学方法的一个组成部分。同时，作者也承认批评者的观点，即该方法有重大的局限性，为此留出了很大的篇幅。尽管他们指出这些局限性是合理的，但比彻姆和克里尔对这些局限性的强调并没有起到反驳批评者的观点的作用，即规范在应用伦理学中的目的是不够的。本文针对卡森·斯特朗（Carson Strong）的批评为规范辩护，表明他的实例法方法与规范在结构和功能上有很强的相似性。最后得出一个更普遍的观点，即任何应用伦理学的解释都离不开确定具体案例和问题中与道德相关的事实的规范或一些密切相关的方法。比彻姆和克里尔应该比他们目前表现的更积极地支持和捍卫规范。
