Bioethics and Non-Psychological Views of Personhood

Bioethics is probably the sub-division of ethics that is currently of greatest interest to the public, since there is a widespread sense that recent and likely future scientific and technological developments will pose significant ethical challenges. The “culture wars” surrounding such life-and-death issues as abortion and euthanasia also generate interest in bioethics. Accordingly, effective teaching of ethics at undergraduate level would involve extensive use of examples or illustrations from the field of bioethics. Dealing with bioethics issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and embryo experimentation typically involves taking some stance on the moral status of human beings. This article focuses on the notion of what a human being is in terms of these debates.