Abstract :
In Quine’s classical paper on ethics; On the Nature of Moral Values (Quine 1981), he declared ethics as methodologically infirm. This paper is aimed at showing that many attempts have been made to show that Quine claim about ethics is unjustified by attempting to establish a common nature between ethics and science. This paper, again, intends to show that none among those attempts has been found to be able to sufficiently upturn Quine’s argument. Quine’s declaration of methodological infirmity on ethics is based on his naturalism which seeks to assess the meaning of each statement or judgment based on their amenability to empirical stimulation. In other words, Quine deals only with statements or judgments as much as they are observational or empirical. Therefore, this paper intends to show that attempts to falsify Quine’s argument and show ethics as sharing common characteristics with science are either going to mutilate ethics beyond repair or be doomed to failure. This owes to nothing but the peculiarity of ethics. It is this peculiarity of ethics which makes it not amenable to scientific methodology which is Quine’s paradigmatic criterion. As a result, ethical statements and truths will always be infirm before the tribunal of science. But this paper will show that Quine’s declaration of methodological infirmity on ethics does not mean meaning infirmity. Ethics, in its own right, is firm when applied to the right methodology of reasoning.
