Normative Science
The goal of normative science is the generally applicable answer to normative questions.
Normative questions are questions about what should be, especially how to act and which values and goals should be striven for. Normative questions arise in ethics , politics , economics , law and education , among others .
Normative science should not be confused with the empirical study of norms by sociology , ethnology, or psychology . While these sciences are concerned with the description and explanation of existing systems of standards, normative science endeavors to justify and criticize individual standards or even entire systems of standards.
Science differs from other forms of knowledge acquisition in that its results not only claim general validity, but that this claim is also substantiated by intersubjectively comprehensible arguments .
Thus, as the art of star interpretation, astrology also claims a general, i.e. independent and permanent, validity for its statements, but in contrast to scientific astronomy, astrology lacks the intersubjectively verifiable justification of its statements.
In the positive sciences, the intersubjective verifiability is based on the principle of repeatability (e.g. through an experiment) on the basis of what is sensually given. Therefore one speaks of empirical sciences or empirical sciences.
Is Normative Science Possible?
However, normative questions can not be answered with the methods of empirical science (systematic observation, experiment, etc.) alone . Because you can see what is, but you cannot see what should be .
Hume already pointed out that one cannot logically deduce what should be from statements about what is. Any inference from being to an ought is therefore a logical fallacy, because the ought is a completely new element of meaning that is not contained in the factual premises and consequently cannot be logically derived from it.
In the so-called value judgment dispute at the beginning of the 20th century, the positivists who demanded a purely empirical, value judgment- free science largely prevailed.
On the other hand, the normative questions about the right action, about the good to be striven for, about the common good and justice remained acute. The extreme position that normative questions are pointless turned out to be of little help.
In the 1960s, there was an increasing number of voices pointing out that normative sentences are accessible to logic and that one can argue for or against normative claims in an intersubjectively comprehensible manner.
The truth criterion of empirical sciences, logical consistency and consistent observation, is not applicable to normative assertions, but again does not exclude the existence of other criteria of general validity.
Above all, Habermas introduced a consensus theory of truth into the discussion in this context . According to this, the criterion for the general validity of an assertion is that a general consensus can be established on this assertion in an ideal speech situation and only through arguments .
Since Habermas deliberately did not want to develop methodology for answering normative questions, he owed his critics to answer the question of what could take on the role of consensus-building, intersubjectively consistent observation in the normative sciences.
The possibility of normative science thus remains controversial.
Position within science
Berg-Schlosser and Stammen investigate dividing political science into normative-ontological theoretical approaches, dialectical-historical theoretical approaches and empirical-analytical theoretical approaches. The normative-ontological theoretical approach and the dialectical-historical theoretical approach have a similar methodological approach, while the empirical-analytical theoretical approach differs significantly from both.
literature
- Max Weber: Methodological writings . Frankfurt a. M. 1968
- Jürgen Habermas: Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism . Frankfurt a. M. 1973
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Theo Stammen : Introduction to Political Science . 7th edition. CH Beck , Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50495-7 , pp. 81 ( Google Books ).