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| 5 December (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
| Tomislav Bracanović
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Department of Philosophy, Center for Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb
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| Respect for Cultural Diversity or Bioethics? |
Many
authors claim that bioethics should stop its search for universal
moral principles and put much stronger emphasis on particular
cultural traditions that inform various bioethically relevant beliefs
and attitudes. The reasoning behind this demand is the following:
since universalist approaches (like deontology or utilitarianism) are
too simple and do not reflect the complexity of bioethical issues
arising in culturally diverse societies (Irvine et al. 2002, Koenig
and Marshal 2003), a kind of “cultural humility” becomes
“critically relevant to bioethics” (Carese and Sugarman 2006)
whereas respect for cultural diversity becomes an “ethical
imperative” (Chattopadhyay and De Vries 2012). In this paper I will
try to show that this “cultural turn” of bioethics is
theoretically flawed and detrimental to both bioethics and respect
for cultural diversity. In the first part I argue that the concept of
“respect for cultural diversity” is incompatible with the concept
of “bioethics” as a normative discipline that seeks to provide
rationally grounded methods for dealing with specific moral dilemmas.
In the second part I focus on some concrete bioethical issues (like
the patient autonomy and the physician’s right to conscientious
objection) in order to illustrate how bioethical respect for cultural
diversity may cause injustice and serious individual and societal
harm. In the third part I suggest – contrary to a widespread view –
that universalist approaches do not imply disrespect for cultural
diversity: it has its role in bioethical decision making, but only as
a secondary principle with no prescriptive power of its own.
references
[1]
Carese, J. A. and Sugarman, J. 2006. “The inescapable relevance of
bioethics for the practicing clinician”, Chest
130: 1864-1872.
[2] Chattopadhyay, S. and De Vries, R. 2012. “Respect
for cultural diversity is an ethical imperative”, Medicine,
Health Care and Philosophy
(forthcoming).
[3] Irvine, R., McPhee J. and Kerridge, I. H. 2002.
“The challenge of cultural and ethical pluralism to medical
practice”, Medical
Journal of Australia
176: 174-175.
[4] Koenig, B. A. and Marshall, P. A. 2003.
“Anthropology and bioethics”, in Encyclopedia
of Bioethics,
3rd ed., ed. S. G. Post, New York: Thomson Gale, Macmillan Reference,
pp. 215-225.
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| 12 December (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
| Márton Gömöri
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Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy
Eötvös University, Budapest
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Only one kind of convention
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Poincaré's
geometric conventionalism is the thesis that we are free in choosing
the geometry we use to describe the world. Grünbaum's trivial semantic
conventionalism is the thesis that we are free in choosing the meanings
of the terms in which we describe the world. Analyzing Poincaré's disc
parable, we argue that the first reduces to the second; there is only
one kind of convention.
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| 19 December (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
| Zalán Gyenis* and Miklós Rédei**
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* Department of Mathematics, Central European University, Budapest
** Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE, London
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Why `Bertrand's paradox' is not paradoxical
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The
classical interpretation of probability together with the Principle of
Indifference are formulated in terms of probability measure spaces in
which the probability is given by the Haar measure. A notion called
Labeling Invariance is defined in the category of Haar probability
spaces, it is shown that Labeling Invariance is violated and Bertrand's
Paradox is interpreted as the very proof of violation of Labeling
Invariance. It is argued that, under the interpretation of Bertrand's
Paradox suggested, the paradox does not undermine either the Principle
of Indifference or the classical interpretation and is in complete
harmony with how mathematical probability theory is used in the sciences
to model phenomena; it is shown in particular that violation of
Labeling Invariance does not entail that labeling of random events
affects the probabilities of random events. It also is argued however
that the content of the Principle of Indifference cannot be specified in
such a way that it can establish the classical interpretation of
probability as descriptively accurate or predictively successful.
Related paper: Z. Gyenis and M. Rédei, Defusing Bertrand's Paradox
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