The Empirical and the Philosophical in Empirical Bioethics: Time for a Conceptual Turn
Kristin Zeiler, Marjolein de Boer
Abstract
A growing number of scholars in bioethics engage with empirical work on stakeholders’ values, attitudes, and experiences as a basis for theorizing ethics in the context of healthcare. Related to this empirical turn, a debate is being conducted about how to combine empirical research with normative analysis. In this commentary, we are concerned with the more rarely discussed question of how to integrate philosophical, conceptual work into empirical bioethics. We suggest that empirical bioethics should make one more turn after the empirical one: a conceptual turn. The commentary offers a three-dimensional approach to doing philosophical empirical bioethics. Specifically, it proposes an integration of hermeneutical phenomenology into empirical bioethics.