ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the intellectual foundation for normative planning, the rational consideration of both factual questions of public policy means and ethical questions of public policy ends. It argues, planners cannot consider only factual questions of alternative means but also must deal with substantive ethical questions—implicitly if not explicitly. The chapter examines the "logical-positivist" foundation for the instrumental w and found to be deficient. In the logical-positivist view, sentences which are neither true by virtue of the meanings of the words they contain nor empirically testable are cognitively meaningless and, therefore, neither true nor false. The "postlogical-positivist" views of contemporary philosophers such as John Rawls are found to suggest that ethical issues can be rationally considered in ways similar to those of the empirical sciences. A dominant theme underlying much of the planning literature is the view that planners can and should avoid the consideration of substantive ethical questions. Philosophers now recognize that ethical reasoning is much more like scientific reasoning than the logical positivists recognized.
