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A Framework for an Empirical Ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
Empirical ethics, as the term is used in this paper, may be understood as the study of moral practice and of the moral judgments employed within such practice. One aspect of such an ethics is the analysis of the meaning of terms employed in moral judgments. In this study we are concerned with the relations between the rules of usage for such terms as “good”, “interest”, “value”, and others. But these rules of usage are not to be thought of as merely semantical; rather, they are rules which state how the terms are to be used or interpreted if certain results are to be produced in specified kinds of moral situations. That is to say, since moral judgments and their constituent terms perform an important instrumental role within moral practice, it is possible both to formulate rules for the use of these instruments, and also to study the relations between these instruments (i.e., terms) which result from the application and use of these rules.
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- Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940
References
1 Of course, A2 may be an activity which will so change E1 as to produce S, when A1 will recur. That is, the process of adjustment involves modifications, not only of the activity, but of the environment as well.
2 That an activity does tend to adjust itself to the environment follows from the definition of “its” environment. For the latter consists of just these characteristics whose changes are accompanied by corresponding changes in the activity. Hence it is not the same activity which takes place in their absence as in their presence. It is this change which is called “adjustment.”
3 In the simplest case, Q is simply the negation of P, and the “law” is analytic.
4 They are roughly what Peirce called the “dynamic interpretants” of signs.
5 As developed in G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, 1934.
6 Thus divergence of interest may arise even though the impulses concerned are very similar, because of false judgments of relevance of courses of action. This whole problem will be reconsidered in the last section.
7 Cf. E. Rignano, The Psychology of Reasoning. New York, 1923.
8 In terms developed by C. W. Morris in his Foundations of the Theory of Signs (Chicago, 1938), the symbols have pragmatical rules, but no semantical ones.
9 Of course the norm may be (and usually is) elliptically phrased, so that the reference to the impulse is only implicit.
10 This is an impirical judgment, an evaluation based on evidence, more and more confirmed by the increasing specialization of function in civilized societies.
11 Senator Taft of Ohio, on Memorial day, 1939.
12 Senator Byrd of Virginia, on the same day.
13 It is to be noted, however, that in Mannheim's usage, these terms emphasize the social function of these two kinds of symbolization.