The Evolution of Moral Progress PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Evolution of Moral Progress PDF full book. Access full book title The Evolution of Moral Progress by Allen Buchanan. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Allen Buchanan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190868430
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Get Book Here
Book Description
In The Evolution of Moral Progress, Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell resurrect the project of explaining moral progress. They avoid the errors of earlier attempts by drawing on a wide range of disciplines including moral and political philosophy, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, history, and sociology. Their focus is on one especially important type of moral progress: gains in inclusivity. They develop a framework to explain progress in inclusivity to also illuminate moral regression--the return to exclusivist and "tribalistic" moral beliefs and attitudes. Buchanan and Powell argue those tribalistic moral responses are not hard-wired by evolution in human nature. Rather, human beings have an evolved "adaptively plastic" capacity for both inclusion and exclusion, depending on environmental conditions. Moral progress in the dimension of inclusivity is possible, but only to the extent that human beings can create environments conducive to extending moral standing to all human beings and even to some animals. Buchanan and Powell take biological evolution seriously, but with a critical eye, while simultaneously recognizing the crucial role of culture in creating environments in which moral progress can occur. The book avoids both biological and cultural determinism. Unlike earlier theories of moral progress, their theory provides a naturalistic account that is grounded in the best empirical work, and unlike earlier theories it does not present moral progress as inevitable or as occurring in definite stages; but rather it recognizes the highly contingent and fragile character of moral improvement.
Author: Allen Buchanan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190868430
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Get Book Here
Book Description
In The Evolution of Moral Progress, Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell resurrect the project of explaining moral progress. They avoid the errors of earlier attempts by drawing on a wide range of disciplines including moral and political philosophy, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, history, and sociology. Their focus is on one especially important type of moral progress: gains in inclusivity. They develop a framework to explain progress in inclusivity to also illuminate moral regression--the return to exclusivist and "tribalistic" moral beliefs and attitudes. Buchanan and Powell argue those tribalistic moral responses are not hard-wired by evolution in human nature. Rather, human beings have an evolved "adaptively plastic" capacity for both inclusion and exclusion, depending on environmental conditions. Moral progress in the dimension of inclusivity is possible, but only to the extent that human beings can create environments conducive to extending moral standing to all human beings and even to some animals. Buchanan and Powell take biological evolution seriously, but with a critical eye, while simultaneously recognizing the crucial role of culture in creating environments in which moral progress can occur. The book avoids both biological and cultural determinism. Unlike earlier theories of moral progress, their theory provides a naturalistic account that is grounded in the best empirical work, and unlike earlier theories it does not present moral progress as inevitable or as occurring in definite stages; but rather it recognizes the highly contingent and fragile character of moral improvement.
Author: Pandey
Publisher: Concept Publishing Company
ISBN: 9788180697050
Category : Human evolution
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Sara Stinson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470179643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 887
Get Book Here
Book Description
This comprehensive introduction to the field of human biology covers all the major areas of the field: genetic variation, variation related to climate, infectious and non-infectious diseases, aging, growth, nutrition, and demography. Written by four expert authors working in close collaboration, this second edition has been thoroughly updated to provide undergraduate and graduate students with two new chapters: one on race and culture and their ties to human biology, and the other a concluding summary chapter highlighting the integration and intersection of the topics covered in the book.
Author: Gillian Crane-Kramer
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781516546145
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Introduction to Human Evolution has been developed in direct response to student feedback on the standard textbook approach to the subject matter. Concise and filled with engaging images, the book makes evolution, primatology, and human variation appealing to today's learners. The book introduces readers to issues surrounding the theory of evolution, sheds light on questions about what evolution is or isn't, and discusses how we know what we think we do about it. Readers will learn about early hominins, the Australopithecines, and the genus Homo. The book also addresses population history and genetics, adaptation and acclimatization, and anatomically modern humans. It concludes with the big question--where will we go from here? Each chapter is a balance of text, exercises, graphs, and visuals. The exercise worksheets support independent learning, and answers are provided to allow for self-assessment. Introduction to Human Evolution is an excellent choice for courses in anthropology and biology. It is accessible to non-majors, but can also be used in introductory courses for science majors.
Author: Jonathan Marks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520961196
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Get Book Here
Book Description
What do we think about when we think about human evolution? With his characteristic wit and wisdom, anthropologist Jonathan Marks explores our scientific narrative of human origins—the study of evolution—and examines its cultural elements and theoretical foundations. In the process, he situates human evolution within a general anthropological framework and presents it as a special case of kinship and mythology. Tales of the Ex-Apes argues that human evolution has incorporated the emergence of social relations and cultural histories that are unprecedented in the apes and thus cannot be reduced to purely biological properties and processes. Marks shows that human evolution has involved the transformation from biological to biocultural evolution. Over tens of thousands of years, new social roles—notably spouse, father, in-laws, and grandparents—have co-evolved with new technologies and symbolic meanings to produce the human species, in the absence of significant biological evolution. We are biocultural creatures, Marks argues, fully comprehensible by recourse to neither our real ape ancestry nor our imaginary cultureless biology.
