Cultivating Conscience

Cultivating Conscience PDF Author: Lynn Stout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083600X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
How the science of unselfish behavior can promote law, order, and prosperity Contemporary law and public policy often treat human beings as selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards. Yet every day we behave unselfishly—few of us mug the elderly or steal the paper from our neighbor's yard, and many of us go out of our way to help strangers. We nevertheless overlook our own good behavior and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. In this pathbreaking book, acclaimed law and economics scholar Lynn Stout argues that this focus neglects the crucial role our better impulses could play in society. Rather than lean on the power of greed to shape laws and human behavior, Stout contends that we should rely on the force of conscience. Stout makes the compelling case that conscience is neither a rare nor quirky phenomenon, but a vital force woven into our daily lives. Drawing from social psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, Stout demonstrates how social cues—instructions from authorities, ideas about others' selfishness and unselfishness, and beliefs about benefits to others—have a powerful role in triggering unselfish behavior. Stout illustrates how our legal system can use these social cues to craft better laws that encourage more unselfish, ethical behavior in many realms, including politics and business. Stout also shows how our current emphasis on self-interest and incentives may have contributed to the catastrophic political missteps and financial scandals of recent memory by encouraging corrupt and selfish actions, and undermining society's collective moral compass. This book proves that if we care about effective laws and civilized society, the powers of conscience are simply too important for us to ignore.

Cultivating Conscience

Cultivating Conscience PDF Author: Lynn Stout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083600X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book

Book Description
How the science of unselfish behavior can promote law, order, and prosperity Contemporary law and public policy often treat human beings as selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards. Yet every day we behave unselfishly—few of us mug the elderly or steal the paper from our neighbor's yard, and many of us go out of our way to help strangers. We nevertheless overlook our own good behavior and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. In this pathbreaking book, acclaimed law and economics scholar Lynn Stout argues that this focus neglects the crucial role our better impulses could play in society. Rather than lean on the power of greed to shape laws and human behavior, Stout contends that we should rely on the force of conscience. Stout makes the compelling case that conscience is neither a rare nor quirky phenomenon, but a vital force woven into our daily lives. Drawing from social psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, Stout demonstrates how social cues—instructions from authorities, ideas about others' selfishness and unselfishness, and beliefs about benefits to others—have a powerful role in triggering unselfish behavior. Stout illustrates how our legal system can use these social cues to craft better laws that encourage more unselfish, ethical behavior in many realms, including politics and business. Stout also shows how our current emphasis on self-interest and incentives may have contributed to the catastrophic political missteps and financial scandals of recent memory by encouraging corrupt and selfish actions, and undermining society's collective moral compass. This book proves that if we care about effective laws and civilized society, the powers of conscience are simply too important for us to ignore.

Conscience and the Common Good

Conscience and the Common Good PDF Author: Robert K. Vischer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521113776
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Our society's longstanding commitment to the liberty of conscience has become strained by our increasingly muddled understanding of what conscience is and why we value it. Too often we equate conscience with individual autonomy, and so we reflexively favor the individual in any contest against group authority, losing sight of the fact that a vibrant liberty of conscience requires a vibrant marketplace of morally distinct groups. Defending individual autonomy is not the same as defending the liberty of conscience because, although conscience is inescapably personal, it is also inescapably relational. Conscience is formed, articulated, and lived out through relationships, and its viability depends on the law's willingness to protect the associations and venues through which individual consciences can flourish: these are the myriad institutions that make up the space between the person and the state. Conscience and the Common Good reframes the debate about conscience by bringing its relational dimension into focus.

The Credentials of Conscience. A Few Reasons for the Popularity of "Ecce Homo"

The Credentials of Conscience. A Few Reasons for the Popularity of Author: Credentials
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description


