Experimental philosophical bioethics and normative inference

. 2021 Nov 17;42(3-4):91–111. doi: 10.1007/s11017-021-09546-z

Case study 1. Parsimony
“Judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases” [40]
Consider a child who needs a tissue donation in order to survive. Suppose that her biological parent could donate the needed tissue. Insofar as it seems intuitive that the parent has a moral responsibility to donate the tissue, what drives this judgment? Is it the biological relation between the donor and recipient [41] or the fact that the donor is uniquely suited to provide tissue that will work for the recipient [42]? John Beverley and James Beebe, in a study involving a series of contrastive vignettes, found that “unique ability rather than biological relatedness was the primary predictor of people’s judgments of moral responsibility” [40]. To distill the normative relevance of this finding, the authors adopt a metaphilosophical stance: folk judgments need not “rigidly constrain philosophical theorizing,” but counterintuitive normative views (e.g., that moral responsibility stems from biological relatedness) carry an explanatory burden [40]. As such, the parsimony model would maintain that the “unique ability” judgment be assigned prima facie normative import.

Case study 1. Parsimony

“Judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases” [40]

Consider a child who needs a tissue donation in order to survive. Suppose that her biological parent could donate the needed tissue. Insofar as it seems intuitive that the parent has a moral responsibility to donate the tissue, what drives this judgment? Is it the biological relation between the donor and recipient [41] or the fact that the donor is uniquely suited to provide tissue that will work for the recipient [42]? John Beverley and James Beebe, in a study involving a series of contrastive vignettes, found that “unique ability rather than biological relatedness was the primary predictor of people’s judgments of moral responsibility” [40]. To distill the normative relevance of this finding, the authors adopt a metaphilosophical stance: folk judgments need not “rigidly constrain philosophical theorizing,” but counterintuitive normative views (e.g., that moral responsibility stems from biological relatedness) carry an explanatory burden [40]. As such, the parsimony model would maintain that the “unique ability” judgment be assigned prima facie normative import.