Granice autonomii etyki. O potrzebie uwzględniania wyników nauk empirycznych w etyce
The Limits of Ethics Autonomy. Ethics Takes Into Account the Empirical Data

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on the psychological realism requirement which should be metby any ethical theory. Even if one should not make normative conclusions out ofdescriptive presumptions, there are still some limitations resulting from our natureabout which one should remember when formulating moral ideals. One should notimpose moral ideals which may require of people more than they would ever be ableto bear. The paper’s aim is to emphasize how important it is to ethics to pay attentionto the empirical research carried out within psychology which show that a large partof our thought and volitional processes is automatic or semi-automatic. This meansthat ethicists cannot exclusively concentrate on regulating reflective processes whichunderlie consciously made decisions. If ethics is to avoid marginalization, ethicistsmust also focus on those automatic processes which control human thinking andaction, especially in the circumstances of a total “ego-depletion”, e.g. when we aretired, hungry, or under a strong influence of unstable emotions. The paper showsthat virtue ethics is this kind of ethical approach which meets the psychologicalrealism condition most successfully.

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