Author: Alan H. Goodman
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472066063
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Get Book Here
Book Description
DIVShows the potential for a reintegrated, critical, and politically relevant biocultural anthropology /div
Author: Nancy Easterlin
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421405040
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Get Book Here
Book Description
Combining cognitive and evolutionary research with traditional humanist methods, Nancy Easterlin demonstrates how a biocultural perspective in theory and criticism opens up new possibilities for literary interpretation. Easterlin maintains that the practice of literary interpretation is still of central intellectual and social value. Taking an open yet judicious approach, she argues, however, that literary interpretation stands to gain dramatically from a fair-minded and creative application of cognitive and evolutionary research. This work does just that, expounding a biocultural method that charts a middle course between overly reductive approaches to literature and traditionalists who see the sciences as a threat to the humanities. Easterlin develops her biocultural method by comparing it to four major subfields within literary studies: new historicism, ecocriticism, cognitive approaches, and evolutionary approaches. After a thorough review of each subfield, she reconsiders them in light of relevant research in cognitive and evolutionary psychology and provides a textual analysis of literary works from the romantic era to the present, including William Wordsworth’s “Simon Lee” and the Lucy poems, Mary Robinson’s “Old Barnard,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode,” D. H. Lawrence’s The Fox, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, and Raymond Carver’s “I Could See the Smallest Things.” A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation offers a fresh and reasoned approach to literary studies that at once preserves the central importance that interpretation plays in the humanities and embraces the exciting developments of the cognitive sciences.
Author: W.H. Thorpe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351362399
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 535
Get Book Here
Book Description
Our views on human nature are fundamental to the whole development, indeed the whole future, of human society. Originally published in 1974, Professor Thorpe believed that this was one of the most important and significant topics to which a biologist can address himself, and in this book he attempts a synthetic view of the nature of man and animal based on the five disciplines of physiology, ethology, genetics, psychology and philosophy. In a masterly survey of the natural order he shows the animal world as part of, yet distinct from, the inanimate world. He then treats aspects of the animal world which approach the human world in behaviour and capabilities, examining simple organisms, communications in vertebrates and invertebrates, innate behaviour versus acquired behaviour, and animal perception. In the second part of the book he deals with those aspects of human nature for which there is no analogy and which constitute man’s uniqueness – his consciousness of his past, his awareness of his future and his desire to understand the meaning of his existence. The primary facts which demonstrate the importance of this book arise from the ever-growing power of man over his environment and his apparent inability to foresee and cope with the dangers of uncontrolled population growth on the one hand and the wildly irrational waste and degradation of the natural resources of the world on the other. Professor Thorpe believes that an immense responsibility lies with literate men of good will, particularly scientists, to convince man that he is the spearhead and custodian of a stupendous evolutionary process. Animal Nature and Human Nature integrates scientific fact with sound theological thought in an attempt to fulfil, in a manner previously impossible Pascal’s injunction that: ‘It is dangerous to show man too clearly how much he resembles the beast without at the same time showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to allow him too clear a vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is very profitable to show him both.’
Author: Tina Moffat
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845459814
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Get Book Here
Book Description
There are not many areas that are more rooted in both the biological and social-cultural aspects of humankind than diet and nutrition. Throughout human history nutrition has been shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces, and in turn, access to food and nutrition has altered the course and direction of human societies. Using a biocultural approach, the contributors to this volume investigate the ways in which food is both an essential resource fundamental to human health and an expression of human culture and society. The chapters deal with aspects of diet and human nutrition through space and time and span prehistoric, historic, and contemporary societies spread over various geographical regions, including Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia to highlight how biology and culture are inextricably linked.
Author: Courtney L. Meehan
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826357016
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collection is the first to specifically address our current understanding of the evolution of human childhood, which in turn significantly affects our interpretations of the evolution of family formation, social organization, cultural transmission, cognition, ontogeny, and the physical and socioemotional needs of children. Moreover, the importance of studying the evolution of childhood has begun to extend beyond academic modeling and into real-world applications for maternal and child health and well-being in contemporary populations around the world. Combined, the chapters show that what we call childhood is culturally variable yet biologically based and has been critical to the evolutionary success of our species; the significance of integrating childhood into models of human life history and evolution cannot be overstated. This volume further demonstrates the benefits of interdisciplinary investigation and is sure to spur further interest in the field.
