Mind and Morals

Mind and Morals PDF Author: Larry May
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262631655
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. This cross-disciplinary interchange coincides, not accidentally, with the renewed interest in ethical naturalism. In order to understand the nature and limits of moral reasoning, many new ethical naturalists look to cognitive science for an account of how people actually reason. At the same time, many cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in moral reasoning as a complex form of human cognition that challenges their theoretical models. The result of this collaborative, and often critical, interchange is an exciting intellectual ferment at the frontiers of research into human mentality. Sections and Contributors Ethics Naturalized, Owen Flanagan, Mark L. Johnson, Virginia Held - Moral Judgments, Representations, and Prototypes, Paul M. Churchland, Andy Clark, Peggy DesAutels, Ruth Garrett Millikan - Moral Emotions, Robert M. Gordon, Alvin I. Goldman, John Deigh, Naomi Scheman - Agency and Responsibility James P. Sterba, Susan Khin-Zaw, Helen E. Longino, Michael E. Bratman A Bradford Book

Mind and Morals

Mind and Morals PDF Author: Larry May
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262631655
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. The essays in this anthology deal with the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology. This cross-disciplinary interchange coincides, not accidentally, with the renewed interest in ethical naturalism. In order to understand the nature and limits of moral reasoning, many new ethical naturalists look to cognitive science for an account of how people actually reason. At the same time, many cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in moral reasoning as a complex form of human cognition that challenges their theoretical models. The result of this collaborative, and often critical, interchange is an exciting intellectual ferment at the frontiers of research into human mentality. Sections and Contributors Ethics Naturalized, Owen Flanagan, Mark L. Johnson, Virginia Held - Moral Judgments, Representations, and Prototypes, Paul M. Churchland, Andy Clark, Peggy DesAutels, Ruth Garrett Millikan - Moral Emotions, Robert M. Gordon, Alvin I. Goldman, John Deigh, Naomi Scheman - Agency and Responsibility James P. Sterba, Susan Khin-Zaw, Helen E. Longino, Michael E. Bratman A Bradford Book

Moral Minds

Moral Minds PDF Author: Marc D. Hauser
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061864781
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
A Harvard scientist illuminates the biological basis for human morality in this groundbreaking book. With the diversity of moral attitudes found across cultures around the globe, it is easy to assume that moral perspectives are socially developed—a matter of nurture rather than nature. But in Moral Minds, Marc Hauser presents compelling evidence to the contrary, and offers a revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct. Hauser argues that certain biologically innate moral principles propel us toward judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

Postures of the Mind

Postures of the Mind PDF Author: Annette Baier
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816613273
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Postures of the Mind was first published in 1985. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Annette Baier develops, in these essays, a posture in philosophy of mind and in ethics that grows out of her reading of Hume and the later Wittgenstein, and that challenges several Kantian or analytic articles of faith. She questions the assumption that intellect has authority over all human feelings and traditions; that to recognize order we must recognize universal laws—descriptive or prescriptive; that the essential mental activity is representing; and that mental acts can be analyzed into discrete basic elements, combined according to statable rules of synthesis. In the first group of essays—"Varieties of Mental Postures"—Baier evaluates the positions taken by philosophers ranging from Descartes to Dennett and Davidson. Among her topics are remembering, intending, realizing, caring, representing, changing one's mind, justifying one's actions and feelings, and having conflicting reasons for them. The second group of essays—"Varieties of Moral Postures" - explores the sort of morality we get when all of these capacities become reflective and self-corrective. Some deal with particular moral issues—our treatment of animals, our policies regarding risk to human life, our contractual obligations; others, with more general questions on the role of moral philosophers and the place of moral theory. These essays respond to the theories of Hobbes, Kant, Rawls, and MacIntyre, but Baier's most positive reaction is to David Hume; Postures of the Mind affirms and cultivates his version of a moral reflection that employs feeling and tradition as well as reason.

Animal Minds and Human Morals

Animal Minds and Human Morals PDF Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801482984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Sorabji surveys a vast range of Greek philosophical texts and considers how classical discussions of animals' capacities intersect with central questions, not only in ethics but in the definition of human rationality as well.

The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality PDF Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263254
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Moral 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.

The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind PDF Author: Jonathan Haidt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307455777
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The #1 bestselling author of The Anxious Generation and acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.

Moral Imagination

Moral Imagination PDF Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622323X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.

Rational Rules

Rational Rules PDF Author: Shaun Nichols
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198869150
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Rational Rules argues that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols provides statistical learning accounts of some fundamental aspects of moral development, combining aspects of traditional empiricist and rationalist approaches.

The Emotional Construction of Morals

The Emotional Construction of Morals PDF Author: Jesse Prinz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019928301X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Jesse Prinz presents a bravura argument for highly controversial claims about morality, which go to the heart of our understanding of ourselves. He argues that moral values are based on emotional responses, and that these are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. These two claims support a form of moral relativism.

Second Nature

Second Nature PDF Author: Jonathan Balcombe
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0230613624
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
With vivid stories and entertaining anecdotes, Balcombe gives the human pedestal a strong shake while opening the door into the inner lives of the animals themselves.