Psychology as a Moral Science

Psychology as a Moral Science PDF Author: Svend Brinkmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441970673
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying from the discipline’s ethical foundations, Psychology as a Moral Science argues that psychological phenomena are inherently moral, and that psychology, as prescriptive and interventive practice, reflects specific moral principles. The book cites normative moral standards, as far back as Aristotle, that give human thoughts, feelings, and actions meaning, and posits psychology as one of the critical methods of organizing normative values in society; at the same time it carefully notes the discipline’s history of being sidetracked by overemphasis on theoretical constructs and physical causes—what the author terms “the psychologizing of morality.” This synthesis of ideas brings an essential unity to what can sometimes appear as a fragmented area of inquiry at odds with itself. The book’s “interpretive-pragmatic approach”: • Revisits core psychological concepts as supporting normative value systems. • Traces how psychology has shaped society’s view of morality. • Confronts the “naturalistic fallacy” in contemporary psychology. • Explains why moral science need not be separated from social science. • Addresses challenges and critiques to the author’s work from both formalist and relativist theories of morality. With its bold call to reason, Psychology as a Moral Science contains enough controversial ideas to spark great interest among researchers and scholars in psychology and the philosophy of science.

Psychology as a Moral Science

Psychology as a Moral Science PDF Author: Svend Brinkmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441970673
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying from the discipline’s ethical foundations, Psychology as a Moral Science argues that psychological phenomena are inherently moral, and that psychology, as prescriptive and interventive practice, reflects specific moral principles. The book cites normative moral standards, as far back as Aristotle, that give human thoughts, feelings, and actions meaning, and posits psychology as one of the critical methods of organizing normative values in society; at the same time it carefully notes the discipline’s history of being sidetracked by overemphasis on theoretical constructs and physical causes—what the author terms “the psychologizing of morality.” This synthesis of ideas brings an essential unity to what can sometimes appear as a fragmented area of inquiry at odds with itself. The book’s “interpretive-pragmatic approach”: • Revisits core psychological concepts as supporting normative value systems. • Traces how psychology has shaped society’s view of morality. • Confronts the “naturalistic fallacy” in contemporary psychology. • Explains why moral science need not be separated from social science. • Addresses challenges and critiques to the author’s work from both formalist and relativist theories of morality. With its bold call to reason, Psychology as a Moral Science contains enough controversial ideas to spark great interest among researchers and scholars in psychology and the philosophy of science.

Morality for Humans

Morality for Humans PDF Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022611354X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
“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.

New Perspectives on Moral Change

New Perspectives on Moral Change PDF Author: Cecilie Eriksen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800735987
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The world we live in is constantly changing. Climate change, transforming gender conceptions, emerging issues of food consumption, novel forms of family life and technological developments are altering central areas of our forms of life. This raises questions of how to cope with and understand the moral changes implicit in such alterations. This volume is the first to address moral change as such. It brings together anthropologists and philosophers to discuss how to study and theorize the change of norms, concepts, emotions, moral frameworks and forms of personhood.

Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics

Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics PDF Author: G. Weisz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792305668
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Medical or hio- ethics has in recent years been a growth industry. Journals, Centers and Associations devoted to the subject proliferate. Medical schools seem increasingly to be filling rare positions in the humanities and social sciences with ethicists. Hardly a day passes without some media scrutiny of one or another ethical dilemma resulting from our new-found ability to transform the natural conditions of life. Although bioethics is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field, it has not attracted the collaboration of many social scientists. In fact, social scientists who specialize in the study of medicine have in many cases watched its development with a certain ambivalence. No one disputes the significance and often the painfulness of the issues and choices being addressed. But there is something about the way these issues are usually handled which seems somehow inappropri ate if not wrong-headed to one trained in a discipline like sociology or history. In their analyses of complex situations, ethicists often appear grandly oblivious to the social and cultural context in which these occur, and indeed to empirical referents of any sort. Nor do they seem very conscious of the cultural specificity of many of the values and procedures they utilize when making ethical judg ments. The unease felt by many in the social sciences was given articulate expression in a paper by Renee Fox and Judith Swazey which appeared in 1984.

