Variations -- On being imprisoned by one's upbringing -- Moral psychologies and moral ecologies -- Bibliographical essay -- First nature -- Classical Chinese sprouts -- Modern moral psychology -- Beyond moral modularity -- Destructive emotions -- Bibliographic essay -- Collisions -- When values collide -- Moral geographies of anger -- Weird anger -- For love's and justice's sake -- Bibliographical essay -- Anthropologies -- Self-variations: philosophical archaeologies -- The content of character.
This book explores the interface between geography, ethics and morality. It considers questions that have haunted the past, are subjects of controversy in the present, and which affect the future. Does distance diminish responsibility? Should we interfere with the lives of those we do not know? Is there a distinction between private and public space? Which values and morals, if any, are absolute, and which cultural, communal or personal? And are universal rights consistent with respect for difference? David Smith shows how these questions play themselves out in politics, planning, development, social and personal relations, the exploitation of resources, and competition for territory. After introducing the essential elements of moral philosophy from Plato to postmodernism, he examines the moral significance of concepts of landscape, location and place, proximity, distance and community, space and territory, justice, and nature. He is concerned above all with the morality people practice, to see how this varies according to geographical context, and to assess the inevitability of its outcomes. His argument is seamlessly interwoven with everyday observation and vividly described case studies: the latter include genocide and rescue during the Holocaust, the conflicts over space between Israeland Palestine and within Israel itself, and the social tensions and aspirations in post-apartheid South Africa. The meaning, possibility and limits of social justice lie at the heart of the book. That geographical context is vital to the understanding of moral practice and ethical theory is its central proposition. The book is clearly and engagingly written. The author has a student readership in mind, but his book will appeal widely to geographers and others involved in planning, development, politics, social theory, and the analysis of the contemporary world.
With a foreword by Edward O. Wilson, this book brings together internationally known experts from the scientific, societal, and conservation policy areas who address policy responses to the problem of biodiversity loss: how to determine conservation priorities in a scientific fashion, how to weigh the long-term, often hidden value of conservation against the more immediate value of land development, the need for education in areas of rapid population growth, and how lack of knowledge about biodiversity can impede conservation efforts. United in their belief that conservation of biological diversity is a primary concern of humankind, the contributing authors address the full scope of global biodiversity and its decline -- the threatened marine life and extinction of many mammals in the modern era in relation to global patterns of development, and the implications of biodiversity loss for human health, agricultural productivity, and the economy. The Living Planet in Crisis is the result of a conference of the American Museum of Natural History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation.
This book represents a landmark exploration of the common terrain of geography and ethics. Drawing together specially commissioned contributions from distinguished geographers across the UK, North America and Australasia, the place of geography in ethics and of ethics in geography is examined through wide-ranging, thematic chapters. Geography and Ethics is divided into four sections for discussion and exploration of ideas: Ethics and Space; Ethics and Place; Ethics and Nature and Ethics and knowledge, all of which point to the rich interplay between geography and moral philosophy or ethics.
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history—but who bears the brunt of these monster storms? Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they have been encouraged to do so by what Gilbert M. Gaul reveals in The Geography of Risk to be a confounding array of federal subsidies, tax breaks, low-interest loans, grants, and government flood insurance that shift the risk of life at the beach from private investors to public taxpayers, radically distorting common notions of risk. These federal incentives, Gaul argues, have resulted in one of the worst planning failures in American history, and the costs to taxpayers are reaching unsustainable levels. We have become responsible for a shocking array of coastal amenities: new roads, bridges, buildings, streetlights, tennis courts, marinas, gazebos, and even spoiled food after hurricanes. The Geography of Risk will forever change the way you think about the coasts, from the clash between economic interests and nature, to the heated politics of regulators and developers.
Owen Flanagan argues in this book for a more psychologically realistic ethical reflection and spells out the ways in which psychology can enrich moral philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of such “moral saints” as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Oskar Schindler, Flanagan charts a middle course between an ethics that is too realistic and socially parochial and one that is too idealistic, giving no weight to our natures.
