Moral Reductionism and the Normativity Challenge

Moral reductionism attempts to simplify some moral concepts and beliefs into someconcrete concepts and beliefs to provide a more clear and verifiable explanations.Reductionism takes place sometimes in the same field and among compatible conceptsand beliefs; as in the field of empirical psychology which is under the empirical sciences.In this field, certain psychological findings are simplified into some neurological andbiochemical concepts. But sometimes it may be applied to two non-compatible realms,one of which is normative and the other one descriptive. Moral concepts, beliefs, andtruths are among the most important normative affairs. Epistemology and semantics areamong the normative sciences as well. Contrary to them, naturalistic cognitions are a setof descriptive, non-normative concepts and propositions that their truth may be verifiedby referring to the objective world providing a causal explanation. Now an importantquestion here is that whether the normativity of normative sciences, especially ethics, is apart of their essence and structure or they are like the other sciences, especially empiricalones, which are non-normative in nature or they could be non-normative. Put differently,is it possible for us to reduce their normative content to a set of non-normative truths?Ethical naturalism as a kind of moral reductionism has asserted that it is possible. In thispaper we examine this claim and its efforts and policies for reducing moral facts intonon-normative facts.