Introduction

The personal concern that motivated this research was the search for improvements in the teaching and learning process in the Research Methodology subject, in the Master in Bioethics program, at the Center for Advanced Social Research, in Queretaro, Mexico. This concern was didactic and methodological: what use should be given to the expression interdiscipline, multidiscipline and similar ones when teaching deliberation and research procedures to students in graduate school?

To answer this question, the work is divided into three sections. The first is an investigation from a convenient sample. The information search technique was through a search engine (Google.com). The options located on the web that offer a master’s or master’s degree in bioethics were selected. The first nine options for analysis¹ were considered. The analysis consisted of reviewing purposes, objectives and the study plan. Some of the methodological elements of how bioethics is presented in the programs are described.

In the second section of this work, a conceptual analysis of the interdisciplinary is carried out using the categories of expanded reason (^{Agejas, J., 2014}). This contrasts with what is located in the first section. From the thought of these two sections, I extract some ideas that I propose for the teaching of Bioethics in the postgraduate course of the Center for Advanced Social Research of Queretaro and that I consider can be applied to other postgraduate programs in Bioethics.

1. Examples of Bioethics programs offered byvarious institutions

In this part, some revised Bioethics Postgraduate programs from universities in Spain, Mexico and South America that were randomly selected through an internet search as indicated are covered. The analysis focuses on pointing out how Bioethics is presented from the methodological and epistemological point of view. In the presentation of the programs, in the curricular maps, there are explicit and implicit elements that are indicated.² The answers are varied; they give a hint of the use given to terms such as discipline and the use of bioethics.

2. The interdisciplinary statute of Bioethics and teaching work: discussion and analysis

In the first section, we saw that different names are used to describe Bioethics: Interdiscipline, transdiscipline, multidisciplinary, discipline.

Some common features were found regarding how the terms are used. We can define these common features as openness or dialogue. Bioethics as a promoter of working together with the methodologies of each participating science or discipline: approach or open up to other disciplines.

One of the uses or forms of interdisciplinary use is its collaborative nature. In this sense, the following observation by Ana Marta González suitably summarizes the position that is sought to be shown in this document (I have underlined what is considered most important to highlight):

Those in favor of constituting Bioethics in an autonomous science, can argue in their favor the undeniable fact that it has generated, in a few decades, a huge and specific reflection that, in addition to requiring the application of ethical principles to a very specific matter. Internally it requires the adoption of a multidisciplinary perspective when facing their specific problems; although this position is defensible from a practical point of view... After all, the same interdisciplinarity could be seen as a systematic extension of deliberation that must precede any ethically acceptable decision, the acceptability of which, in any case, corresponds to be examined through ethics (^{González, A., 2001: 305}).

Ethical reflection belongs to the common person and at the same time is reciprocally enlightened and illuminating of the disciplines studied with it. That is an interdisciplinary character understood as a true joint work not only of the same object of study, but in exchange and cooperation (^{Luengo, E., 2012}). I reiterate this idea in This aspect of the way of working bioethics is reflected in the manuals. Thus, for example, in the ^{Sgreccia Manual of Bioethics (2009: 23 et seq.)} it is stated: «there are those who shape Bioethics […] a methodology of interdisciplinary confrontation […] as an autonomous discipline». The author seems to lean towards the latter: «from all that we have presented the conclusion is drawn that the new discipline», and in the following paragraph, he points out: «the need for an interdisciplinary approach, peculiar characteristic of Bioethics».

From the methodological and teaching point of view of Bioethics, I suggest using the concepts of prudence, council and wisdom. These concepts inspired by the notion of expanded reason used by the disciplines participating in this process of finding the answers about the lawfulness of intervention in life would facilitate the search for ethical answers and can serve as strategies for teaching. Ethics and its questions have that possibility of being transversal, as one of the mentioned programs pointed out, due to the moral dimension that all human action implies (^{Agejas, J., 2014}). These concepts can be useful when configuring the dialogue between disciplines and in seeking that ethical response. These terms I propose should be understood as follows:

These categories can be assistant for listening and teaching one’s own arguments and those of others. In other words, due to its practical nature, reality can be better understood or accessed by considering those three principles. It is thus possible to have an open vision without implying that Bioethics is governed by an «epistemological syncretism in which theorems and paradigms will be mixed […] where such upsets in which […] the language of Quantum Physics is simply extrapolated to the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, is a New Age quackery» (^{Calderón, D., 2003: 193}). The above is compatible with interdisciplinary intervention that «respects and assumes the methodology of each one of the knowledge involved» (^{Calderón, D., 2003: 193}).

The categories thus imply reasoning with the recognition of the limit of one’s own discipline and the discipline of others, where when collaborating together one can find lawful responses that somehow integrate a complex ethical response but more realistic and closer to human reality. Also recognizing that ethics is a question about the meaning of life, that goes beyond mere biological functioning, which reminds us that rationality, when it asks about the meaning of action, its ethics, speculative reason and practice, have to collaborate to find the ethical reasons for the action.

This idea of interactive experience goes well with teaching resources like those that «problem based learning» pointed out in the next section.