"Suffering is an unavoidable reality in health care. Not only are patients and families suffering but also the clinicians who care for them. Commonly the suffering experienced by clinicians is moral in nature, reflecting the increasing complexity of health care, their roles within it, and the expanding range of available interventions. Moral suffering is the anguish experienced in response to various forms of moral adversity including moral harms, wrongs or failures, or unrelieved moral stress. Confronting moral adversity challenges clinicians' integrity: the inner harmony that arises when their essential values and commitments are aligned with their choices and actions. The most studied response to moral adversity is moral distress. The sources and sequelae of moral distress, one type of moral suffering, have been documented among clinicians across specialties. Recent interest has expanded to include a more corrosive form of moral suffering, moral injury. Moral resilience, the capacity to restore or sustain integrity in response to moral adversity, offers a path designing individual and system solutions to address moral suffering. It encompasses capacities aimed at developing self- regulation and self-awareness, buoyancy, moral efficacy, self-stewardship and ultimately personal and relational integrity. Moral resilience has been shown to be a protective resource that reduces the detrimental impact of moral suffering. Clinicians and healthcare organizations must work together to transform moral suffering by cultivating the individual capacities for moral resilience and designing a new architecture to support ethical practice. Used worldwide for scalable and sustainable change, the Conscious Full Spectrum Response, offers a method to solve problems to support integrity, shift patterns that undermine moral resilience and ethical practice, and source the inner potential of clinicians and leaders to produce meaningful and sustainable results that benefit all"--
"The world today seems full of anger. In the West, particularly in the US and UK, this anger can oftentimes feel aimless, a possible product of social media. Still, anger is normally considered a useful motivational source for positive social change. Channeling that anger into movements for civil rights, alleviation of socio-economic inequality, and the end of endless wars, has long been understood as a valuable tactic. Moreover, anger is believed to be handy in everyday life in order to protect, and stick up for, oneself. On the flip side, the world today celebrates diminishing amounts of shame. Political leaders and pundits shamelessly abandon commitments to integrity, truth and decency, and in general, shame is considered to be a primitive, ugly emotion, which causes eating disorders, PTSD, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and other highly undesirable circumstances. Having shame is, thus, regularly understood as both psychologically bad and morally bad. In How to Do Things with Emotions, philosopher Owen Flanagan argues this thinking is backwards, and that we need to tune down anger and tune up shame. By examining cross-cultural resources, Flanagan demonstrates how certain kinds of anger are destructive, while a 'mature' sense of shame can be used -as it is in many cultures- as a socializing emotion, that does not need to be attached to the self, but can be called upon to protect good values (kindness, truth) rather than bad ones (racism, sexism). Drawing from Stoic, Buddhist, and other cultural traditions, Flanagan explains that payback anger (i.e., revenge) and pain-passing anger (i.e., passing hurt one is feeling to someone else) are incorrigible, and also, how the Western view of shame rooted in traditions of psychoanalysis is entirely unwarranted. Continuing his method of doing ethics by bringing in cross-cultural philosophy, research from psychology, and in this case widening that to include cultural psychology and anthropology, Flanagan shows exactly how our culture shapes our emotions-through norms and traditions-and how proper cultivation of our emotions can yield important progress in our morality"--
What does pleasure have to do with morality? What role, if any, should intuition have in the formation of moral theory? If something is ‘simulated’, can it be immoral? This accessible and wide-ranging textbook explores these questions and many more. Key ideas in the fields of normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics are explained rigorously and systematically, with a vivid writing style that enlivens the topics with energy and wit. Individual theories are discussed in detail in the first part of the book, before these positions are applied to a wide range of contemporary situations including business ethics, sexual ethics, and the acceptability of eating animals. A wealth of real-life examples, set out with depth and care, illuminate the complexities of different ethical approaches while conveying their modern-day relevance. This concise and highly engaging resource is tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies, with a clear and practical layout that includes end-of-chapter summaries, key terms, and common mistakes to avoid. It should also be of practical use for those teaching Philosophy as part of the International Baccalaureate. Ethics for A-Level is of particular value to students and teachers, but Fisher and Dimmock’s precise and scholarly approach will appeal to anyone seeking a rigorous and lively introduction to the challenging subject of ethics. Tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies.
