La bioetica empirica come boundary object. Riflessioni sullo statuto epistemologico della disciplina

Although the expression "empirical bioethics" has become commonplace within bioethical scholarship, the precise meaning of such notion and what is implied by the so-called 'empirical turn in bioethics' are still controversial issues. Underpinned by a definitional aim, the present contribution is configured as a meta-level work geared at scrutinizing the epistemological status of empirical bioethics, i.e. its disciplinary positioning and epistemic aims. The contribution is structured as follows. First, it contends that defining 'empirical bioethics' requires disambiguating the meaning of 'empirical', while clearly identifying the aims that empirical bioethics pursues. Second, it argues in favor of a broad definition of empirical bioethics, defined here as 'bottom up analytical ethics'. Third, it claims that narrower accounts of empirical bioethics are doomed to failure, precisely because of the polymorphic nature of the discipline itself, here interpreted through the lens of what has been defined in the sociological literature with the expression "boundary object". Finally, I will ask to what extent it is possible today to speak of a non-empirical bioethics, inasmuch as the 'empirical' ever increasingly plays a role in bioethics - a discipline which has been oriented, since its inception, to address moral dilemmas originating within contingent real life scenarios.