New Interdisciplinary Landscapes in Morality and Emotion

New Interdisciplinary Landscapes in Morality and Emotion PDF Author: Sara Graça Da Silva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351387324
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The intersection between morality and emotion is not always easily discernible. Researchers often choose to treat these concepts separately, and in doing so an important aspect of this symbiosis is irremediably thwarted. New Interdisciplinary Landscapes in Morality and Emotion considers the relationship between these fields, reflecting on complex philosophical, psychological, social, evolutionary, historical and literary approaches. The book reviews emerging paths and features contributions from distinct scientific fields including highly debated and somewhat controversial topics such as the relationship between empathy and in-group biases; emotion and irrationality; reflexivity and meta-emotions; shame and pro-social behaviour; the evolution of human jealousy; the role of love in driving moral motivation; individuals’ wellbeing; behavioural economics; social robotics; historical considerations of medical societies and politics of sadism; and literary reflections on sympathy and emigration. Covering various methodological angles and entanglements, New Interdisciplinary Landscapes in Morality and Emotion will appeal to anyone interested in multidisciplinary dialogues from across the humanities, sciences, and the social sciences.

The Emotional Construction of Morals

The Emotional Construction of Morals PDF Author: Jesse Prinz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019928301X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Jesse Prinz presents a bravura argument for highly controversial claims about morality, which go to the heart of our understanding of ourselves. He argues that moral values are based on emotional responses, and that these are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. These two claims support a form of moral relativism.

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.

Moral Imagination

Moral Imagination PDF Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622323X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.

Moral Emotions

Moral Emotions PDF Author: Anthony J. Steinbock
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810167549
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Winner, 2015 CSCP Symposium Book Award Moral Emotions builds upon the philosophical theory of persons begun in Phenomenology and Mysticism and marks a new stage of phenomenology. Author Anthony J. Steinbock finds personhood analyzing key emotions, called moral emotions. Moral Emotions offers a systematic account of the moral emotions, described here as pride, shame, and guilt as emotions of self-givenness; repentance, hope, and despair as emotions of possibility; and trusting, loving, and humility as emotions of otherness. The author argues these reveal basic structures of interpersonal experience. By exhibiting their own kind of cognition and evidence, the moral emotions not only help to clarify the meaning of person, they reveal novel concepts of freedom, critique, and normativity. As such, they are able to engage our contemporary social imaginaries at the impasse of modernity and postmodernity.

Morality and Emotion

Morality and Emotion PDF Author: Sara Graça Da Silva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317308859
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Despite the many attempts to disentangle the relationship between morality and emotion, as is clear from the myriad of approaches that try to understand the nature and importance of their connection, the extent of this synergy remains rather controversial. The multidisciplinary framework of the present volume was specifically designed to challenge self-containing disciplinary views, encouraging a more integrative analysis that covers various methodological angles and theoretical perspectives. Contributions include discussions on the interrelation between moral philosophy, emotion and identity, namely the clash between grand ethical theories and the practicality of human life; philosophical considerations on akrasia or the so called weakness of will, and the factors behind it; anthropological reflections on empathy and prosocial behavior; accounts from artificial intelligence and evolutionary game theory; and literary and artistic dissections of emotional responses to the representational power of fiction and the image. The inclusion of chapters from varied scientific backgrounds substantially enriches this debate and shows that several core questions, such as the ones related to identity and to the way we perceive the other and ourselves, are transversal. It is therefore valuable and pressing to further explore these common threads, and to encourage disciplinary dialogues across both traditional and emerging fields to help shed new light on the puzzling and fascinating ways in which morality and emotion are mutually imbricated.