New Perspectives on Moral Development

New Perspectives on Moral Development PDF Author: Charles C. Helwig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317283953
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This volume presents a selection of some of the most exciting new perspectives on moral development that have emerged over the last decade and have transformed our understanding of the field. The contributors to this book cut across traditional boundaries to provide an innovative and integrative approach to fundamental questions dealing with the nature and acquisition of morality. In addressing these questions, the chapters draw on new work on the origins of morality in infancy and the early years, comparative approaches examining morality in primates, new perspectives on moral emotions such as guilt and empathy, and new perspectives on the emerging moral self in childhood and moral identity in adolescence. The book also examines the roles of parenting and culture in children’s and adolescents’ moral development. Each chapter is framed in theory and methodology and provides illustrative examples of new research to address important questions in the field. This book is essential reading for researchers and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying moral development and developmental psychology. It will also be of interest to academics and professionals in related fields such as education and public policy.

Making Moral Judgments

Making Moral Judgments PDF Author: Donelson Forsyth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000710904
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This 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.

The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape PDF Author: Sam Harris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143917122X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

Science and Moral Imagination

Science and Moral Imagination PDF Author: Matthew J. Brown
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987678
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
The idea that science is or should be value-free, and that values are or should be formed independently of science, has been under fire by philosophers of science for decades. Science and Moral Imagination directly challenges the idea that science and values cannot and should not influence each other. Matthew J. Brown argues that science and values mutually influence and implicate one another, that the influence of values on science is pervasive and must be responsibly managed, and that science can and should have an influence on our values. This interplay, he explains, must be guided by accounts of scientific inquiry and value judgment that are sensitive to the complexities of their interactions. Brown presents scientific inquiry and value judgment as types of problem-solving practices and provides a new framework for thinking about how we might ethically evaluate episodes and decisions in science, while offering guidance for scientific practitioners and institutions about how they can incorporate value judgments into their work. His framework, dubbed “the ideal of moral imagination,” emphasizes the role of imagination in value judgment and the positive role that value judgment plays in science.

The Moral Status of Persons

The Moral Status of Persons PDF Author: Gerhold K. Becker
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042012011
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The advances in molecular biology and genetics, medicine and neurosciences, in ethology and environmental studies have put the concept of the person firmly on the philosophical agenda. Whereas earlier times seemed to have a clear understanding about the moral implications of personhood and its boundaries, today there is little consensus on such matters. Whether a patient in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease is still a person, or whether a human embryo is already a person are highly contentious issues. This book tackles the issue of personhood and its moral implications head-on. The thirteen essays are representative of the major strands in the current bioethical debate and offer new insights into humanity's moral standing, its foundations, and its implications for social interaction. While most of the essays approach the issue by drawing on the rich intellectual tradition of the West, others offer a cross-cultural perspective and make available for ethical consideration the philosophical resources and the wisdom of the East. The contributors to this book are highly recognized philosophers, ethicists, theologians, and professionals in health care and medicine from East Asia (China, Japan), Europe, and North America. The first part of the book probes the foundations of personhood. Examining critically the main theories on personhood in contemporary philosophy, the authors offer alternatives that better respond to contemporary challenges and their implications for bioethics. The focus of the second part is firmly on the Confucian relational concept of the person and on the social constitution of personhood in traditional Japanese culture. While the essays challenge the individualistic features of personhood in the Western tradition, they lay the foundations for a richer concept that holds great promise for the resolution of moral dilemmas in modern medicine and health care. The third part of the book enters into a dialogue with the Christian tradition and draws on its spiritual heritage in the search for answers to the contemporary challenges to human dignity and value. Its focus is on the Catholic social thought and Lutheran theology. The fourth part addresses the moral status of persons in view of specific issues such as the effects of brain injury, gene therapy, and human cloning on personhood. It extends the scope of research beyond human beings and inquires also into the moral status of animals.

Moral Change

Moral Change PDF Author: Cecilie Eriksen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030610373
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
How does moral change happen? What leads to the overthrow or gradual transformation of moral beliefs, ideals, and values? Change is one of the most striking features of morality, yet it is poorly understood. In this book, Cecilie Eriksen provides an illuminating map of the dynamics, structure, and normativity of moral change. Through eight narratives inspired by the legal domain and in dialogue with modern moral philosophy, Eriksen discusses moral bias, conflict, progress, and revolutions. She develops a context-sensitive understanding of ethics and shows how we can harvest a knowledge of the past that will enable us to build a better future.