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.