Conscience

Conscience PDF Author: Patricia Churchland
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1324000899
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
How do we determine right from wrong? Conscience illuminates the answer through science and philosophy. In her brilliant work Touching a Nerve, Patricia S. Churchland, the distinguished founder of neurophilosophy, drew from scientific research on the brain to understand its philosophical and ethical implications for identity, consciousness, free will, and memory. In Conscience, she explores how moral systems arise from our physical selves in combination with environmental demands. All social groups have ideals for behavior, even though ethics vary among different cultures and among individuals within each culture. In trying to understand why, Churchland brings together an understanding of the influences of nature and nurture. She looks to evolution to elucidate how, from birth, our brains are configured to form bonds, to cooperate, and to care. She shows how children grow up in society to learn, through repetition and rewards, the norms, values, and behavior that their parents embrace. Conscience delves into scientific studies, particularly the fascinating work on twins, to deepen our understanding of whether people have a predisposition to embrace specific ethical stands. Research on psychopaths illuminates the knowledge about those who abide by no moral system and the explanations science gives for these disturbing individuals. Churchland then turns to philosophy—that of Socrates, Aquinas, and contemporary thinkers like Owen Flanagan—to explore why morality is central to all societies, how it is transmitted through the generations, and why different cultures live by different morals. Her unparalleled ability to join ideas rarely put into dialogue brings light to a subject that speaks to the meaning of being human.

Shocking the Conscience

Shocking the Conscience PDF Author: Simeon Booker
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617037893
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
An unforgettable chronicle from a groundbreaking journalist who covered Emmett Till's murder, the Little Rock Nine, and ten US presidents

Integrity and Conscience

Integrity and Conscience PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814788831
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Can individuals believe that they are acting with integrity, yet in disobedience to the dictates of their conscience? Can they retain fidelity to their conscience while ignoring a sense of what integrity requires? Integrity and conscience are often thought to be closely related, perhaps even different aspects of a single impulse. This timely book supports a different and more complicated view. Acting with integrity and obeying one's conscience might be mutually reinforcing in some settings, but in others they can live in varying degrees of mutual tension. Bringing together prominent scholars of legal theory and political philosophy, the volume addresses both classic ruminations on integrity and conscience by Plato, Hume, and Kant as well as more contemporary examinations of professional ethics and the complex relations among politics, law and personal morality.

Conscience and Authority

Conscience and Authority PDF Author: Thomas E. Hill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authority
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description


Screenwriting With a Conscience

Screenwriting With a Conscience PDF Author: Marilyn Beker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135637938
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Screenwriting With a Conscience: Ethics for Screenwriters is for screenwriters who care deeply about what they write; who are aware that movie images matter and can influence audiences; and who want to create meaningful screenplays that make powerful statements while entertaining and winning over audiences. A user-friendly guide to ethical screenwriting, this book makes the case that social responsibility is endemic to public art while it emphatically champions First Amendment rights and condemns censorship. In this dynamic and practical volume, author Marilyn Beker provides methods for self-assessment of values, ideas, and ethical stances, and demonstrates the application of these values to the development of plot, character, and dialogue. Screenwriters are introduced to ethical decision making models and shown--through specific film examples--how they can be utilized in plot and character development. In addition, specific techniques and exercises are supplied to help screenwriters determine the difference between "good" and "evil," to write realistic and compelling characters based on this determination, and to present "messages" and write dialogue powerfully without preaching. This book also puts forth a livable work philosophy for dealing with the ethics of the screenwriting business, and presents a viable personal philosophy for surviving in the screenwriting world. Screenwriting With a Conscience: Ethics for Screenwriters is an indispensible, dynamic guide for the ethics-conscious screenwriter. It is intended for screenwriters at the student and professional level, and is appropriate for beginning to graduate screenwriting courses in film and English programs, and for film courses dealing with Ethics in the Media.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind PDF Author: Julian Jaynes
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547527543
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Popular Conscience

Popular Conscience PDF Author: Muhammad Mahdi Chamseddine
Publisher: Mainstay Foundation
ISBN: 9781943393503
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
In The Tragedy of Karbala in the Popular Conscience, Ayatollah Chamseddine writes: The secret of this revolution is that it immaculately resonates in every heart and soul. Human affection and sentiment embraces the renaissance and revolution of Hussain without any kind of hesitation. Muslims and non-Muslims alike are inspired and moved by his revolution. More particularly, Shia Muslims have dedicated almost every aspect of their lives to his honor. The cultural, social, ethical, and political identity of the Shia Muslim is owed to the revolution and sacrifice of Imam Hussain. When you look back at the history of Islam and all the revolutions that took place, the revolution of Hussain is the only one that lives vibrantly in the hearts and minds of Muslims. It is also the only movement that has found a place in the popular con-science of the people, whereby it enriched them and was enriched by them. It enriched people with its mantras, ideas, ethics, and noble goals. People enriched it with their noble stands in honor of the revolution and their principled outlooks throughout history. His revolution became the "Mother of Revolutions" in the history of Islam.