应用伦理学的研究人员,特别是生物伦理学的一些领域,旨在为在道德相关的现实世界情况下的行动制定具体和适当的建议。当从更抽象的伦理推理层面出发到这样的具体建议时,然而,即使是同样的规范性原则或规范,似乎有可能针对某种情况制定不同甚至矛盾的行动建议。这可能给人的印象是,这些建议是任意的,因此,没有充分的理由。在这种背景下,我们,首先,旨在表明道德上的行动建议,尽管在某种意义上是偶然的,如果开发得当,就不是任意的。为此,我们根据最近在COVID-19大流行背景下的行动建议实例,研究了应用伦理推理中出现的两种类型的突发事件.在这样做的时候,我们指的是针对行动建议的道德推理的三步模型。这个,然而,留下了一个悬而未决的问题,即应用伦理如何应对或有的行动建议。因此,第二步,我们分析桥梁原则在制定道德上适当的行动建议方面的作用,即,将规范性主张与相关经验信息联系起来的原则,以证明在给定的道德相关情况下采取行动的某些建议是合理的。最后,我们讨论了经验知情伦理中推理和报告的一些含义。
Researchers in applied ethics, and some areas of bioethics particularly, aim to develop concrete and appropriate recommendations for action in morally relevant real-world situations. When proceeding from more abstract levels of ethical reasoning to such concrete recommendations, however, even with regard to the very same normative principle or norm, it seems possible to develop divergent or even contradictory recommendations for action regarding a certain situation. This may give the impression that such recommendations would be arbitrary and, hence, not well justified. Against this background, we, first, aim at showing that ethical recommendations for action, although being contingent in some sense, are not arbitrary if developed appropriately. For this purpose, we examine two types of contingencies arising in applied ethics reasoning based on recent examples of recommendations for action in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, we refer to a three-step model of ethical reasoning towards recommendations for actions. This, however, leaves open the question of how applied ethics may cope with contingent recommendations for action. Therefore, in a second step, we analyze the role of bridge principles for developing ethically appropriate recommendations for action, i.e., principles which connect normative claims with relevant empirical information to justify certain recommendations for action in a given morally relevant situation. Finally, we discuss some implications for reasoning and reporting in empirically informed ethics.