Reconsidering the Role of Ethical Theories in Bioethics: Ethical Theories as Heuristic Descriptions of Moral Grammars

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the question of how to understand the role and use of ethical theories in bioethics. Work in bioethics often involves uses of ethical theory, but methodological developments such as the empirical turn and the growing insights into the plurality and contextuality of moral considerations challenge a traditional view of ethical theories as providing moral input into the value‐neutral descriptions offered by empirical studies. Nevertheless, bioethics is characterised by a relative neglect of questions related to the use of ethical theories. The article develops a number of desiderata that any understanding of the role of ethical theories should be able to address; to accommodate moral plurality and contextuality, to motivate choices and uses of specific theories, to minimise risks of theory‐driven attention and blindness, to allow for theoretical plurality, to address relations between theories and theoretical integrity. It then presents some challenges for existing accounts of theory‐use in bioethics, thus paving the way for an alternative understanding of the role of ethical theories in bioethics. The suggestion presented here is that ethical theories should be understood as descriptions or representations of moral grammars , implicit normative structures of thinking and action that constitute moral considerations. Furthermore, in relation to problems in bioethics, it is suggested that ethical theories are used as heuristic tools to illuminate and clarify moral grammars as they appear in specific bioethical poblems or studies.