Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality

Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality PDF Author: Howard Margolis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226505243
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Why do we volunteer time? Why do we contribute money? Why, even, do we vote, if the effect of a single vote is negligible? Rationality-based microeconomic models are hard-pressed to explain such social behavior, but Howard Margolis proposes a solution. He suggests that within each person there are two selves, one selfish and the other group-oriented, and that the individual follows a Darwinian rule for allocating resources between those two selves. "Howard Margolis's intriguing ideas . . . provide an alternative to the crude models of rational choice that have dominated economics and political science for too long."—Times Literary Supplement

Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality

Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality PDF Author: Howard Margolis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226505243
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why do we volunteer time? Why do we contribute money? Why, even, do we vote, if the effect of a single vote is negligible? Rationality-based microeconomic models are hard-pressed to explain such social behavior, but Howard Margolis proposes a solution. He suggests that within each person there are two selves, one selfish and the other group-oriented, and that the individual follows a Darwinian rule for allocating resources between those two selves. "Howard Margolis's intriguing ideas . . . provide an alternative to the crude models of rational choice that have dominated economics and political science for too long."—Times Literary Supplement

The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness PDF Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101137223
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
A collection of essays that sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's controversial, groundbreaking philosophy. Since their initial publication, Rand's fictional works—Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged—have had a major impact on the intellectual scene. The underlying theme of her famous novels is her philosophy, a new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that offers a robust challenge to altruist-collectivist thought. Known as Objectivism, her divisive philosophy holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature. In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness. More Than 1 Million Copies Sold!

Does Altruism Exist?

Does Altruism Exist? PDF Author: David Sloan Wilson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300189494
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.

In Defense of Selfishness

In Defense of Selfishness PDF Author: Peter Schwartz
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466878908
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
From childhood, we're taught one central, non-controversial idea about morality: self-sacrifice is a virtue. It is universally accepted that serving the needs of others, rather than our own, is the essence of morality. To be ethical—it is believed—is to be altruistic. Questioning this belief is regarded as tantamount to questioning the self-evident. Here, Peter Schwartz questions it. In Defense of Selfishness refutes widespread misconceptions about the meaning of selfishness and of altruism. Basing his arguments on Ayn Rand's ethics of rational self-interest, Schwartz demonstrates that genuine selfishness is not exemplified by the brutal plundering of an Attila the Hun or the conniving duplicity of a Bernard Madoff. To the contrary, such people are acting against their actual, long-range interests. The truly selfish individual is committed to moral principles and lives an honest, productive, self-respecting life. He does not feed parasitically off other people. Instead, he renounces the unearned, and deals with others—in both the material and spiritual realms—by offering value for value, to mutual benefit. The selfish individual, Schwartz maintains, lives by reason, not force. He lives by production and trade, not by theft and fraud. He disavows the mindlessness of the do-whatever-you-feel-like emotionalist, and upholds rationality as his primary virtue. He takes pride in his achievements, and does not sacrifice himself to others—nor does he sacrifice others to himself. According to the code of altruism, however, you must embrace self-sacrifice. You must subordinate yourself to others. Altruism calls, not for cooperation and benevolence, but for servitude. It demands that you surrender your interests to the needs of others, that you regard serving others as the moral justification of your existence, that you be willing to suffer so that a non-you might benefit. To this, Schwartz asks simply: Why? Why should the fact that you have achieved any success make you indebted to those who haven't? Why does the fact that someone needs your money create a moral entitlement to it, while the fact that you've earned it, doesn't? Using vivid, real-life examples, In Defense of Selfishness illustrates the iniquity of requiring one man to serve the needs of another. This provocative book challenges readers to re-examine the standard by which they decide what is morally right or wrong.

The Ayn Rand Lexicon

The Ayn Rand Lexicon PDF Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110113724X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
A prolific writer, bestselling novelist, and world-renowned philosopher, Ayn Rand defined a full system of thought--from epistemology to aesthetics. Her writing is so extensive and the range of issues she covers so enormous that those interested in finding her discussions of a given topic may have to search through many sources to locate the relevant passage. The Ayn Rand Lexicon brings together all the key ideas of her philosophy of Objectivism. Begun under Rand's supervision, this unique volume is an invaluable guide to her philosophy or reason, self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism--the philosophy so brilliantly dramatized in her novels The Fountainhead, We the Living, and Anthem.

Ethics, Rationality, and Economic Behaviour

Ethics, Rationality, and Economic Behaviour PDF Author: Francesco Farina
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198289814
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The connection between economics and ethics is as old as economics itself, and central to both disciplines. The essays included in the present volume provide an analysis of the connections between ethics and economics as viewed from several different - oft

The Heart of Altruism

The Heart of Altruism PDF Author: Kristen Renwick Monroe
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691058474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Is all human behavior based on self-interest? Many social and biological theories would argue so, but such a perspective does not explain the many truly heroic acts committed by people willing to risk their lives to help others. Kristen Monroe boldly lays the groundwork for a social theory toward altruism by examining the experiences described by altruists themselves.

Paradigms and Barriers

Paradigms and Barriers PDF Author: Howard Margolis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226505220
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In Paradigms and Barriers Howard Margolis offers an innovative interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn's landmark idea of "paradigm shifts," applying insights from cognitive psychology to the history and philosophy of science. Building upon the arguments in his acclaimed Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition, Margolis suggests that the breaking down of particular habits of mind—of critical "barriers"—is key to understanding the processes through which one model or concept is supplanted by another. Margolis focuses on those revolutionary paradigm shifts— such as the switch from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican worldview—where challenges to entrenched habits of mind are marked by incomprehension or indifference to a new paradigm. Margolis argues that the critical problem for a revolutionary shift in thinking lies in the robustness of the habits of mind that reject the new ideas, relative to the habits of mind that accept the new ideas. Margolis applies his theory to famous cases in the history of science, offering detailed explanations for the transition from Ptolemaic to cosmological astronomy, the emergence of probability, the overthrow of phlogiston, and the emergence of the central role of experiment in the seventeenth century. He in turn uses these historical examples to address larger issues, especially the nature of belief formation and contemporary debates about the nature of science and the evolution of scientific ideas. Howard Margolis is a professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies and in the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality and Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

The End of Rationality and Selfishness

The End of Rationality and Selfishness PDF Author: Rui-Wu Wang
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811997527
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This book reviews the antinomy of rationality and selfishness raised from egoism, though rationality and selfishness are understood as basic evolutionary dynamics of humans and other organisms in both classical economics and evolutionary biology. Based on the research and a comparison with human’s social cooperative behavior, the author presents his belief that the social cooperative system, in its essence, cooperation and conflict are of uncertain stochasticity resulting from their intrinsic asymmetric interaction between cooperative partners. The book then discusses limitations of Newton’s methodology of monism in both biology and social science. The understanding of the asymmetric and uncertain characteristics found in cooperation system needs perspective of quantum physics of pluralism. At the end of the book, the author undertakes a review of consistency of Newtonian and monism philosophy and the links between quantum physics and pluralism philosophy.

Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality

Selfishness, Altruism, and Rationality PDF Author: Howard Margolis
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521240680
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description