A Trip to Transylvania With a Bunch of Ethicists
There was quite an excitement at our research institute in September last year as seven of us were to travel to Romania for a summer school in ethics. None of us had ever been there before. We were looking forward to this week in a town called Bran in the Transylvanian mountains and couldn´t wait to explore Bucharest over the weekend. Once the non-EU citizens among us had confirmed that Romania didn´t require a visa, we were all set to embark on this adventure.
I am a researcher at the Institute for Biomedical Ethics of the University of Basel (IBMB) in Switzerland. The IBMB is an interdisciplinary research institute established in May 2011. Bioethics is a discipline that investigates different moral and ethical issues. We do so by drawing theories and research methods from philosophy, theology, medicine, psychology, law, sociology, and anthropology.
Two schools of thought
Let me give you a very short introduction to ethics first: the two principal schools of thought in ethics are normative and empirical ethics. Normative ethics deals with what ‘should’ be done in a given moral or ethical dilemma and often has a strong theoretical basis. Whereas empirical ethics draws on various research methods from social sciences and investigates established practice, perception, and attitude of different stakeholders. In short, it tries to describe what ‘is’ actually done in society.
For example, there is currently a debate on whether new technology such as CRISPR-Cas 9 should be used to change human reproductive genome. A normative ethicist would draw on moral and philosophical arguments for his assessment and would put forward normative claims. Whereas an empirical ethicist would assess the views and concerns of various stakeholders on genetic manipulation, such as scientists working in this field or the general public.
However, the fact that the majority of society supports a certain action, doesn´t make said action morally acceptable.
Most ethicists working in empirical ethics try to go beyond describing what ‘is’ going on in a given society. They also try to build a strong normative ethical analysis of what ‘should’ be done in light of their empirical findings. However, bridging normative and empirical ethics creates its own set of methodological challenges.
Bridging the gaps in ethics
This brings us back to my trip to Transylvania. Together with the University of Bucharest and State University of Moldavia, the summer school was organized to discuss the challenges of combining normative and empirical ethics.
Most researchers at my institute do empirical ethics. While most of our colleagues in Romania engage in normative ethics. By bringing together PhDs, postdocs, and international experts, our aim was to engage in a constructive discussion on the challenges of bridging the gap between empirical and normative ethics. All PhD students from Basel, Bucharest, and Chișinău presented their research projects and received feedback from the international experts in empirical as well as normative ethics.
Through this exchange, it became clear that though challenging, it is possible to combine the two schools of thought. However, this can only be successful if the research project is designed to incorporate both aspects all the way through from collecting the data to publishing the results.
Dracula, bears, and schnapps
Even though our days were long and filled with intense debates, we also had the chance to taste the local cuisine, enjoy the mountains and explore the famous castle of Dracula. We also visited a reserve for injured brown bears that takes care of more than 200 rescued animals.
We were overwhelmed with the hospitality and friendliness of our Romanian hosts. We especially enjoyed the food! Even the few vegetarians among us, who were initially a bit worried about the food, found the local vegetarian cuisine delicious. We all noticed the heavy use of garlic in all meals; which makes sense once you learn that garlic apparently repels vampires.
There were also few social occasions where we gathered around a pool table, drank wine and tasted the local specialty — plum schnapps.
Next stop Moldavia
This summer school was part of a two-year long collaborative project between Basel, Bucharest, and Chișinău under a SCOPES grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Thanks to this grant, we are able to have a regular exchange with our colleagues from Romania and Moldavia. Next up will be a workshop on medical ethics in Moldavia in spring 2017. And yes, we are already fighting about who gets to go.
If you are curious about our institute and the projects we have ongoing, take a look at our website.
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