Spielthenner Georg
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Dar es Salaam, P.O. Box 110135, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
HEC Forum. 2017 Dec;29(4):277-292. doi: 10.1007/s10730-016-9318-8.
This article is concerned with the role empirical research can play in normative practical ethics. There is no doubt that ethical research requires some kind of collaboration between normative disciplines and empirical sciences. But many researchers hold that empirical science is only assigned a subordinate role, due to the doctrine that normative conclusions cannot be justified by descriptive premises. Scientists working in the field of ethics commonly hold, however, that the empirical sciences should play a much bigger role in ethical research. The aim of this paper is to show that empirical sciences can play a substantive role in normative ethics, with no illicit inferences from is to ought. To achieve this aim, I explain (in "The Is-Ought Problem Explained" section) Hume's thesis. In the following sections, I am concerned with different uses of empirical data that do not imply an illicit inference from descriptive premises to a normative conclusion. The article demonstrates that there are many modes of ethical reasoning that allow for a substantive use of empirical data, and it also shows the importance of Hume's thesis for clarifying ethical reasoning.
本文关注实证研究在规范实践伦理学中所能发挥的作用。毫无疑问，伦理研究需要规范学科与实证科学之间进行某种协作。但许多研究者认为，由于规范性结论不能由描述性前提来证成这一学说，实证科学仅被赋予次要角色。然而，从事伦理学领域研究的科学家普遍认为，实证科学在伦理研究中应发挥更大的作用。本文的目的是表明，实证科学能够在规范伦理学中发挥实质性作用，且不存在从“是”到“应当”的非法推理。为实现这一目标，我在“休谟命题阐释”部分解释了休谟的命题。在接下来的部分中，我将关注实证数据的不同用途，这些用途并不意味着从描述性前提到规范性结论的非法推理。本文论证了存在许多伦理推理模式允许对实证数据进行实质性运用，并展示了休谟命题对于阐明伦理推理的重要性。
