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Author : Matt Ridley
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 1997-10-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780140244045
Matt Ridley explores such perplexing conundrums as why, if humans are such egoistical beings, don't they behave as rational fools and forego the benefits of cooperation. He uses the findings of new research to look afresh at "Mankind".
Author : Matt Ridley
Publisher : Viking Adult
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1997
Category : Psychology
ISBN : STANFORD:36105019231724
"Witty and lucid and brimming with provocative conjectures" ("Wall Street Journal"), this fascinating and literate book interprets the latest research in the emerging field of evolutionary psychology to answer an age-old question: Is human nature cooperative or competitive? Vivid examples of animal andhuma n behavior, examine why humans tend generally to cooperate with each other. 13 line drawings.
Author : Christopher Boehm
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2012-05-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780465029198
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 : Stephen Mark Gardiner
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0801489687
"There are grounds for saying that contemporary work in virtue ethics is, if not quite in its theoretical infancy, at least not far out of diapers. And this suggests that we should be gentle and nurturing, allowing it time to flourish before coming to any definitive verdict on its merits.... However, it is hard to deny that modern-day virtue ethics is part of a long, sophisticated and fairly continuous tradition. Not only does the approach have origins almost as ancient as philosophy itself, but its history also includes extensive work by such philosophical luminaries as (at least) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, and (perhaps) Hume and Nietzsche. And this suggests that we should already be in a good position to assess its appeal."--from the Introduction In Virtue Ethics, Old and New, ten philosophers seek to enrich the contemporary understanding and development of virtue ethics through a detailed examination of some key contributions from its past. Their essays demonstrate the continuing relevance of the history of moral philosophy to contemporary debates.
Author : Charles P. Hanson
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 0813917948
Tracing the Constitution's separation of church and state to the need for French assistance in the fight against the British during the Revolutionary War, the author examines the significant break with the traditional, virulent anti- Catholicism of colonial New England Protestants. While some saw the break as a necessary result of shedding the colonial past, the author argues that many saw it as a temporary expedient to be dispensed with as soon as possible. The alliances with France and French Canadians, he says, had the effect of redrawing religious boundaries and disabusing some Americans of their habitual intolerance. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author : Devin Henry,Karen Margrethe Nielsen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2015-05-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781107010369
Explores the extent to which Aristotle's ethical treatises employ the concepts, methods, and practices developed in his 'scientific' works.
Author : Deirdre Nansen
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 637 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2010-03-15
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780226556673
For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.
Author : Terry Lee Anderson
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2000-01-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780585223582
Arguing that Americans should turn to private entrepreneurs rather than the federal government to guarantee the protection and improvement of environmental quality, the authors document numerous examples of how entrepreneurs have satisfied the growing demand for environmental quality. Beginning with historical cases from the turn of the century, they illuminate the benefits of entrepreneurial participation in wildlife preservation, aquatic habitat production, and environmentally friendly housing development. As government budgets shrink and more people question the efficacy of government regulations, Enviro-Capitalists offers alternatives to traditional thinking about the environment. While the book does not claim that the private sector can provide solutions to all environmental problems, it offers innovative ideas that will cultivate and encourage environmental entrepreneurship.
Author : Bill Birchard
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2011-09-13
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780230337671
Merchants of Virtue is about a band of people who determined to make their company a good global citizen. Herman Miller has been looking at some of the critical questions of our time—for the past 35 years. Is sustainable business sustainable? In an age where sustainability is key to future success, businesses must incorporate new strategies towards sustainability in order to give them the competitive edge. But, can employees in global companies make great products, take care of the environment, benefit society, and make good money—all at the same time? The answer, as in so many stories of people working together, comes down to a principle of management. At Herman Miller, sustainability triumphs because people commit and recommit themselves to the guiding light of company values and in turn changed the world of business. Here author Bill Birchard goes deep inside the organization to find out how Herman Miller has been accomplishing this goal—from the individuals who have become passionate about this topic—to the designers who incorporate ideas of sustainability into every product they create. Birchard shares not only the stories—but the details of how every this remarkable effort has been accomplished.
Author : Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1996-09-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521578264
This remarkable book is the first attempt to establish a theory of knowledge based on the model of virtue theory in ethics.
Author : Julia Annas
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2011-04-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191617225
Intelligent Virtue presents a distinctive new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. Annas argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of a kind which can illuminatingly be compared to the kind of reasoning we find in someone exercising a practical skill. Rather than asking at the start how virtues relate to rules, principles, maximizing, or a final end, we should look at the way in which the acquisition and exercise of virtue can be seen to be in many ways like the acquisition and exercise of more mundane activities, such as farming, building or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing, and as constituting (wholly, or in part) that happiness. We are offered a better understanding of the relation between virtue as an ideal and virtue in everyday life, and the relation between being virtuous and doing the right thing.
Author : Nicolas Baumard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2016-03-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190210236
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 : Matt Ridley
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2012-02-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780062200716
“A terrific book, witty and lucid, and brimming with provocative conjectures.” (Wall Street Journal) from the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Genome Brilliantly written, The Red Queen compels us to rethink everything from the persistence of sexism to the endurance of romantic love. Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture—including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.
Author : John Shovlin
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0801474183
'The Political Economy of Virtue' offers an interpretation of political economy in the second half of the 18th century. It covers the key turning points in the development of French political economy.
Author : Matt Ridley
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2012-01-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780062200662
Francis Crick—the quiet genius who led a revolution in biology by discovering, quite literally, the secret of life—will be bracketed with Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein as one of the greatest scientists of all time. In his fascinating biography of the scientific pioneer who uncovered the genetic code—the digital cipher at the heart of heredity that distinguishes living from non-living things—acclaimed bestselling science writer Matt Ridley traces Crick's life from middle-class mediocrity in the English Midlands through a lackluster education and six years designing magnetic mines for the Royal Navy to his leap into biology at the age of thirty-one and its astonishing consequences. In the process, Ridley sheds a brilliant light on the man who forever changed our world and how we understand it.