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Mission: Impossible? On Empirical-Normative Collaboration in Ethical Reasoning

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An Erratum to this article was published on 04 June 2009

Abstract

During the 1980s, empirical social sciences and normative theory seemingly converged within ethical debates. This tendency kindled new debates about the limits and possibilities of empirical-normative collaboration. The article asks for adequate ways of collaboration by taking a closer look at the philosophy of science of empirical social sciences as well as normative theory development and its logical groundings. As a result, three possible modes of cooperation are characterized: first, the empirical assessment of conditions that actually necessitate the translation of normatively derived basic principles into practice rules; second, the empirical assessment of conditions for application of a moral norm which are formulated by bridging principles; third, the empirical assessment of social practice which allows (a) to measure whether adopted norms actually are implemented in practice or not and (b) to encounter new moral problems which are in need of ethical guidance. Finally, the article defends a symbiotic position in Weaver’s and Trevino's triad of possible approaches to empirical-normative collaboration in ethics.

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Notes

  1. Integrative approaches are often subsumed under the label of ‘empirical ethics’. Yet, as Musschenga notes, the conceptual character of this term often remains vague and unclear. He identifies the ‘care for context-sensitivity’ as ‘the ultimate aim of all empirical ethics’ (Musschenga 2005) and proposes two possible ways of understanding empirical ethics. The main challenge then is to achieve this aim ‘without making ethics uncritical’ (Musschenga 2005). Whether and how such an undertaking is possible is the question we are going to deal with in the following.

  2. At this point some decisive metaethical assumptions have to be clarified which are underlying our understanding of normative theory: First, we do not believe in any kind of ontological objectivity of moral norms and therefore believe moral norms to be strictly separated from facts. Hence, moral norms need to be constructed rather than detected quasi-empirically. Second, although we speak of ‘moral ideals’ we do not believe in the possibility of ultimate justification of any moral norm. What we mean by ‘moral ideal’ simply is the particular state of a normative theory, which would be reached through complete achievement of its specific moral target value. That does not only apply to consequentialist theories: Kant for instance specified the moral ideal as a state in which the rule of pure reason is absolute.

  3. In the course of this article we will discuss another kind of limitations that is also important for developing practical norms: limitations which we will call external limitations.

  4. To avoid misunderstandings, we have to hold here that in our opinion it is of no intrinsic value whether a basic principle can be implemented by everyday agents or not. In principle, one can imagine basic normative systems which are logically coherent but cannot be implemented because of certain limitations of human beings. Therefore, basic principles only need to be translated into practice rules which can be implemented realistically if one decides to act in accordance to these basic principles. In such cases of acceptance, basic principles become unrealistic if one is not able to act according to them. As regards our project, it should be clear that translation is necessary in order to enable moral acting in ethical practice.

  5. Of course, the specification and weighting of restricting factors requires developing further normative criteria. However, we cannot deal with this point here.

  6. By this, we do not ignore the fact that there is a whole number of further attempts to disprove Hume’s Law (see e.g. Gewirth 1978; MacIntyre 1981). However, all of these attempts ultimately face the same problems as described above.

  7. One could argue that such kinds of logical fallacies rarely appear in scientific practice. We also think that naturalistic fallacies indeed are committed less often than claimed. In order to avoid that allegations of naturalistic fallacies become universal discussion stoppers, each premise and conclusion should be analyzed in detail. Closer inspections of controversial cases often show that the contested argument is logically correct as it includes normatively derived bridging principles that have just not been explicitly stated. This does not, however, affirm positions which advocate influence of empirical data on normative theory development. Rather, such cases once more show that empirical description and normative theory are distinct in a decisive respect. Statements like ‘every person ought to be treated like x, because she has the natural feature y’ might arouse the suspicion of committing a naturalistic fallacy. However, one can easily dispel this suspicion by adding a normative premise like ‘the natural feature y is morally relevant because of z’. Thereby one has shown the distinction of empirical description and normative theory exemplarily. As soon as normative premises are introduced, debates have to address the normative question of its rightness.

  8. This insufficiency of logical possibility of course only applies to norms which in principle are adopted by agents (cf. note 3).

  9. For attempts of arguing against ‘Ought implies Can’ cf. e.g.: Pidgen 1990; Saka 2000. For arguments in favour of ‘Ought implies Can’ cf. exemplarily: Bailey 2006; Streumer 2003.

  10. To avoid misconceptions we should clarify the difference between bridging principles which we regard as biconditionals and ‘Ought implies Can’ which is often also seen as a bridging principle. However, according to our weak understanding, ‘Ought implies Can’ is an implication rather than a biconditional. To put it another way, bridging principles are an integrative part of a normative theory and therefore are formulating testable empirical conditions which must be fulfilled in order to gain validity for the respective principle. In contrast, ‘Ought implies Can’ as we have demonstrated is not associated with normative validity. It is rather a touchstone for the factual possibility to act as requested by normative theory.

  11. Although Birnbacher (1988) does not mention external limitations, we consider them as significantly important as stated previously.

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Correspondence to Sebastian Schleidgen.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9179-1

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Schleidgen, S., Jungert, M.C. & Bauer, R.H. Mission: Impossible? On Empirical-Normative Collaboration in Ethical Reasoning. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 13, 59–71 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-009-9170-x

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