On the interrelations between ethics and other fields of philosophy and science

Abstract

(1) It has become commonplace today to distinguish between ethical theories proper and metaethical investigations. Originally, the latter were intended to be an analysis of the meaning of moral expressions. Later, the theory of justification of moral statements was included. By means of a simple analogy I shall try to express what this develop? ment looks like to me: Suppose somebody says that there are two kinds of people dealing, directly or indirectly, with physical objects: first, the physicists, and secondly, those who study the use of physical terms. As soon as it is discovered that physicists sometimes use phrases like: 'this theory is better confirmed than that one' they force the people of the second kind to do theory of confirmation as well. In this picture nothing is left for what is considered the main task of a systematic philosophy of science, namely to give rational reconstructions. Therefore, I suggest adding this kind of activity to moral philosophy as well, so that we have a threefold distinction instead of a twofold one. There is only an inessential difference in so far as, in the first case, only those persons are normally called philosophers who are concerned with philosophy of science, not with science itself, while in ethics those who develop an ethical theory as well as those who try to reconstruct it in precise terms are called philosophers in most cases. This has nothing to do with the distinction between an 'object-level' and a 'meta-level'. But, of course, in our case too we must distinguish between theory and metatheory. This only shows that it was an oversimp? lification when I spoke of a threefold distinction. As rational reconstruc? tions can be performed either on the object-level of ethical theories or on