Moral Origins

Author : Christopher Boehm
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2012-05-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780465029198

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Moral Origins by Christopher Boehm Pdf

From the age of Darwin to the present day, biologists have been grappling with the origins of our moral sense. Why, if the human instinct to survive and reproduce is "selfish," do people engage in self-sacrifice, and even develop ideas like virtue and shame to justify that altruism? Many theories have been put forth, some emphasizing the role of nepotism, others emphasizing the advantages of reciprocation or group selection effects. But evolutionary anthropologist Christopher Boehm finds existing explanations lacking, and in Moral Origins, he offers an elegant new theory. Tracing the development of altruism and group social control over 6 million years, Boehm argues that our moral sense is a sophisticated defense mechanism that enables individuals to survive and thrive in groups. One of the biggest risks of group living is the possibility of being punished for our misdeeds by those around us. Bullies, thieves, free-riders, and especially psychopaths -- those who make it difficult for others to go about their lives -- are the most likely to suffer this fate. Getting by requires getting along, and this social type of selection, Boehm shows, singles out altruists for survival. This selection pressure has been unique in shaping human nature, and it bred the first stirrings of conscience in the human species. Ultimately, it led to the fully developed sense of virtue and shame that we know today.A groundbreaking exploration of the evolution of human generosity and cooperation, Moral Origins offers profound insight into humanity's moral past -- and how it might shape our moral future.

Author : Patricia Churchland
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2019-06-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781324000891

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Conscience by Patricia Churchland Pdf

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.

Author : Nicolas Baumard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2016-03-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190210236

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The Origins of Fairness by Nicolas Baumard Pdf

In order to describe the logic of morality, "contractualist" philosophers have studied how individuals behave when they choose to follow their moral intuitions. These individuals, contractualists note, often act as if they have bargained and thus reached an agreement with others about how to distribute the benefits and burdens of mutual cooperation. Using this observation, such philosophers argue that the purpose of morality is to maximize the benefits of human interaction. The resulting "contract" analogy is both insightful and puzzling. On one hand, it captures the pattern of moral intuitions, thus answering questions about human cooperation: why do humans cooperate? Why should the distribution of benefits be proportionate to each person's contribution? Why should the punishment be proportionate to the crime? Why should the rights be proportionate to the duties? On the other hand, the analogy provides a mere as-if explanation for human cooperation, saying that cooperation is "as if" people have passed a contract-but since they didn't, why should it be so? To evolutionary thinkers, the puzzle of the missing contract is immediately reminiscent of the puzzle of the missing "designer" of life-forms, a puzzle that Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially resolved. Evolutionary and contractualist theory originally intersected at the work of philosophers John Rawls and David Gauthier, who argued that moral judgments are based on a sense of fairness that has been naturally selected. In this book, Nicolas Baumard further explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. In this environment, Baumard suggests, the best strategy was to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation in a fair way, so that those who offered less than others were left out of cooperation while those who offered more were exploited by their partners. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard ultimately accounts for the specific structure of human morality.

Author : David Konstan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2010-08-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9781139490511

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Before Forgiveness by David Konstan Pdf

In this book, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome. Even more startlingly, it is not fully present in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the New Testament or in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. It would still be centuries - many centuries - before the idea of interpersonal forgiveness, with its accompanying ideas of apology, remorse, and a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoer, would emerge. For all its vast importance today in religion, law, politics and psychotherapy, interpersonal forgiveness is a creation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the Christian concept of divine forgiveness was fully secularized. Forgiveness was God's province and it took a revolution in thought to bring it to earth and make it a human trait.

Author : Paul Bloom
Publisher : Crown
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013-11-12
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780307886866

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Just Babies by Paul Bloom Pdf

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice. Still, this innate morality is limited, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Bloom explores how we have come to surpass these limitations. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral feelings about sex, politics, religion, and race. In his analysis of the morality of children and adults, Bloom rejects the fashionable view that our moral decisions are driven mainly by gut feelings and unconscious biases. Just as reason has driven our great scientific discoveries, he argues, it is reason and deliberation that makes possible our moral discoveries, such as the wrongness of slavery. Ultimately, it is through our imagination, our compassion, and our uniquely human capacity for rational thought that we can transcend the primitive sense of morality we were born with, becoming more than just babies. Paul Bloom has a gift for bringing abstract ideas to life, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Just Babies offers a radical new perspective on our moral lives.

Author : Donald Black
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2011-04-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0199831602

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Moral Time by Donald Black Pdf

Conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable, but people generally dislike it and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible. So why do clashes of right and wrong occur? And why are some more serious than others? In Moral Time, sociologist Donald Black presents a new theory of conflict that provides answers to these and many other questions. The heart of the theory is a completely new concept of social time. Black claims that the root cause of conflict is the movement of social time, including relational, vertical, and cultural time--changes in intimacy, inequality, and diversity. The theory of moral time reveals the causes of conflict in all human relationships, from marital and other close relationships to those between strangers, ethnic groups, and entire societies. Moreover, the theory explains the origins and clash of right and wrong not only in modern societies but across the world and across history, from conflict concerning sexual behavior such as rape, adultery, and homosexuality, to bad manners and dislike in everyday life, theft and other crime, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, witchcraft accusations, warfare, heresy, obscenity, creativity, and insanity. Black concludes by explaining the evolution of conflict and morality across human history, from the tribal to the modern age. He also provides surprising insights into the postmodern emergence of the right to happiness and the expanding rights of humans and non-humans across the world. Moral Time offers an incisive, powerful, and radically new understanding of human conflict--a fundamental and inescapable feature of social life.

