Question
When does a moral category stop working?
A moral rule may rest on a feature that, under ordinary conditions, points reliably at some important property. New knowledge or changed conditions can weaken that link. What then has to be tested is both the ground of the category and the consequences of revising it.
0.55 inclined · editorial estimate
What we know
- General rules trade precision against predictability, ease of application and protection from arbitrary decisions.
- Ethical principles can retain their significance and acquire new applications. The case on genetic intervention shows both that inheritance and that refinement.
- Different features inside a concept can be considered separately; the distinction alone does not yet establish which norm should be adopted.
What we do not know
- Under what conditions a more precise category improves decisions, and when it complicates application and opens room for abuse.
- How to assess a new norm before data on its consequences have accumulated.
- Which revision procedure secures participation for those the change directly concerns.
Our position
We take a divergence between the feature and the morally significant property to be grounds for testing the category. Rebuilding it is justified if it has the better justification and takes account of the protection of rights, predictability, and the consequences of application. The burden of proof lies with whoever initiates the change; neither the age of a norm nor the novelty of a technology lifts that burden.
What would change this position
The position would be weakened by a case in which the conditions we propose systematically approve a harmful revision or block a necessary one. That would require changing the criteria, their weights, or the procedure of testing.
Why this matters to synchronism
Revising concepts is one of the instruments for working on gaps. For it to help development, a useful refinement has to be told apart from a change that merely looks logically attractive.
Sources
- Tom Beauchamp, James Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics (1979) — the development of biomedical ethical principles
- The Belmont Report (1979)