Abstract

Services of ethics committees are nowadays commonly used in such various spheres of life as health care, public administration, business, law, engineering, and scientific research. It is taken that as their members have expertise in ethics, these committees can have valuable contributions to make in solving practical moral problems. It has, however, also been maintained that it is simply absurd to claim that one has some special knowledge and skills in moral matters; in connection with moral questions there is no expertise to be had. In this paper, I assess this criticism of the use of ethics committees and ethics consultants. I argue that there is no sufficient reason to reject the possibility of ethical expertise.