Author : Tao Jiang
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 537 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780197603475

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Origins of Moral-political Philosophy in Early China by Tao Jiang Pdf

This book offers a new narrative and interpretative framework about the origins of moral-political philosophy that tracks how the three core normative values, humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, were formulated, reformulated, and contested by early Chinese philosophers in their effort to negotiate the relationship among three distinct domains, the personal, the familial, and the political. Such efforts took place as those thinkers were reimagining a new moral-political order, debating its guiding norms, and exploring possible sources within the context of an evolving understanding of He

Author : Peter H. Sedgwick
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2018-11-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004384927

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The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology by Peter H. Sedgwick Pdf

The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology shows how Anglican moral theology draws on Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, Luther and Calvin. Perkins, Hooker, Sanderson and Taylor express its flowering from 1590 to 1670.

Author : Richard Sorabji
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2018-05-31
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781501717888

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Animal Minds and Human Morals by Richard Sorabji Pdf

"They don't have syntax, so we can eat them." According to Richard Sorabji, this conclusion attributed to the Stoic philosophers was based on Aristotle's argument that animals lack reason. In his fascinating, deeply learned book, Sorabji traces the roots of our thinking about animals back to Aristotelian and Stoic beliefs. Charting a recurrent theme in ancient philosophy of mind, he shows that today's controversies about animal rights represent only the most recent chapter in millennia-old debates. 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 nature of concepts; how perceptions differ from beliefs; how memory, intention, and emotion relate to reason; and to what extent speech, skills, and inference can serve as proofs of reason. Focusing on the significance of ritual sacrifice and the eating of meat, he explores religious contexts of the treatment of animals in ancient Greece and in medieval Western Christendom. He also looks closely at the contemporary defenses of animal rights offered by Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Mary Midgley. Animal Minds and Human Morals sheds new light on traditional arguments surrounding the status of animals while pointing beyond them to current moral dilemmas. It will be crucial reading for scholars and students in the fields of ancient philosophy, ethics, history of philosophy, classics, and medieval studies, and for everyone seriously concerned about our relationship with other species. A Townsend Lecture Book

Author : Dennis Krebs
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2011-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199778232

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The Origins of Morality by Dennis Krebs Pdf

Why do people behave altruistically in some circumstances, but not in others? In order to account fully for morality, Dennis Krebs departs from the dominant contemporary psychological approach to morality, which suggests that children acquire morals through socialization and cultural indoctrination. Rather, social learning and cognitive-developmental accounts of morality can be subsumed and refined in an evolutionary framework. Relying on evolutionary theory, Krebs explains how notions of morality originated in the first place. He updates Darwin's early ideas about how dispositions to obey authority, to control antisocial urges, and to behave in altruistic and cooperative ways originated and evolved, then goes on to update Darwin's account of how humans acquired a moral sense.

Author : Frans B. M. DE WAAL,F. B. M. de Waal
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674033177

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Good Natured by Frans B. M. DE WAAL,F. B. M. de Waal Pdf

To observe a dog's guilty look. to witness a gorilla's self-sacrifice for a wounded mate, to watch an elephant herd's communal effort on behalf of a stranded calf--to catch animals in certain acts is to wonder what moves them. Might there he a code of ethics in the animal kingdom? Must an animal be human to he humane? In this provocative book, a renowned scientist takes on those who have declared ethics uniquely human Making a compelling case for a morality grounded in biology, he shows how ethical behavior is as much a matter of evolution as any other trait, in humans and animals alike. World famous for his brilliant descriptions of Machiavellian power plays among chimpanzees-the nastier side of animal life--Frans de Waal here contends that animals have a nice side as well. Making his case through vivid anecdotes drawn from his work with apes and monkeys and holstered by the intriguing, voluminous data from his and others' ongoing research, de Waal shows us that many of the building blocks of morality are natural: they can he observed in other animals. Through his eyes, we see how not just primates but all kinds of animals, from marine mammals to dogs, respond to social rules, help each other, share food, resolve conflict to mutual satisfaction, even develop a crude sense of justice and fairness. Natural selection may be harsh, but it has produced highly successful species that survive through cooperation and mutual assistance. De Waal identifies this paradox as the key to an evolutionary account of morality, and demonstrates that human morality could never have developed without the foundation of fellow feeling our species shares with other animals. As his work makes clear, a morality grounded in biology leads to an entirely different conception of what it means to he human--and humane.

Author : Adam Smith (économiste)
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 636 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 1812
Category : Electronic
ISBN : BCUL:1092833964

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The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (économiste) Pdf

Author : F. Fejes
Publisher : Springer
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780230614680

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Gay Rights and Moral Panic by F. Fejes Pdf

Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn.

Author : Ramin Jahanbegloo
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 100 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2018-10-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781498567640

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The Revolution of Values by Ramin Jahanbegloo Pdf

Ramin Jahanbegloo elucidates the central concepts in the moral and political thought of Martin Luther King Jr., bringing out the subtlety, potency, and universal importance of his concepts of Agape love and non-violence, the Beloved Community and revolution of values, and his view of the relation between justice and compassion in politics.

Author : Mary Wollstonecraft
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 550 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1794
Category : France
ISBN : OSU:32435017640152

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An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution by Mary Wollstonecraft Pdf