Empirical and Narrative Ethics

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

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