Experimental philosophical bioethics and normative inference

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

Case study 2. Debunking: failed
“How do people use ‘killing’, ‘letting die’, and related bioethical concepts?” [49]
Laypeople distinguish killing and letting die by evaluating the morality of the physician’s intervention [50]. For example, doctors who employ end-of-life interventions that honor the wishes of terminal patients are seen as allowing them to die, whereas doctors who employ interventions that disregard patients’ wishes are seen as killing them [49]. The judgments of ordinary people may afford little normative insight here, in part because they lack the requisite understanding of the medical and clinical issues in play. This objection makes a straightforward empirical prediction: if laypeople acquired the relevant medical knowledge, they would abandon their untrained judgments in favor of the canonical distinction between killing and letting die as commissive versus omissive life-ending acts, respectively. However, David Rodríguez-Arias and colleagues found no evidence of this: doctors, medical students, and laypeople revealed strikingly similar judgments about end-of-life cases [49]. The determining factor appears to be whether the patient wished to live or die, and not how the patient’s death was brought about (i.e., via action or omission). Thus, the ordinary judgment could not be debunked on grounds of ignorance of clinically relevant details.

Case study 2. Debunking: failed

“How do people use ‘killing’, ‘letting die’, and related bioethical concepts?” [49]

Laypeople distinguish killing and letting die by evaluating the morality of the physician’s intervention [50]. For example, doctors who employ end-of-life interventions that honor the wishes of terminal patients are seen as allowing them to die, whereas doctors who employ interventions that disregard patients’ wishes are seen as killing them [49]. The judgments of ordinary people may afford little normative insight here, in part because they lack the requisite understanding of the medical and clinical issues in play. This objection makes a straightforward empirical prediction: if laypeople acquired the relevant medical knowledge, they would abandon their untrained judgments in favor of the canonical distinction between killing and letting die as commissive versus omissive life-ending acts, respectively. However, David Rodríguez-Arias and colleagues found no evidence of this: doctors, medical students, and laypeople revealed strikingly similar judgments about end-of-life cases [49]. The determining factor appears to be whether the patient wished to live or die, and not how the patient’s death was brought about (i.e., via action or omission). Thus, the ordinary judgment could not be debunked on grounds of ignorance of clinically relevant details.