What can the Social Sciences Contribute to the Study of Ethics? Theoretical, Empirical and Substantive Considerations

TLDR

The article argues that the usual objection to the division between normative and descriptive ethics—labeling social sciences as merely providing facts—fails to capture the broader role of social sciences in ethics. It seeks to demonstrate that social sciences can make a substantive contribution to the study of ethics. The discussion is structured around three questions: what theoretical work can social sciences offer, what empirical work can they provide, and how these combine to socially constitute and situate ethical analysis. The authors conclude that social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest in how ethics shapes social change, that empirical investigations reveal epistemological and methodological interplay extending beyond traditional ethical questions, and that this combined work probes the social processes underlying the designation of issues as ethical.

Abstract

This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over-simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the 'handmaiden' role of simply providing the 'facts'). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being 'ethical issues.'