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Author: Martin Rhonheimer
Publisher: CUA Press
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 489
ISBN-13: 0813217997
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Perspective of the Acting Person introduces readers to one of the most important and provocative thinkers in contemporary moral philosophy
Author: Stephen Darwall
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-09-30
Total Pages: 363
ISBN-13: 0674034627
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.
Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-09-04
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 022611354X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“A welcome renewal and defense of John Dewey's ethical naturalism, which Johnson claims is the only morality ‘fit for actual human beings.’” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews What is the difference between right and wrong? This is no easy question to answer, yet we constantly try to make it so, frequently appealing to absolutes, whether drawn from God, universal reason, or societal authority. Combining cognitive science with a pragmatist philosophical framework, Mark Johnson argues that appealing solely to absolute principles is not only scientifically unsound but even morally suspect. He shows that the standards for the kinds of people we should be and how we should treat one another are frequently subject to change. Taking context into consideration, he offers a nuanced, naturalistic view of ethics that sees us creatively adapt our standards according to given needs, emerging problems, and social interactions. Ethical naturalism is not just a revamped form of relativism. Indeed, Johnson attempts to overcome the absolutist-versus-relativist impasse that has been one of the most intractable problems in the history of philosophy. Much of our moral thought, he shows, is automatic and intuitive, gut feelings that we attempt to justify with rational analysis and argument. However, good moral deliberation is not limited to intuitive judgments supported after the fact by reasoning. Johnson points out a crucial third element: we imagine how our decisions will play out, how we or the world would change with each action we might take. Plumbing this imaginative dimension of moral reasoning, he provides a psychologically sophisticated view of moral problem solving, one perfectly suited for the embodied, culturally embedded, and ever-developing human creatures that we are.
Author: Charles Daniel Batson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0199355541
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMost works on moral psychology consider morality an unalloyed good. Drawing primarily on social-psychological theory and research, this book looks at morality as a problem. The problem is that we often fail live up to our own moral standards. Why?
Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2007-08-24
Total Pages: 285
ISBN-13: 0262263254
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMoral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.
Author: Donelson Forsyth
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-10-17
Total Pages: 334
ISBN-13: 1000710904
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis fascinating new book examines diversity in moral judgements, drawing on recent work in social, personality, and evolutionary psychology, reviewing the factors that influence the moral judgments people make. Why do reasonable people so often disagree when drawing distinctions between what is morally right and wrong? Even when individuals agree in their moral pronouncements, they may employ different standards, different comparative processes, or entirely disparate criteria in their judgments. Examining the sources of this variety, the author expertly explores morality using ethics position theory, alongside other theoretical perspectives in moral psychology, and shows how it can relate to contemporary social issues from abortion to premarital sex to human rights. Also featuring a chapter on applied contexts, using the theory of ethics positions to gain insights into the moral choices and actions of individuals, groups, and organizations in educational, research, political, medical, and business settings, the book offers answers that apply across individuals, communities, and cultures. Investigating the relationship between people’s personal moral philosophies and their ethical thoughts, emotions, and actions, this is fascinating reading for students and academics from psychology and philosophy and anyone interested in morality and ethics.
Author: Adam Smith (économiste)
Publisher:
Published: 1812
Total Pages: 636
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Marcus Arvan
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-01-29
Total Pages: 123
ISBN-13: 1000751511
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPhilosophers across many traditions have long theorized about the relationship between prudence and morality. Few clear answers have emerged, however, in large part because of the inherently speculative nature of traditional philosophical methods. This book aims to forge a bold new path forward, outlining a theory of prudence and morality that unifies a wide variety of findings in neuroscience with philosophically sophisticated normative theorizing. The author summarizes the emerging behavioral neuroscience of prudence and morality, showing how human moral and prudential cognition and motivation are known to involve over a dozen brain regions and capacities. He then outlines a detailed philosophical theory of prudence and morality based on neuroscience and lived human experience. The result demonstrates how this theory coheres with and explains the behavioral neuroscience, showing how each brain region and capacity interact to give rise to prudential and moral behavior. Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory will be of interest to philosophers and psychologists working in moral psychology, neuroethics, and decision theory. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Author: Melanie Killen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1999-10-13
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13: 9780521665865
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis collection highlights research on morality in human development.
Author: Todd K. Shackelford
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2015-08-10
Total Pages: 327
ISBN-13: 3319196715
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis interdisciplinary collection presents novel theories, includes provocative re-workings of longstanding arguments, and offers a healthy cross-pollination of ideas to the morality literature. Structures, functions, and content of morality are reconsidered as cultural, religious, and political components are added to the standard biological/environmental mix. Innovative concepts such as the Periodic Table of Ethics and evidence for morality in non-human species illuminate areas for further discussion and research. And some of the book’s contributors question premises we hold dear, such as morality as a product of reason, the existence of moral truths, and the motto “life is good.” Highlights of the coverage: The tripartite theory of Machiavellian morality: judgment, influence, and conscience as distinct moral adaptations. Prosocial morality from a biological, cultural, and developmental perspective. The containment problem and the evolutionary debunking of morality. A comparative perspective on the evolution of moral behavior. A moral guide to depravity: religiously-motivated violence and sexual selection. Game theory and the strategic logic of moral intuitions. The Evolution of Morality makes a stimulating supplementary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in the evolutionary sciences, particularly in psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, religious studies, and philosophy
