Science

Is Ethics a Science?

Our philosophical science correspondent Massimo Pigliucci asks.

Is ethics, or can it ever be, in some sense of the word, a ‘science’? This question has been debated at length by ethical theorists, and tends to divide them into two broad camps. According to the ‘continuity’ position, science and ethics share basic similarities, and even if ethics may not really be a science, there are many more points of congruence between the two than popularly acknowledged. The ‘discontinuity’ camp, on the other hand, assert that ethics and science are fundamentally different kinds of activity, and the two shall never meet.

To clear up a possible confusion, I am not talking here about the ethics of doing science. That is, of course, a perfectly legitimate branch of philosophy and ethical theory, and the controversies regarding it are of an applied nature, concerning specific instances of ethical or unethical behavior on the part of the scientific community.

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