This article presents partial findings of the larger research project 'Bioethics in Theory and Practice', where the overall purpose is (1) to investigate ethical reasoning in biomedical practice in Denmark empirically and (2) to show how to integrate empirical research into the formulation of normative ethical principles without losing the normative approach.
We believe by taking an approach to bioethics in which empirical research is integrated into the formulation of normative ethical principles, the conclusions of empirical studies may provide health care professionals and researchers with normative principles about how to analyse, reason and act in practice in ethically difficult situations.
In a recent paper, I provide such an account, focusing on a surprising divergence between the formulation of normative views on corporate governance at state and federal levels.
The normative function of doctrinal formulation is a typically vain effort to fix and conserve an interpretation of the original dogmas of a given tradition.
But the strain needed to answer the charge becomes greater the wider the range of normative properties that the formulation of theological voluntarism aims to explain.
In Ebbesen & Pedersen [ 6] we argue that the phenomenological hermeneutical method can be combined with the moral philosophical method of Wide Reflective Equilibrium (WRE) as a decision procedure for the formulation of normative principles, because WRE is a method or process of deciding what we should think, not merely one of describing what we do think [ 7].
First, a simple and straightforward appeal to the norm of respect for persons cannot ground or justify the principle of state neutrality (on any of its common formulations), since this norm, like other normative commitments, is subject to a range of interpretations, which are very much in dispute among moral and political philosophers.
This formulation equips the normative account (i.e., minimizing variational free energy or maximizing expected value) with a biologically plausible implementation an implementation that makes some clear predictions about measurable behavioral and neuronal responses.
The authors propose setting up a European body (temporary committee or working group) for the development of a normative framework that guides the formulation of EU policies on HE.
Through the Facility and its normative programmes, FAO also supports the formulation and implementation of policy frameworks and national forest programmes.
