Experimental Ethics and Kantian Deontology

The study assesses J. Greene’s experimental criticism of deontological normative theory, offers an alternative interpretation of experimental data, which does not lead to Greene’s conclusions about the inconsistency of deontology, and analyzes some argumentative strategies and methodological presuppositions of the experimental approach to philosophical problems. An example of Greene’s criticism of deontological ethics from experimental position allows one to make a number of conclusions. Firstly, the experimental material provides a subject for interpretation, but the interpretations themselves are philosophical abductive theories claiming to be the best explanation of the data. It is difficult to expect that such claims will remain without objections and without competitors based on different extra-theoretical standards. This makes experimental philosophy an arena of particularly intense debate, in which new results are born. Secondly, in experimental philosophy there remains a basic tension between the natural scientific tendency to consider the most economical explanation as the best and to accept a reduction of “pseudo-problems” and a more inclusive philosophical attitude to “perennial questions”, the recognition of the importance of which serves as a necessary criterion for the consistency of a theory. Thirdly, the case of Greene’s criticism of deontology allows one to identify some strategies of argumentation characteristic of the natural scientific approach to experimental philosophy: “motte-and-bailey”, the understanding of the norm as an empirical regularity, and a commitment to explanations through origin. It would be too hasty to assess these strategies as fallacies or tricks; it would be more correct to call them features of types of rationality that create a special dynamic of search in experimental philosophy and distinguish the scientific-experimental party from the more philosophical party. The value of the experimental approach is undeniable; it enriches philosophy not only with new data, but also with new arguments.