Epistemology of bioethics ”“ Latin American focus

Abstract

This study is composed of two parts. In the first, there is a critical analysis of the principlist type of bioethics that originated from the United States, in which the need to construct a new and broader form of epistemology for this discipline is defended. The historical development of bioethics is divided into four stages: foundation (1970s), expansion and consolidation (1980s and beginning of the 1990s), critical review (starting in the mid-1990s) and conceptual extension (today). The authors affirm that the theory of the four principles is impotent in the light of the day-to-day macro-problems seen in the lives of poor people in peripheral countries, which makes it necessary for bioethics to expand the theoretical basis on which it is grounded. In the second part of this study, new epistemological foundations for bioethics are proposed, taking the reference points of respect for moral pluralism; the need to go more deeply into the contradiction of universalism-relativism in ethics; bioethical approaches as practical or applied forms of ethics; a focus not only on multi and interdisciplinary approaches but also essentially transdisci- plinary; and a view of the questions starting from the paradigms of complexity and concrete totality. Finally, the following reference points for structuring the new bioethical discourse are proposed: communication and language; argumentation; dialog; coherence; consensus; and rationality.