Two concepts of empirical ethics.

Area of Science:

• Bioethics
• Moral Philosophy
• Empirical Ethics

Background:

• Bioethical principlism is criticized for being too abstract and lacking factual depth.
• Empirical ethics seeks to ground morality in human experience and factual data.
• A key challenge for empirical ethics is maintaining its normative ethical force when incorporating empirical findings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the limitations of current empirical ethics approaches.
• To propose a naturalistic theory that better integrates empirical data with ethical considerations.
• To demonstrate the utility of this new theory using case studies.

Main Methods:

• Development of a naturalistic theory termed teleological expressivism (TE).
• Analysis of the "naturalistic fallacy" and its negotiation within ethical frameworks.
• Application of TE to real-world ethical dilemmas, specifically informed consent and euthanasia.

Main Results:

• Teleological expressivism (TE) provides a robust framework for incorporating empirical data into ethical analysis.
• This approach avoids the pitfalls of abstract ethical theories and the "wrong kind of reasons" problem in empirical ethics.
• The theory demonstrates superiority in analyzing complex ethical issues like informed consent and euthanasia.

Conclusions:

• Empirical ethics can be advanced by naturalistic theories like teleological expressivism (TE).
• TE successfully bridges the gap between empirical facts and normative ethical judgment.
• This framework offers a more satisfactory method for ethical decision-making in applied bioethics.