I don't understand -- are you claiming that scientists are people and therefore they're as much experts on ethics as anyone? Current bioethicists may suck, but the idea of having some people specialize at bioethics seems sound.
I don't understand -- are you claiming that scientists are people and therefore they're as much experts on ethics as anyone?
Yes. Actually, I would say scientists are better ethicists in their area of expertise, because
moral reasoning is reasoning, and smarter people are better at reasoning
they know what the heck they're talking about.
Current bioethicists may suck, but the idea of having some people specialize at bioethics seems sound.
Can you specialize in ethics? Or is it like - to use the ever-popular reason-as-martial-arts metaphor - like ...
From Michael Eisen's blog:
Yuval Levin, former Executive Director of the President's Council on Bioethics, has an op-ed in Tuesday's Washington Post arguing that Obama's new stem cell policy is dangerous. Levin does not argue that stem cell research is bad. Rather he is upset that Obama did not dictate which uses of stem cells are appropriate, but rather asked the National Institutes of Health to draft a policy on which uses of stem cells are appropriate:
Lost in this superficially unobjectionable - if banal - assertion of the complexity of ethical issues involving science is Levin's (and many other bioethicists) credo: that the moral complexity of scientific issues means that scientists should not make decisions about them.