Moral Minds

Moral Minds PDF Author: Marc D. Hauser
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061864781
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
A Harvard scientist illuminates the biological basis for human morality in this groundbreaking book. With the diversity of moral attitudes found across cultures around the globe, it is easy to assume that moral perspectives are socially developed—a matter of nurture rather than nature. But in Moral Minds, Marc Hauser presents compelling evidence to the contrary, and offers a revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct. Hauser argues that certain biologically innate moral principles propel us toward judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

Moral Minds

Moral Minds PDF Author: Marc Hauser
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060780703
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
Marc Hauser's eminently readable and comprehensive book Moral Minds is revolutionary. He argues that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct, unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Experience tunes up our moral actions, guiding what we do as opposed to how we deliver our moral verdicts. For hundreds of years, scholars have argued that moral judgments arise from rational and voluntary deliberations about what ought to be. The common belief today is that we reach moral decisions by consciously reasoning from principled explanations of what society determines is right or wrong. This perspective has generated the further belief that our moral psychology is founded entirely on experience and education, developing slowly and subject to considerable variation across cultures. In his groundbreaking book, Hauser shows that this dominant view is illusory. Combining his own cutting-edge research with findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, he examines the implications of his theory for issues of bioethics, religion, law, and our everyday lives.

Moral Minds

Moral Minds PDF Author: Marc D. Hauser
Publisher: Abacus Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780349118093
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Scholars have long argued that moral judgements arise from rational deliberations about what society determines is right and wrong. This has generated the idea that our moral psychology is founded on cultural experience. In the revolutionary Moral Minds, Hauser challenges these concepts, showing that this view is illusory and arguing instead that humans have evolved a 'moral instinct', a universal feature of the human mind rather than one informed by gender, education or religion." "Combining his own cutting-edge research with cognitive psychology, linguistics, evolutionary biology and economics, Hauser examines his groundbreaking theory in terms of bioethics, religion and law, as well as our everyday lives."--Back cover.

The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind PDF Author: Jonathan Haidt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307455777
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.

Media and the Moral Mind

Media and the Moral Mind PDF Author: Ronald C. Tamborini
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415506352
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Moral psychology and media theory: historical and emerging viewpoints / by Allison Eden, Matthew Grizzard, and Robert J. Lewis -- Universal morality, mediated narratives, and neural synchrony / by Rene Weber, Lucy Popova, and J. Michael Mangus -- A model of intuitive morality and exemplars / by Ron Tamborini -- Morality subcultures and media production: how Hollywood minds the morals of its audience / by Dana Mastro ... [et al.] -- The experience of elevation: responses to media portrayals of moral beauty / by Mary Beth Oliver, Erin Ash, and Julia K. Woolley -- Moral disengagement during exposure to media violence: would it feel right to shoot an innocent civilian in a video game? / by Tilo Hartmann -- Moral monitoring and emotionality in responding to fiction, sports, and the news / by Dolf Zillmann -- How we enjoy and why we seek out morally complex characters in media entertainment / by Arthur A. Raney and Sophie H. Janicke -- The psychological functions of justice in mass media / by Tobias Rothmund ... [et al.] -- The effect of media on children's moral reasoning / by Marina Krcmar

Moral Foundations of Philosophy of Mind

Moral Foundations of Philosophy of Mind PDF Author: Joel Backström
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030184927
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This volume brings together a collection of essays that explore in a new way how unacknowledged moral concerns are integral to debates in the philosophy of mind.The radical suggestion of the book is that we can make sense of the internal dynamics and cultural significance of these debates only when we understand the moral forces that shape them. Drawing inspiration from a variety of traditions including Wittgenstein, Lacan, phenomenology and analytic philosophy, the authors address a wide range of topics including the mind/body-problem, the problem of other minds, subjectivity and objectivity, the debates on mindreading, naturalism, reductive physicalism, representationalism and the ‘E-turn’; Dennett’s heterophenomenology, McDowell’s neo-Kantianism, Wittgenstein’s ‘private language’ considerations and his notion of an ‘attitude towards a soul’; repression, love, conscience, the difficulties of self-understanding, and the methods and aims of philosophy. Through a combination of detailed, immanent criticism and bold constructive work, the authors move the discussion to a new level, beyond humanistic or conservative critiques of naturalism and scientism.

The Servile Mind

The Servile Mind PDF Author: Kenneth Minogue
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594036519
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
One of the grim comedies of the twentieth century was that miserable victims of communist regimes would climb walls, swim rivers, dodge bullets, and find other desperate ways to achieve liberty in the West at the same time that progressive intellectuals would sentimentally proclaim that these very regimes were the wave of the future. A similar tragicomedy is playing out in our century: as the victims of despotism and backwardness from Third World nations pour into Western states, academics and intellectuals present Western life as a nightmare of inequality and oppression. In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how that idealistic dream is destroying exactly what has made the inventive Western world irresistible to the peoples of foreign lands. The Servile Mind looks at how Western morality has evolved into mere “politico-moral” posturing about admired ethical causes—from solving world poverty and creating peace to curing climate change. Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one’s essential decency by having the correct opinions has become a substitute for individual moral responsibility. Instead, Minogue argues, we ask that our governments carry the burden of solving our social—and especially moral—problems for us. The irony is that the more we allow the state to determine our moral order, the more we need to be told how to behave and what to think. Such is the servile mind.

Moral Brains

Moral Brains PDF Author: S. Matthew Liao
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199357676
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In the last fifteen years, there has been significant interest in studying the brain structures involved in moral judgments using novel techniques from neuroscience such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Many people, including a number of philosophers, believe that results from neuroscience have the potential to settle seemingly intractable debates concerning the nature, practice, and reliability of moral judgments. This has led to a flurry of scientific and philosophical activities, resulting in the rapid growth of the new field of moral neuroscience. There is now a vast array of ongoing scientific research devoted towards understanding the neural correlates of moral judgments, accompanied by a large philosophical literature aimed at interpreting and examining the methodology and the results of this research. This is the first volume to take stock of fifteen years of research of this fast-growing field of moral neuroscience and to recommend future directions for research. It features the most up-to-date research in this area, and it presents a wide variety of perspectives on this topic.

Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind

Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind PDF Author: Joshua May
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192539604
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral thought and action, we're told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, shows the pervasive role played by reason our moral minds, and ultimately defuses sweeping debunking arguments in ethics. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don't come easily. However, despite the heavy influence of automatic and unconscious processes that have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we needn't reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed or in need of serious repair. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but a special pessimism about morality in particular is unwarranted. Moral judgment and motivation are fundamentally rational enterprises not beholden to the passions.

Moral Tribes

Moral Tribes PDF Author: Joshua Greene
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143126059
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
“Surprising and remarkable…Toggling between big ideas, technical details, and his personal intellectual journey, Greene writes a thesis suitable to both airplane reading and PhD seminars.”—The Boston Globe Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world’s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (“portrait,” “landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight—sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words—often with life-and-death stakes. A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.