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SUMMARY Ethics in Life Sciences; AM_470707; VU Amsterdam; Master €4,94
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SUMMARY Ethics in Life Sciences; AM_470707; VU Amsterdam; Master
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  • Cours
  • Ethics in Life Sciences (AM_470707)
  • Établissement
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)

In this document, I've summarized all the lectures given during the course Ethics in Life Sciences at the VU. My grade for the exam was an 8.2. Good luck studying!

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Infos sur le Document

  • 22 février 2025
  • 26
  • 2024/2025
  • Resume

Sujets

  • ethical theories
  • technology ethics
  • medical ethics
  • immanuel kant
  • john stuart mill
  • virtue ethics
  • deontology
  • david hume
  • consequentialism
  • utilitarianism
  • jeremy bentham
  • categorical imperative
  • hypothetical

École, étude et sujet

  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Biomedical Sciences
  • Ethics in Life Sciences (AM_470707)
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Contents
Lecture 1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 2
Lecture 2 Ethical theories.............................................................................................. 5
Lecture 3 Technology ethics......................................................................................... 9
Lecture 4 Medical ethics ..............................................................................................14
Lecture 5 Non-human ethics .....................................................................................17
Lecture online on Fallacies .........................................................................................19
Lecture 6 Virtue ethics & care ethics.......................................................................23




1

,Lecture 1 Introduction

Ethics
➢ The practical study of deciding how we ought to act → a domain of knowledge
➢ A set of moral principles governing an individual or a group → ‘her ethics’, medical
ethics
➢ Ethics as a design discipline

Setting: science, technology or innovation in the health and life sciences
- The direct and indirect, intended and unintended influences of scientists on the moral
states of others is large
- Science, technology and innovation shape society → society shapes science,
technology and innovation

Ethics as a design discipline I
- Societal needs and problems should be the starting point of science, technology and
innovation
- Moral values should be placed at the heart of science, technology and innovation
- Ethics is all about translating values into actions and designs, weighing (different
stakeholders’ or individual actors’) values against each other, and morally justifying
one’s judgements, actions and designs

Ethics as a design discipline II
- Shared feature of design problems & moral problems: rarely one unique correct
solution
o Yet: one can often distinguish better from worse solutions
o Ethics: how do you justify your choices?
- This course offers you theoretical and practical resources conducive to doing all this,
and hence to doing the right thing
- You will practice making the translation from moral values to design principles and
choices

Maxim-by-design
- Safety as a design requirement
- At the earliest stages of product and process development
- To prevent possible risks for human health and the environment

Introductory words on ethics
Ethics is the practical study of deciding how we ought to act
➔ The branch of philosophy that deals with morality and values
o Systematic reflection on morality (values, norms, beliefs)
o Providing reasons to justify our decisions
The purpose of education is to learn how to think for yourself

How to recognize a morally problematic issue?
- Moral problems arise when the values, rights, interests, desires of ‘another’ are at
stake or harmed

2

, o How do we recognize values, rights, interests and desires?
o How do we define the other? Who is a proper subject of moral concern?
- Ethical reasoning is needed whenever we are confronted with a moral problem

What do we mean by values (1/2)
Values refer to what is or is perceived as good
- E.g. equality
‘values are (a) concepts or beliefs, (b) about desirable end states or behaviours, (c) that
transcend specific situations, (d) guide selection or evaluation of behaviour and events, and
(e) are ordered by relative importance.
➔ Values can be translated into norms: rules for behaviour in specific situations

What do we mean by values (2/2)
Intermediate step: conceptualization and analysis
- What do you mean with value such-and-such?
- Why is it valuable?
- How does it relate to other values?
- When or where is it relevant?
o Specify! Tie in with context
e.g.: ‘equality’ – what do we mean when we say ‘everyone is equal’?
equal before the judge? Equal opportunities (school, work)? Equal capacities?

Moral spheres
Morally problematic issues can be found more or less anywhere. In different
contexts, different values are more pertinent. And hence different norms
guide our actions in different situations

Personal sphere (rules for relations to family and friends)
- E.g. value ‘loyalty’ ; norm ‘one always helps one’s friends’
Business sphere (rules for business identity)
- E.g. value ‘human dignity’; norm ‘don’t use slave labour’
Professional sphere (rules for e.g. the scientific community)
- E.g. value ‘objectivity’; norm ‘always avoid conflict of interest’
Public sphere (rules for a just society)
- E.g. value ‘justice’; norm ‘thou shalt not kill’

What does ‘morally problematic issue’ mean?
Morally problematic ≠ morally rejectable
Morally problematic issues are everywhere where the values, rights, interests, desires of ‘an
other’ are at stake or harmed
- Taking a moral stance means: carefully considering and subsequently deciding
whether or not a morally problematic issue is morally objectionable.

