A note on discourse ethics and naturalized social contracts

Abstract

Beginning the first section with Joseph Heath’s criticism on Jurgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, the author clarifies the structure of deontological ethics in its Kantian version and discourse ethics version. He argues that if we are not satisfied with a transcendental inference, we should take a naturalistic approach to the problem of ethics and norms. In the second section, he appreciates the game theoretic approach to the problematic social contract by Brian Skyrms and Kenneth Binmore. As a result of the historical evolution of a society, a naturalistic version of ethics (e.g., Binmore’s empathy equilibrium) comes to reflect historical heritage and then the dominant social structure. In the third section, he offers a scheme of the dual structure of the normative and real dimensions to grasp the problematic areas of the ethical problem. He explains these areas and maintains that a dual-dimension scheme can compensate for the partiality of both the idealist and naturalist directions.