How can we reconnect the sciences with the foundations of ethics?

Stephen Toulmin

pp. 403-423

in: Daniel Callahan, Tristram Engelhardt (eds), The roots of ethics, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

Anyone familiar with the contemporary literature on the philosophical foundations of ethics—say, from John Rawls's Theory of Justice (1972) up to Alan Donagan's Theory of Morality (1977) and Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously (1977)— will know how little attention such books give to "'science," or at least to "the natural and social sciences," as they are conceived of at the present time in the English-speaking world.¹

Cited authors

Rawls John

Donagan Alan