Ethical thinking → Thinking beyond one’s inclinations and prejudices
Ethics concerns (some of) the hardest and most complex choices we have to make. Feeling
engages us in a moral problem. Critical reflection challenges feelings, enables understanding.
You need


3

, - An open (impartial) mind
- Critical reasoning skills
Localize the problem:
- Personal, professional, business, public sphere
Consider everything that’s relevant
- Values, rights, interests, desires
- Relevant actors
- Actions – their nature and their (potential) consequences
- Moral principles
Ethical thinking
- Critical reasoning, balancing arguments
Define problem > apply reason > formulate judgement

There are 3 families of ethical reasoning:




So summary:
- Ethics is the practical study of deciding how we ought to act
- We have to engage in ethical reflection when the values, rights, interests, desires of
‘an other’ are at stake or harmed
- Almost anything can be morally pertinent ‘other’
- Ethical reasoning requires an open mind and critical reasoning skills




4

,Lecture 2 Ethical theories
There are three families of ethical perspectives:




Consequentialism/utilitarianism
- What we can observe (in moral terms) are feelings and sentiments towards certain
acts. These sentiments that we feel are not nothing, they are still facts. You feel
disapproval of murder for example. He mainly meant that you can’t point to a murder
and can’t observe and act?
- When you say ‘killing is bad’, you’re not saying something about the act of killing.
You’re saying something about your feelings towards it.
- Wrongness is not objectively out there in the world. We only have feelings that say
this.

David Hume
- The idea that the church had a monopoly on what objective morality was. David
Hume was not in accordance with this. He combines the empiricist idea. That we can
observe and feel positive or negatively about things. Our judgements are empowered
by our passion and feelings.
o Major figure in empiricism and scepticism
▪ Empiricism = philosophical view that knowledge comes primarily from
sensory experience. All concepts and beliefs must be grounded in
observable evidence or experience
▪ Scepticism = doubting or questioning the certainty of knowledge or
beliefs
- Laws of regularities in experimental observation; good & evil are +& - feelings when
evaluating acts of ourselves/others
o Basically, our judgement/decisions are empowered by passions, and they
follow hardwired roads to promote our interests and those of our fellows with
whom we sympathize (>sociobiology)
- Morality is based on emotions, not reason




5

, Jeremy Bentham
- Founder of utilitarianism (18th-19th century)
- It is all about pain versus pleasure. = ethical hedonism. Just like the subjectivism. If
you say someone is a hedonist you mean that they are only guided by pleasure and
not much else.
o Actions are morally right if they increase pleasure and minimize pain
- Psychological & ethical hedonism; Good & evil; pleasure & pain; sensory data →
founding idea of ‘utilism’
o Our judgement and decisions are rationally defendable by calculating the
trade-off between consequences of our acts in terms of estimated increased
or diminished pain and pleasure for the society (> legal, liberalism)

John Stuart Mill
- Refined utilitarianism, emphasizing quality of pleasures over mere quantity.
- He tried to create a hierarchy of pleasure in order to defend utilitarianism of the pain
and pleasure thing.
- Next to the pain and pleasure thing he formulated the happiness principle.
- According to mill, it is morally irrelevant who gets the goods → greatest happiness for
the greatest number’
- Why one does what one does (only the outcomes matter, not the process or
motivations behind it)
- It is about the effects of the action, not about how noble the action itself was.

So remember:
Hume: sensory states (passions/feeling) are what defines our judgement
Bentham: utilitarian calculus & pain vs. pleasure
Mill: most elaborate and ‘rigid’ version of the theory; ‘greatest happiness for greatest
number’ (not you yourself, necessarily!)

Deontology
- Centres on duty
- Don’t immediately jump to the consequences of the act, but recognize that the moral
quality of the act has to do with the action itself
- At least consider the possibility that, irrespective of the outcomes, one act might be
better than another (in this case: act 2 rather than act 1 – declining the job instead of
taking it)

Immanuel Kant
Kant’s three questions that answer ‘all the interest of my reason’:
1. What can I know?
a. We can know things as they appear to us, but not things as they are in
themselves.
2. What must I do?
a. You must act according to the moral law, which is determined by the
categorical imperative (see under).
3. What may I hope?
a. Hope is grounded in practical reason.


6

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