Submitted by: Sanjay kaushal Assignment- II The Emergence of Bioethics As Discipline and Discourse Daniel Callahan

In this article, Daniel Callahan has talked about the need of the emergence of Bioethics as a Discipline and what role should an ethicist play to bring it up as a discipline. Callahan has basically focused the need of solving the problems in Biosciences and medicine that involve ethical questions regarding Bioethics. While solving the bioethical problems and ethicist should do three important tasks as follows; a. Ethicist should try to point out and define which problems raise moral issues. b. Ethicist should provide some systematic means of thinking about, and thinking through the moral issues which have been recognized. c. And, should help scientists and physicians to make right decisions. Philosophy and Theology do not compatibly lay open the ethical issues in medicine and biology. There is a slot between the conceptual world and real world, and this space is to be bridged through the Bioethics. Challahan has discussed the notion disciplinary reductionism, which means, first picking up the problem and then minus all technical jargons, and then reducing it (but not the issue) to that language which is commonly comprehensive. In this situation, the language which consists all jargons of a particular field is transformed into other language. Challahan has stressed the problem of disciplinary reductionism; i.e. transforming one language into other is a way of reducing many elements of that language, though this helps methodologists and professional ethicists. Therefore, disciplinary reductionism is also an unavoidable difficult task. As he has explained, if a discipline of Bioethics is to be created, it

must be created in a way which does not allow this form of evading responsibility, of blaming the students for the faults of the teacher, of changing the nature of the problems to suit the methodologies of professional ethicists. In trying to create the discipline of Bioethics, it is vital to understand the meaning of rigorous and serious regarding Bioethics on which most of the questions are based. And there can be two options to understand these words. One way is to stick to traditional notions of philosophical and theological rigor, in which case one will rarely if ever encounter it in the interdisciplinary work of Bioethics. And according to other way, the thought may occur that its definitions of rigor which needs adaptation. Therefore, basically the methodological rigor should be appropriate to the subject matter. The first task and ethicist is entrusted with is to have the ability to see in, through, and under the surface appearance of things; to envision alternatives; to get under the skin of peoples ethical agonies or ethical insensitivities, to envision across social issues, faiths and values. Secondly, methodological strategies require a rigor which can and should come into play, bearing on logic, consistency, careful analysis of terms, and the like. Simultaneously they have to be adapted to the subject matter at hand, and that subject matter is not normally, in concrete ethical cases of medicine and biology, one which can be stuffed into a too-rigidly structured methodological mold. Traditionally, the methodology of ethics has concerned itself with ethical thinking about ethical problems. Callahan has talked about three areas of ethical activity as follows; a. Thinking b. Feeling (attitudes) c. And behavior The case for including feeling and behavior along with thinking rests on the assumptions,

i. ii.

that in life both feelings and behavior shape thinking helping to explain why defective arguments are persuasive and pervasive and, that it is legitimate for an ethicist to worry about what people do and not just what they think and say.

Callahan has offered one negative and one positive criterion for ethical methodology. He says, the wrong methodology will be used if it is not a methodology which has been specifically developed for ethical problems of medicine and biology. His positive criterion for positive methodology is that it must display the fact that bioethics is an interdisciplinary field in which the purely ethical dimensions neither can nor should be factored out without remainder from the legal, political, psychological and social dimensions. The third task as a bioethicist is the decision-making. Callahan has offered a second positive criterion as a test of a good bioethical methodology. Methodology ought to be such that it enables those who employ it to reach reasonably specific, clear decisions in those instances which require them. Good methodology should make it possible to reach specific conclusions at specific times. And only deductive kind of ethical systems makes it possible. Callahan has drawn a distinction between ethics understood broadly and ethics understood narrowly. In its narrow sense, to do ethics is to be good at doing what well-trained philosopher and theologians do such as analyze concepts, clarify principles, see logical entailments, spot underlying assumptions, and build theoretical systems. Callahan explains, if Bioethics is to be understood as a discipline, it has to be designed and practitioners should be trained so that it will directly serve those physicians and biologists whose position calls them to make the practical decisions. One important test for acceptance of bioethics as a discipline will be the extent to which it is called upon by scientists and physicians. This means that it should be developed inductively, working at least initially from the kinds of problems scientists and physicians believe they face and need assistance on.