Metodologia bioetyki
Methodology in Bioethics

Summary/Abstract: The issues presented in this article bear on (1) the status of bioethics as an academic discipline and (2) research methods employed in it. With regard to the status of bioethics, I discuss problems related to the definition of bioethics, the ways of addressing bioethical issues (interdisciplinary discourse, applied ethics, an extension of medical ethics) and the choice of the discipline within which bioethics should be developed (law, theology, philosophy). The presented methods of bioethics have been divided into normative and non-normative. The non-normative methods are empirical, both qualitative and quantitative, whereas normative methods have been divided into three groups: methods based on principles (the application method and coherentism), casuistry, and alternative methods (virtue ethics, the ethics of care, communitarianism, and the narrative perspective). Since alternative ways of addressing bioethical issues are not always sufficiently developed from the methodological point of view, I have introduced, apart from the concept of method, the concept of research perspective (used, in the literature on the subject, interchangeably with the concept of research approach).

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