As I’m revisiting this post, I’m going to break with my no-comment policyagain. This time I don’t have a very good excuse, this comment just sort of sits in my head rent-free, and I keep wanting to address it.
On the one hand, I think your broad point is right, my evidence is more weighted towards the philosopher bioethicists than the medical bioethicists, and I don’t really distinguish the two in my post. This might full well make an important difference to several of the points in my piece, though I’m not sure what sort of difference in particular you think it makes (do you think the medical bioethicists are more bioconservative on average than the general public as well as the philosophers? Do you think this is the primary reason for current problems in the bioethics bureaucracies?).
On a somewhat more petty level, I’m bothered by how you say all of my evidence is specific to philosophers. The philpapers survey certainly is, and the figures I cite from the 1DaySooner letter, but the two pieces of evidence I bring up that I consider strongest don’t seem to be. The program I surveyed (my MA) has a mix of students from both a medical and philosophical background, and is even in NYU’s School of Global Public Health rather than its philosophy school. As for Bensinger’s literature review, if I had time I would go through all of the authors to check how many are from more of a philosophy versus medical background (and I encourage anyone interested to report the results back to me), but I think they are a mix.
I don’t want to lean on this too much though. Again, your basic point holds, that my evidence is philosophy leaning, and it is fully possible to me that the split is characterized by above average philosopher bioethicists canceling out below average medical bioethicists in the aggregates, and the medical ones having more influence. I just don’t know personally.
As I’m revisiting this post, I’m going to break with my no-comment policy again. This time I don’t have a very good excuse, this comment just sort of sits in my head rent-free, and I keep wanting to address it.
On the one hand, I think your broad point is right, my evidence is more weighted towards the philosopher bioethicists than the medical bioethicists, and I don’t really distinguish the two in my post. This might full well make an important difference to several of the points in my piece, though I’m not sure what sort of difference in particular you think it makes (do you think the medical bioethicists are more bioconservative on average than the general public as well as the philosophers? Do you think this is the primary reason for current problems in the bioethics bureaucracies?).
On a somewhat more petty level, I’m bothered by how you say all of my evidence is specific to philosophers. The philpapers survey certainly is, and the figures I cite from the 1DaySooner letter, but the two pieces of evidence I bring up that I consider strongest don’t seem to be. The program I surveyed (my MA) has a mix of students from both a medical and philosophical background, and is even in NYU’s School of Global Public Health rather than its philosophy school. As for Bensinger’s literature review, if I had time I would go through all of the authors to check how many are from more of a philosophy versus medical background (and I encourage anyone interested to report the results back to me), but I think they are a mix.
I don’t want to lean on this too much though. Again, your basic point holds, that my evidence is philosophy leaning, and it is fully possible to me that the split is characterized by above average philosopher bioethicists canceling out below average medical bioethicists in the aggregates, and the medical ones having more influence. I just don’t know personally.