3. Teaching proposal how to teach research methodology: a proposal from one subject

According to what was analyzed, Bioethics, without abandoning the rigor of each discipline participating in the process of reflection, maintains a dialogical attitude, which is manifested in several of the programs outlined in section I, as part of ethical practical judgment. In this elaboration process, I suggest the use of the indicated elements of prudence, wisdom and council, complemented with the observation of profesor Pastor Bueno in relation to ethical deliberation:

Moving from contiguity into an integration in a higher rank unit, without both losing their own nature. In this way, not only is avoided the error of wanting to deduce bioethics from scientifically experimental or sociological claims, but also the error of not manipulating the data based on previous philosophical positions. Bioethics needs the sciences in order to develop properly as a science, but at the same time, this does not mean that bioethics is reduced to and derived from, biomedical or social sciences. In the construction of bioethics, the empirical data will be necessary but not sufficient; it is a determining factor in the solution of the problem or conflict studied, but to solve it, it is required that it be integrated into reasoning of an eminently ethical nature (Bueno, P., 2013: 281).

That is to say, always seek deliberation for the human own good³ and not the strategic or calculated response of the consensus that ends up not being an ethical response, but a political solution that, although it is obtained together, is sometimes obtained, in a union of votes without further ado (^{Pastor, B., 2013}).

If you consider as a principle the indispensable nature of dialogue, which is adherence to the truth and trust with the one with whom you dialogue (^{Llano, C., 1995: 168-195}), and the above supplement it with the characteristics of the methodology of ethical reflection and exposition that have been mentioned. Therefore prudence, council and wisdom lead to a true community of dialogue seeking meaning or, as it was seen when reviewing academic programs, to a true openness to dialogue between disciplines.

The characteristics of interdisciplinarity , understood as that dialogue between disciplines are compatible with didactic strategies, such as Problem-Based Learning (ABP) (^{Brunet, J. et al., 2015}). The author’s experience with the Research Methodology subject was to combine the ABP and the aforementioned categories, through a blended learning tutorial work. This tutorial was applied in such a way that an ethical problem approach, clarification and resolution, and new problems were followed; in short, an epistemic spiral within the sessions themselves so that they reach not only a knowsunderstands but also a knows-how (^{Brunet, J. et al., 2015: 305}).

In the last course (2017), the topic of interdisciplinarity was studied in the thesis topics themselves and experienced in interdisciplinary resolution. Thus, for example, the class methodology within the framework of the ABP was carried out from small introductions and theoretical classifications; for example, in argumentation in the thesis, the topic of fallacies. After posing ethical problems in each thesis topic presented by the students and moving on to its development with a group/individual/group scheme or, in terms of class development: presentation, general application, individual setting, resolution in general class again and recap. Another way to summarize it: an interaction of personal reflection, contribution, reasoning the contribution, the process of obtaining it, and the teaching and learning cycle is repeated.⁴

This methodology allowed students to work among themselves as professionals, who sought a common answer guided by the question of meaning or ethics. Now, in working with them, not only did the teacher interact as a philosopher but also as a nurse and a gerontologist, in such a way that they discovered that interdisciplinary openness is a shared attitude among all the participants.

In this sense, this is another way of avoiding the reductionism of reason, or if you want to name it that way, a science-based reason (^{Agejas, J., 2014}) that usually occurs, sometimes, within the teaching itself or in the process of bioethical deliberation. It is meant a «bioethics» reduced to the paradigm of evidence-based medicine, of lawyers, reduced to a casuistry. For example, when meaning or the search for meaning is abandoned and this interdisciplinary approach is posed as if it were only he would seek to find rules of ethical procedure, as if equivalent (by analogy) to rules of procedure of basic science.

Thus, rather than asking about the norm to apply, you should ask yourself about the meaning of the action in a horizon that is not reduced to efficacy and consensus. Thus avoiding that: «bioethics and its relationship with the health professions abandons the interpersonal concern that belongs to it, trying a normative path that solves the dilemmas through a schematic decision process and approaching an algorithm» (^{Kottow, M., 2015: 17}).

An example of this methodological experience by the author of this article was given in a thesis project presented by a student, related to IUD implantation in postpartum patients after a risky pregnancy. It was insisted on questions of the type: what sense or horizon of life is expected when carrying out a hospital policy of implantation suggested to patients who have had a difficult experience in pregnancy? And avoided just asking himself: what rule is violated here? Is it legal? The first question is open to all disciplines and I consider that it invites an interdisciplinary attitude when posing the human goods involved as a horizon of human meaning.

A second example of another thesis presented and that raised as a problem: is it lawful to have a child and fill that lack of impossibility of conceiving it? The reductionist answer remained in the legal field when, for example, lawyers were asked and used to circumscribe the answer to questions of criminal or civil law. The work posing the problem from a meaning question asking the participants to use the concepts seen facilitated the passage to the questions of the ultimate meaning of the action and the courses of action to follow. It was easier to lead to questions of the type: Is motherhood the recognition of such right a sample of the idea of fullness of development from the one to be born, not limiting itself to the will to have a child? In this way, once again, the invitation to a bioethical answer is open to all disciplines without abandoning its own methodology and contribution, asking about the goods that perfect human nature.

4. Conclusions