RESOLVING CONFLICTS AMONG PRINCIPLES - RANKING, BALANCING, AND SPECIFYING

While much attention has been given to the use of principles in biomed ical ethics and increasing attention is given to alternative theoretic al approaches, relatively little attention has been devoted to the cri tical task of how one resolves conflicts among competing principles. A fter summarizing the system of principles and some problems in concept ualizing the principles, several strategies for reconciling conflicts among principles are examined including the use of single-principle th eories (pure libertarianism, pure utilitarianism and pure Hippocratism ), balancing theories, conflicting appeals theories, and lexical order ing. Then a mixed strategy is proposed in which consequentialist princ iples are balanced between themselves as are nonconsequentialist princ iples, after which the result of balancing the nonconsequentialist pri nciples is lexically ranked over the result of balancing the consequen tialist ones. Finally, strategies involving specifying and rule genera tion are discussed concluding that most current specification and rule -generating theories must involve some degree of lexical ordering of p rinciples.