Empirical Ethics

• Empirical ethics- study of ethical beliefs, practices, and dilemmas exist in a particular setting

  • Often use methods from social science to gather data to demonstrate what ethical practices exist in a certain context

  • Highly descriptive- what ethical beliefs, practices, and dilemmas that occur in a certain population/setting

    • How do certain groups hold beliefs that differ from 4 principles?

  • Tension between empirical and normative ethics, but we can use them together

  • May also document beliefs not reflected in 4 principles

• Casuistry- using case examples to teach us what ethical behavior is supposed to be like, similar to empirical ethics

  • But not trying to describe ethical trends across a larger set

Narrative Ethics

• Narrative ethics- reflection on particular stories to teach us about what “ethical” action may look like

  • Interested in what ethical values/dilemmas matter in a specific context regardless if they’re a specified principle or not

  • Interested in sequence- sequence of events, why someone made a certain decision, what consequences came about bc of it?

• 3 types of stories

  • Quest- having illness changes/transforms the patient in some way

  • Restitution- patient is restored to full health

  • Chaos- no clear resolution for patient, often case for chronic and/or incurable illness

• Mattering maps- what things/values matter to different individuals/parties in the situation (clinicians, patient, etc.)

• Four components of mattering maps

  • Voice- Who’s telling the story and why?

  • Character- Who’s the story about?

  • Plot- What is the sequence of events? How has illness disrupted someone’s life vision?

  • Resolution- How does the story end and are individuals happy with ending?

• Differs from empirical ethics

  • Narrative ethics uses literature stories instead of gathering data from a population

• Differs from casuistry

  • Interested in how people make moral decisions instead of finding generalizable from case examples