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Experience and Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Thomas A Cowan*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University School of Law

Extract

The problem of scientific ethics or experimental morality creates for the scientific methodologist a profound dilemma. To the extent that he makes his investigations scientific he fails at the essence of morality. Conversely, if he attempts to found himself securely in morality, his efforts to become scientific lead to mere utilitarian “moralizing.” In the older language of Kant, the imperatives of morality are categorical; those of science, hypothetical. “Is” and “ought” are incommensurable categories, as they are for logical positivism which simply accepts the dualism as irreducible and advises against what it views as the inevitable consequence of any attempted synthesis: confusion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 by Philosophy of Science Association

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References

Postulates of Empirical Thought, 25 Journal of Philosophy (1928) 318.