Pamental Matthew
*Department of Philosophy, University of Tennessee, 809A McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0480, USA.
J Med Philos. 2013 Dec;38(6):725-42. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jht030. Epub 2013 Jul 22.
Pragmatism has been understood by bioethicists as yet another rival in the "methods wars," as yet another theory of moral deliberation. This has led to criticism of pragmatic bioethics as both theoretically and practically inadequate. Pragmatists' responses to these objections have focused mainly on misunderstandings of pragmatism's epistemology. These responses are insufficient. Pragmatism's commitment to radical empiricism gives it theoretical resources unappreciated by critics and defenders alike. Radical empiricism, unlike its more traditional ancestors, undercuts the gaps between theory and practice, and subjective and objective accounts of experience, and in so doing provides the metaphysical and epistemological basis for a thoroughgoing empirical naturalism in ethics. Pragmatism's strength as an approach to moral problems thus emerges as a result of a much wider array of resources than contemporary interpreters have acknowledged, which makes it a richer, deeper framework for understanding moral deliberation in general and bioethical decision making in particular.
生物伦理学家将实用主义理解为“方法之争”中的又一个竞争对手，是又一种道德审议理论。这导致了对实用主义生物伦理学在理论和实践上都不充分的批评。实用主义者对这些反对意见的回应主要集中在对实用主义认识论的误解上。这些回应是不够的。实用主义对激进经验主义的承诺赋予了它一些理论资源，而这些资源无论是批评者还是捍卫者都没有认识到。与更为传统的先辈不同，激进经验主义消除了理论与实践之间、经验的主观与客观描述之间的差距，从而为伦理学中一种彻底的经验自然主义提供了形而上学和认识论基础。因此，实用主义作为一种解决道德问题的方法，其优势源于一系列比当代解释者所承认的更为广泛的资源，这使得它成为一个更丰富、更深刻的框架，用于总体上理解道德审议，尤其是生物伦理决策。
