Ethics from experience

Ethics from Experience is an original inquiry into morality and how we come to know what is right. It argues that each person is capable of arriving at tested moral conclusions on the basis of experience.

The development of moral theory is conducted here in unusually revealing ways in conjunction with an account of scientific theory and method. Moral agency operates in a world whose structure and behavior must be known if action is to be responsible. Traditional ways of teaching ethics pay little attention to the hard facts in the environment of action.

While not a survey but an original argument, the book introduces and comments upon most of the traditional moral problems and major moral philosophers. In presenting the case for moral consequentialism, it treats morality not as an academic exercise but as a live problem of urgent importance.