The Power of Ideals

The Power of Ideals PDF Author: William Damon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199357765
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Cynicism often seems a smarter choice than idealism. There are reasons for this. Politicians have disappointed us time and again; trusted institutions have proven to be self-serving and corrupt; hopes for lasting world peace repeatedly have been dashed; and social inequities persist and increase, unabated by even the grandest of charitable efforts. It is now considered foolish to think that people can be counted on to rise above their narrow self-interests to serve the broader good, or to tell the truth if it does not reflect well on the self. Supporting this bleak view of the human condition is a moral psychology that has taken increasingly cynical turns in recent years. Famous studies have shown that we have an almost unlimited potential for cruelty when placed in the wrong situations. The Power of Ideals presents a different vision, supported by a different kind of evidence. It examines the lives and work of six 20th century moral leaders who pursued moral causes ranging from world peace to social justice and human rights. Using these six cases to illustrate how people can make choices guided by their moral convictions, rather than by base emotion or social pressures, authors William Damon and Anne Colby explore the workings of three virtues: inner truthfulness, humility, and faith. Through their portrayal of the noble lives of moral leaders, the authors argue that all of us--with ordinary lives--can exercise control over important life decisions and pursue ideals that we believe in.

Reason and Emotion

Reason and Emotion PDF Author: John M. Cooper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691223262
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 604

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Book Description
This book brings together twenty-three distinctive and influential essays on ancient moral philosophy--including several published here for the first time--by the distinguished philosopher and classical scholar John Cooper. The volume gives a systematic account of many of the most important issues and texts in ancient moral psychology and ethical theory, providing a unified and illuminating way of reflecting on the fields as they developed from Socrates and Plato through Aristotle to Epicurus and the Stoic philosophers Chrysippus and Posidonius, and beyond. For the ancient philosophers, Cooper shows here, morality was "good character" and what that entailed: good judgment, sensitivity, openness, reflectiveness, and a secure and correct sense of who one was and how one stood in relation to others and the surrounding world. Ethical theory was about the best way to be rather than any principles for what to do in particular circumstances or in relation to recurrent temptations. Moral psychology was the study of the psychological conditions required for good character--the sorts of desires, the attitudes to self and others, the states of mind and feeling, the kinds of knowledge and insight. Together these papers illustrate brilliantly how, by studying the arguments of the Greek philosophers in their diverse theories about the best human life and its psychological underpinnings, we can expand our own moral understanding and imagination and enrich our own moral thought. The collection will be crucial reading for anyone interested in classical philosophy and what it can contribute to reflection on contemporary questions about ethics and human life.

Morality and the Emotions

Morality and the Emotions PDF Author: Carla Bagnoli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191618373
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Emotions shape our mental and social lives. Their relation to morality is, however, problematic. Since ancient times, philosophers have disagreed about the place of emotions in morality. One the one hand, some hold that emotions are disorderly and unpredictable animal drives, which undermine our autonomy and interfere with our reasoning. For them, emotions represent a persistent source of obstacles to morality, as in the case of self-love. Some virtues, such as prudence, temperance, and fortitude, require or simply consist in the capacity to counteract the disruptive effect of emotions. On the other hand, venerable traditions of thought place emotions such as respect, love, and compassion at the very heart of morality. Emotions are sources of moral knowledge, modes of moral recognition, discernment, valuing, and understanding. Emotions such as blame, guilt, and shame are the voice of moral conscience, and are central to the functioning of our social lives and normative practices. New scientific findings about the pervasiveness of emotions posit new challenges to ethical theory. Are we responsible for emotions? What is their relation to practical rationality? Are they roots of our identity or threats to our autonomy? This volume is born out of the conviction that philosophy provides a distinctive approach to these problems. Fourteen original articles, by prominent scholars in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, offer new arguments about the relation between emotions and practical rationality, value, autonomy, and moral identity.

Art, Emotion and Ethics

Art, Emotion and Ethics PDF Author: Berys Gaut
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199263213
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Can a good work of art be evil? 'Art, Ethics, and Emotion' explores this issue, arguing that artworks are always aesthetically flawed insofar as they have a moral defect that is aesthetically relevant. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the relation of art to morality.