Moral Theory

This chapter provides an overview of moral concepts, theories, and principles that can be serve as a philosophical framework for making decisions involving dilemmas and issues in research with human subjects. The theories and ideas discussed in this chapter include the difference between science and ethics; moral justification and knowledge; reflective equilibrium; moral relativism and subjectivism; divine command theory; virtue ethics; natural law theory; natural rights theory; social contract theory; utilitarianism; Kantianism; Rawls’ principles of justice; feminist ethics; and principlism. The chapter observes that each of the moral theories examined have strengths and weaknesses and emphasize different aspects of morality. The chapter argues that principlism is the most reasonable approach to moral theory because it is better able to accommodate conflicting intuitions concerning moral values than the other approaches and has a workable decision procedure. The principles defended in this chapter include respect for human dignity, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice. Principlism, like other moral theories, must still deal with the problem of priority-setting when conflicts arise among principles. In the following chapter, I argue that an additional principle, the principle of trust, can help resolve conflict among the other moral principles.