Paper's abstract

Caroline & Emmanuel Guibet Lafaye & Picavet, Values and working out of compromises after the experience of the Bioethics Convention
Contemporary forms of ethically significant governance emphasize the opportunities given, in dialogue and deliberation, to lay people. This is exemplified in the 2009 experience of "Etats généraux de la bioéthique" in France. In this process, however, the underlying representations of ethics, the State and the rule of law result in significant constraints on the opportunities to amalgamate in social choices the opinions expressed by the citizens in the selected panels.
Moreover, the process of dialogue gives an important role to selected "major witnesses" who rely on their expertise to chart the tolerable interpretations of the underlying principles and the opportunities for accep-table compromises. In the resulting pattern of discussion, specialized empirical expertise and personal experience, no less than epistemological attitudes and representations of the "natural" appear to play a crucial role. The distinction bet-ween specialized expertise and the more open ethical discussion is thus blurred to some degree, even though the whole process relies on it.

Key Words : Expertise – ethical governance - compromise
t. 53, 2010 : p. 366-381

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