The content of common morality consists of moral rules and moral ideals.
And like Beauchamp and Childress, Gert does not found the tenets of common morality upon any of the usual moral theories, about which he tends to be fairly dismissive.
Whereas pluralistic moral theories are defined in terms of the number and kind of basic moral norms they defend, common morality theories focus on the ultimate source of our principles, rules, and ideals.
In what sense are the common morality approaches of Beauchamp-Childress and Gert moral theories?
Based on our findings, we can conclude that the principles of biomedical ethics – in particular autonomy – have only a weak grounding in human moral psychology and thus in the common morality.
Researchers can, for example, refer to a common morality or they can build on their private moral opinion.
It has been argued that there is far more consensus on common morality principles and rules than on any other moral theories.
The common morality comprises all and only those norms that all morally serious persons accept as authoritative.
In order to underline this significance, Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress base the principles in the common morality, i.e. they claim that the principles represent basic moral values shared by all persons committed to morality and are thus grounded in human moral psychology.
In the following, we focus on those findings in moral research that align with the universality claim of the common morality in order to identify "dimensions" of morality that can then be empirically investigated.
These data are consistent with the notion of a common morality, i.e. there are values that are perceived as being highly moral across social domains.
