Making Sense, Making Science

ConclusionMaking Sense Between Science and Ethics

In a way, this conclusion is separate, less focused on strictly linguistic, semiotic or comparative epistemological problems encountered in the sciences. Indeed, it approaches the subject from the perspective of other types of knowledge, mainly those of moral and political philosophy. Ethical knowledge from moral philosophy and its derivatives in moral sociology, law or normative economics, as well as political theory, are untouched by the division between natural and engineering sciences and human and social sciences. It is undoubtedly separate because it falls under another epistemology of the sciences. Moral and political philosophy are about the “ought to be” rather than the “what is”, or to put it another way, they are about the good rather than the true. This is what can give ethics an epilogue though it must be understood as “separate”. Indeed, the epilogue is literally “above discourse”. It has a special place.

However, this status can be questioned separately from ethics and political theory. For example, one may want to naturalize ethics with the experiments of moral psychology to try to understand how ordinary individuals evaluate this or that situation or dilemma.

Conversely, we can consider that ethics is not knowledge and that it is only irrational.

With these two types of positions, ethics, moral or political philosophy would have to answer some of the questions raised throughout this book.

Ethical questioning ...