Card 3.3.1 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology · △ contested Contested
Bioethics and Medical Ethics
Who counts, who decides, and who gets it?
Bioethics addresses moral questions arising in medicine and the life sciences — the beginning and end of life, consent, distribution of care, and the limits of intervention.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 3.3 Applied ethics. Borders 1.3.2 Personal identity, 6.13 Philosophy of medicine, 6.20 Philosophy of death.
New to ethics? Read the guide
The four-principles framework, and its critics
| Principle | Requires |
|---|---|
| Autonomy | Respect the competent patient's decisions about their own body |
| Beneficence | Act for the patient's good |
| Non-maleficence | Do not harm |
| Justice | Distribute benefits and burdens fairly |
△ contested A contested question: philosophers disagree about the answer, or about how the question should be framed. The book sets out each side and takes none.
Where do you stand?
Who counts, who decides, and who gets it?
One tap, no sign-up. You can change your answer at any time. Answers are counted anonymously.
Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hippocratic writers | c. 5th–4th c. BCE | Greek | Duties of the physician as a distinct code |
| Al-Ruhawi | 9th c. | Islamic | Adab al-Tabib; an early systematic treatise on medical ethics |
| Maimonides | 1138–1204 | Jewish | Physician's obligations within a legal-religious frame |
| Beauchamp and Childress | 20th c. | Analytic | The four-principles framework |
| Judith Jarvis Thomson | 1929–2020 | Analytic | Bodily rights independent of status arguments |
Also on this question: James F. Childress
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Bioethics:
- Deemed consent for organ donation respects the donor’s autonomy, not only the waiting list 8 replies
- Voluntary assisted dying should be legal for competent adults 8 replies
- Brain death is not death 6 replies
- Four ventilators, seven patients: is triage consequentialism with a human face, or something else? 6 replies
- The four-principles framework is too individualist for family-centred medicine 6 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Bioethics
Connections
→ 3.3 · ↔ 1.3.2, 6.13, 6.20, 3.3.6, 6.4.1 · ◇ personhood criteria, four principles, bodily rights · ○ Classical; Islamic golden age; Modern; Table 5
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 159.