Normative vs. descriptive
Christian ethics is a classic example of normative
ethics
DEFINITION: Distinction between moral philosophies
that tell people what they should do (normative
ethics) and moral philosophies that merely
describe what people already believe they should
do (descriptive ethics).
TYPE OF ETHICS: Theory of ethics
SIGNIFICANCE: Descriptive ethical statements are
generally taken to be judgments of fact which
may be shown to be true or false. Normative ethi-
cal statements are much more difficult to prove,
and for some moral philosophers, are statements
of value which are neither true nor false.
Normative ethics deals with the formulation of ethi-
cal codes of behavior and moral models of evaluative
decision making. Normative ethics prescribes moral
principles defining the good, the right, duty, obliga-
tion, law, and justice. A normative approach assumes
the universality of its ethical principles and attempts
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to justify them on a rational basis.
ethics. The following are normative moral utter-
ances: “All promises ought to be kept.” “Killing an-
other human being is wrong.” “Capital punishment is
just because it deters crime.” “A father has a duty to
provide physical support for his children.”Inall these
examples, the common element is the prescription of
a certain course of action or its evaluation. The most
famous example of normative ethics is found in the
Ten Commandments.
 DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS
Descriptive ethics is ethics shorn free of prescrip-
tive or evaluative elements. Descriptive ethics deals
with the meanings of moral utterances, the relation-
ships between them and moral actors, and the nature
of moral argumentation. Descriptive ethics may take a
sociological, psychological, ethnographic, or philo-
sophic approach. A sociological analysis of ethics
may concern itself with the relationship between
moral behavior and social coercion. Psychology may
deal with the relationships between moral behavior
Ethics
and the different stages of human growth and devel-
opment. Ethnography may study the relationships
between ethical beliefs and culture and tradition.
Philosophical analysis will tend to concern itself
with the semantic meaning of moral utterances, their
sense and pragmatic context.
Thomas Hobbes treated ethics as a descriptive
science of the aversions and appetites of the human
organism. The good, according to Hobbes, is any ob-
ject of human desire and appetite. Human behavior,
in this view, is motivated by aversion to fear and want
and appetites for security and gain. Hobbes’s de-
scriptive approach is made possible by his mechanis-
tic view of the universe and human nature.
 NATURALISM
The descriptive approach that finds a natural cause
for moral behavior is known as naturalism. One fa-
mous advocate of naturalism was David Hume, who,
more than any other philosopher, thoroughly mod-
ernized and secularized ethics and philosophy. In A
Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concern-
ing the Principles of Morals, Hume attempts to an-
swer the metaethical questions of the meanings of
ethical terms such as “good,” “right,” “justice,” “vir-
tue,” and “vice.” Hume concludes that ethical terms
are not qualities of a special moral sense or
predicates of ethical objects. Instead, they only
convey sentiments of approbation or approval;
therefore, ethical judgments are entirely subjective.
Whenever an object is judged to be good, it means
that it is either pleasant or useful. Thus, moral
judgments are really judgments of taste.
Naturalistic analysis claims that the good and the
right are determined by human appetites. Naturalism
holds that an object isvalued as good because it is de-
sirable. The proposition “X is good” means “I desire
X.” One form of naturalism is emotivism, which
holds that ethical judgments are only expressions of
personal feelings of approval or distaste. This could
lead to subjectivism and ethical relativism. In fact,
there can be no real ethical disagreements. Ethical
judgments only express the attitudes of speakers.
Hedonism is another form of naturalism. Hedo-
nism equates good and evil with pleasure and pain.
Whatever produces pleasure is equivalent to the good.
Utilitarianism in the hands of Jeremy Bentham main-
tained a vulgar view that overvalued the quantitative
aspects of pleasure. John Stuart Mill, in Utilitarian-
NORMATIVE VS. DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS
ism, distinguished between good and bad pleasures.
Intellectual and cultural pleasures are superior to mere
physical pleasures. As Mill put it, “I would rather be
Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.” One of the
most formidable challenges to naturalism came from
G. E. Moore. Moore’s critique of naturalism is known
as the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy involves defin-
ing good in terms of something else, such as
pleasure. For Moore, good was an indefinable
quality.
As Karl-Otto Apel points out, normative ethics
seems to have been made obsolete by Hume’s dis-
tinction—norms cannot be derived from facts; an
“ought” statement cannot be derived from an “is”
statement. The scientific grounding of ethics is im-
possible. Science deals only with facts. In effect,
Hume relegated moral norms to the subjective do-
main. As a result, modern science will accept objectiv-
ity only in the mathematical and empirical sciences—
not in morality. Morality is purely subjective, from
the point of view of modern science. Since Hume
and Max Weber, science has claimed to be value
free, only positing technological goals, but one can
only ask with Apel: What about the criteria for and
desirability of technological goals? Can science
really free itself from ethics?
As Apel claims, scientific claims involve argu-
ments. Arguments occur in speech situations, in
contexts of communication in which certain ethical
norms are, in fact, presupposed. Other persons are
recognized as genuine subjects of communication.
Involvement in argumentation implies ethical claims
such as truthfulness and sincerity. Thus, if Apel is
correct, science is not value free and there cannot
ever be a purely descriptive ethics.
Michael R. Candelaria
FURTHER READING
Apel, Karl-Otto. Towards a Transformation of Phi-
losophy. Translated by Glyn Adey and David
Frisby. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth, and Logic. London:
V. Gollancz, 1936. Reprint. Introduction by Ben
Rogers. London: Penguin, 2001.
Dancy, Jonathan, ed. Normativity. Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell, 2000.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. London:
Everyman, 2003.
Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Rev. ed. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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