SOFIA

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====== CAPLAN & ARP: BIOÉTICA ENQUANTO DISCIPLINA FILOSÓFICA... ======

Although doctors, nurses, clinicians, lawyers, biologists, theologians, and other researchers make valuable contributions to it, bioethics is first and foremost a philosophical discipline concerned with “issues that emerge in conducting biomedical and clinical research, healthcare, and the policies that ought to govern medicine, nursing, allied health, and the related biomedical sciences,” as we noted in the definition of bioethics above. And we also saw that bioethics is a branch of applied ethics, which is a branch of ethics, itself a branch of Western philosophy; thus, if the classification is correct, the basic features, properties, and characteristics of Western philosophy should be present in bioethics. This means that the principles of correct reasoning and logic trumpeted and championed by the philosopher—including the formation of sound or cogent arguments, complete with objective evidence that any rational person could assent to—should not only act as the primary tool utilized in discussing the topics in bioethics, but also provide thinkers with a level playing field, so to speak, where ideas and arguments can be respectfully explained, analyzed, debated, evaluated, and critiqued. Anyone, regardless of ideology, world view, or perspective, is welcome to play on the field, provided they play by the rules of correct reasoning and logic. Beauchamp and Childress (1979/2009) affirm this philosophical approach in the first chapter of their famous work in bioethics, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, as does H. Tristram Engelhardt (1986/1996) in the first two chapters of his book, The Foundations of Bioethics. Of course, as Dan Brock (1993, pp. 414–416) notes in the final pages of his book, Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics, philosophers have a bad reputation as being “unrealistic, head in the clouds, ivory tower academics;” however, as Brock also notes, philosophers have made important contributions to bioethics and the public policies generated from this important discipline. (p. 6-7)