Behavioral and Brain Sciences



Open Peer Commentary

The place of ethics in a unified behavioral science


Peter Danielson a1
a1 W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada. pad@ethics.ubc.ca http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/people/danielson/

Article author query
danielson p   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 

Abstract

Behavioral science, unified in the way Gintis proposes, should affect ethics, which also finds itself in “disarray,” in three ways. First, it raises the standards. Second, it removes the easy targets of economic and sociobiological selfishness. Third, it provides methods, in particular the close coupling of theory and experiments, to construct a better ethics.

(Published Online April 27 2007)