On the Naturalized Tendency of the Research of Morality

The ethics takes the methods of theoretical analysis as its main approach, especially the methods of thought experiment and the logical deduction. However, thought experiment as the research approach in ethics has been questioned for a long time. And the normative and descriptive nature of morality demand for more than one kind of methods, which makes the empirical sciences getting involved with the research of morality a necessity. Affected by positivism, especially the prevalence of naturalism and the rapid development of cognitive science, the convergence between ethics and empirical sciences is generally becoming a trend. In the context of the research of morality presenting a tendency of naturalization, the empirical moral psychology rises. Moral psychology incorporates achievements of neurosciences, evolutionary biology, linguistics and philosophy to investigate morality, which shows the continuity between the morality and empirical sciences.