Do No Evil: Unnoticed Assumptions in Accounts of Conscience Protection

Area of Science:

• Medical Ethics
• Philosophy of Law

Background:

• Current accounts of conscience protections, including those by Aulisio and Arora, rely on potentially flawed distinctions between traditional and contemporary approaches.
• These accounts may oversimplify the complexity of moral lives by using an impoverished conception of values.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critique existing frameworks for conscience protections.
• To argue that current distinctions between traditional and contemporary conscience protections are inadequate.
• To propose a more robust understanding of conscience in medical ethics.

Main Methods:

• Philosophical argumentation and critical analysis of existing literature on conscience protections.
• Examination of the assumptions underlying traditional versus contemporary articulations of conscience.
• Analysis of the concept of 'maximal play in values' within liberal democratic societies.

Main Results:

• Distinctions between traditional and contemporary conscience protections are based on unnoticed and problematic assumptions.
• The principle of maximal play in values, while important, presents challenges in critical ethical scenarios.
• Existing accounts, including Aulisio and Arora's, give undue weight to a narrow conception of values, failing to capture the richness of moral experience.

Conclusions:

• The normative implications derived from distinguishing traditional and contemporary conscience protections by Aulisio and Arora are not sufficiently supported.
• A more comprehensive understanding of moral life is necessary to adequately address conscience issues in contemporary medical contexts.
• While illustrating the complexity of conscience, current frameworks fail to resolve the core issues due to an incomplete view of morality.