Toward Methodological Innovation in Empirical Ethics Research
Toward Methodological Innovation in Empirical Ethics Research
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DOI：
10.1017/s0963180112000242
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发表时间：
2012-10-01
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Parker, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dunn, Michael;Sheehan, Mark;Parker, Michael
经验伦理学家在实践伦理学领域中占据着一个令人不安的位置。尽管关于伦理学的“经验转向”已经有很多文章，但那些认为使用经验数据来为实际困境的伦理分析提供信息有价值的研究人员面临着大量的批评。一方面，道德哲学家，武装了三个世纪关于事实价值区分的争论，瞄准了经验伦理学研究的有效性，并批评他们认为经验伦理学家从描述性证据中发展出规定性结论的努力站不住脚。[1，2]在另一面，社会科学家（和其他人）攻击经验伦理学研究的独特性，批评的范围从经验伦理学家天真地挪用从他们的学科中发展出来的复杂方法论和方法，[3，4，5]到他们对社会科学家自己试图解释社会实践充满道德价值判断的方式的明显无知。[6]然而，尽管有这些持续不断的斗争，经验伦理学却继续蓬勃发展，这是怎么回事呢？我们的出发点是双重的。第一，经验伦理学，如果仔细加以阐述，可以是一个有效的和独特的企业，第二，当作为一个总括性的术语来描述在伦理分析中使用经验数据的每一种方法时，它可能会失去其有效性和独特性。我们认为，这是因为经验伦理学未能海岸它对道德哲学家和社会科学家提出的批评的防御，我们认为这些失败威胁到经验伦理学项目的长期可行性。这些批评对经验伦理学研究的理论和方法论基础提出了重要挑战，不能被忽视或搁置。
Empirical ethicists occupy an uncomfortable place in the field of practical ethics. Although much has been written about the ‘‘empirical turn’’in ethics, those researchers who see value in using empirical data to inform the ethical analysis of practical dilemmas face a barrage of criticisms. On one flank, moral philosophers, well armed with three centuries worth of arguments about the fact-value distinction, target the validity of empirical ethics research and critique what they see as the empirical ethicists’ untenable efforts to develop prescriptive conclusions from descriptive evidence. 1, 2 On the opposing flank, social scientists (and others) attack the distinctiveness of empirical ethics research, with criticisms ranging from empirical ethicists’ naıve appropriation of the complex methodologies and methods developed from within their disciplines, 3, 4, 5 to their apparent ignorance of social scientists’ own attempts to account for the ways in which social practices are laden with judgments of moral value. 6 Yet, notwithstanding these ongoing battles, empirical ethics continues to flourish.What is to be made of this? Our starting point here is twofold. First, empirical ethics, when elucidated carefully, can be a valid and distinctive enterprise, and, second, when deployed as a catchall term to describe each and every approach to using empirical data within ethical analysis, it can lose both its validity and distinctiveness. This, we believe, is because empirical ethics has failed to shore up its defenses against the criticisms posed by moral philosophers and social scientists, and we propose that these failings threaten the long-term viability of the empirical ethics project. Such criticisms raise important challenges to the theoretical and methodological foundations of empirical ethics research and cannot be dismissed or sidelined.