Critical rationalism and metaethics

Abstract

For Hans Albert, what is to be deemed morally right or wrong could either be based on human conventions (decisions) or on findings of facts (cognitions). As an ethical non-cognitivist Albert emphasizes that decision-based conventions are constitutive of ‘morals/ethics’. Yet, it has been claimed that Popper’s falsificationism applies to prescriptive moral theories roughly as it does to descriptive empirical theories and that this analogy justifies a variant of ethical cognitivism. It is argued in this paper, that such ethical cognitivism would require beyond empirical and analytical fact-finding other abilities of moral cognition which are to be rejected within Albert’s critical rationalism and realism.