THE RATIONALIST AND EMPIRICIST EPISTEMOLOGICAL STRATEGIES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS IN ETHICS

Résumé

While the main focus in an ethics course is on right and wrong and the problems and issues that ethics raises, it is impossible to investigate these problems in isolation, without at least some excursions into the other philosophical sub-disciplines. While all the branches of philosophy consider separate questions and issues, there are considerable interconnections, as assumptions in one area will have repercussions in other areas. One question that all ethical theories must address is where ethical knowledge arises, that is, where does the knowledge about general ethical principles (or the knowledge that certain actions are moral or immoral) originate? These and other similar questions raise issues that are no longer unique to ethics, but ones that touch upon more general epistemological questions: about knowledge, its sources, nature and justification. There is little doubt that there are at least superficial similarities between ethics ad epistemology: one might say that ethics is about the appraisal of social behavior and agents, while epistemology is about the appraisal of cognitive acts and agents. This paper studies the basic tenets of empiricism and rationalism, their various epistemic justificatory mechanisms and how they relate ethics.