Download or read book 10 Moral Paradoxes written by Saul Smilansky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a focused, concrete case for the centrality of paradoxes within morality. Explores what these paradoxes can teach us about morality and the human condition Considers a broad range of subjects, from familiar topics to rarely posed questions, among them "Fortunate Misfortune", "Beneficial Retirement" and "Preferring Not To Have Been Born" Asks whether the existence of moral paradox is a good or a bad thing Presents analytic moral philosophy in a provocative, engaging and entertaining way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes themselves

Download or read book The Cultural Foundations of Nations written by Anthony D. Smith and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new work by Professor Anthony D. Smith challenges the notion of nationalism as a product of modernity. Major new work by a leading historical sociologist Challenges the prevailing idea of nationalism as a product of modernity Demonstrates that different political forms of community and collective identity from pre-modern times have contributed to the formation and character of nations Analyzes the chronology and nature of nations, from the ancient world, to the European Middle Ages, the early modern, and the modern eras Discusses alternative destinies facing modern nations today

Download or read book 10 Moral Paradoxes written by Saul Smilansky and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2007-07-02 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a focused, concrete case for the centrality of paradoxes within morality. Explores what these paradoxes can teach us about morality and the human condition Considers a broad range of subjects, from familiar topics to rarely posed questions, among them "Fortunate Misfortune", "Beneficial Retirement" and "Preferring Not To Have Been Born" Asks whether the existence of moral paradox is a good or a bad thing Presents analytic moral philosophy in a provocative, engaging and entertaining way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes themselves

Download or read book 10 Moral Paradoxes written by Saul Smilansky and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2007-06-18 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a focused, concrete case for the centrality of paradoxes within morality. Explores what these paradoxes can teach us about morality and the human condition Considers a broad range of subjects, from familiar topics to rarely posed questions, among them "Fortunate Misfortune", "Beneficial Retirement" and "Preferring Not To Have Been Born" Asks whether the existence of moral paradox is a good or a bad thing Presents analytic moral philosophy in a provocative, engaging and entertaining way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes themselves

Download or read book Ethnographies of Moral Reasoning written by K. Sykes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-12-22 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rather than measure the actions of their subjects by reference to either universal rationality or cultural relativism, contributors in this volume describe ordinary people as they value human relationships and reason through the commonplace contradictions of their local way of life in a global age.

Download or read book Free Will and Illusion written by Saul Smilansky and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-03-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saul Smilansky presents an original treatment of the problem of free will, which lies at the heart of morality and human self-understanding. He maintains that we have most of the resources we need for a proper understanding of the problem; and the key to it is the role played by illusion. The major traditional philosophical approaches are inadequate, Smilansky argues: their partial insights need to be integrated into a hybrid view, which he calls Fundamental Dualism. Common views about justice, responsibility, human worth, and related notions are radically misguided, and the absurd looms large. We do, however, find some justification for enlightened moral views, and grounding for some of our most cherished views of human nature. The bold and perhaps disturbing claim of Free Will and Illusion is that we could not live adequately with a complete awareness of the truth about human freedom: illusion lies at the centre of the human condition. The necessity of illusion is seen to follow from the basic elements of the free will issue, helping keep our moral and psychological worlds intact. Smilansky offers the challenge of recognizing the centrality of illusion and trying to free ourselves to some extent from it; this is not only a philosophical challenge, but a moral and psychological one as well.

Download or read book Paradoxes written by R. M. Sainsbury and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A paradox can be defined as an unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. Many paradoxes raise serious philosophical problems, and they are associated with crises of thought and revolutionary advances. The expanded and revised third edition of this intriguing book considers a range of knotty paradoxes including Zeno's paradoxical claim that the runner can never overtake the tortoise, a new chapter on paradoxes about morals, paradoxes about belief, and hardest of all, paradoxes about truth. The discussion uses a minimum of technicality but also grapples with complicated and difficult considerations, and is accompanied by helpful questions designed to engage the reader with the arguments. The result is not only an explanation of paradoxes but also an excellent introduction to philosophical thinking.

Download or read book Paradoxes from A to Z written by Michael Clark and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This sentence is false'. Is it? If a hotel with an infinite number of rooms is fully occupied, can it still accommodate a new guest? How can we have emotional responses to fiction, when we know that the objects of our emotions do not exist?

Download or read book The Paradoxes of Freedom written by Sidney Hook and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Download or read book A Brief History of the Paradox written by Roy Sorensen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-12-04 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor.

Download or read book Paradoxes of Neoliberalism written by Elizabeth Bernstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the rise of far-right regimes to the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic, recent years have brought global upheaval as well as the sedimentation of longstanding social inequalities. Analyzing the complexities of the current political moment in different geographic regions, this book addresses the paradoxical persistence of neoliberal policies and practices, in order to ground the pursuit of a more just world. Engaging theories of decoloniality, racial capitalism, queer materialism, and social reproduction, this book demonstrates the centrality of sexual politics to neoliberalism, including both social relations and statecraft. Drawing on ethnographic case studies, the authors show that gender and sexuality may be the site for policies like those pertaining to sex trafficking, which bundle together economics and changes to the structure of the state. In other instances, sexual politics are crucial components of policies on issues ranging from the growth of financial services to migration. Tracing the role of sexual politics across different localities and through different political domains, this book delineates the paradoxical assemblage that makes up contemporary neoliberal hegemony. In addition to exploring contemporary social relations of neoliberal governance, exploitation, domination, and exclusion, the authors also consider gender and sexuality as forces that have shaped myriad forms of community-based activism and resistance, including local efforts to pursue new forms of social change. By tracing neoliberal paradoxes across global sites, the book delineates the multiple dimensions of economic and cultural restructuring that have characterized neoliberal regimes and emergent activist responses to them. This innovative analysis of the relationship between gender justice and political economy will appeal to: interdisciplinary scholars in social and cultural studies; legal and political theorists; and the wide range of readers who are concerned with contemporary questions of social justice.

Download or read book Good and Real written by Gary L. Drescher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, and other topics, Good and Real tries to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our subjective impressions of our own existence. In Good and Real, Gary Drescher examines a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, quantum mechanics, and other topics, in an effort to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our subjective impressions of our own existence. Many scientists suspect that the universe can ultimately be described by a simple (perhaps even deterministic) formalism; all that is real unfolds mechanically according to that formalism. But how, then, is it possible for us to be conscious, or to make genuine choices? And how can there be an ethical dimension to such choices? Drescher sketches computational models of consciousness, choice, and subjunctive reasoning--what would happen if this or that were to occur? --to show how such phenomena are compatible with a mechanical, even deterministic universe. Analyses of Newcomb's Problem (a paradox about choice) and the Prisoner's Dilemma (a paradox about self-interest vs. altruism, arguably reducible to Newcomb's Problem) help bring the problems and proposed solutions into focus. Regarding quantum mechanics, Drescher builds on Everett's relative-state formulation--but presenting a simplified formalism, accessible to laypersons--to argue that, contrary to some popular impressions, quantum mechanics is compatible with an objective, deterministic physical reality, and that there is no special connection between quantum phenomena and consciousness. In each of several disparate but intertwined topics ranging from physics to ethics, Drescher argues that a missing technical linchpin can make the quest for objectivity seem impossible, until the elusive technical fix is at hand.

Download or read book Paradoxes of Political Ethics written by John M. Parrish and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Conflict Paradox written by Bernard S. Mayer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find the roadmap to the heart of the conflict The Conflict Paradox is a guide to taking conflict to a more productive place. Written by one of the founders of the professional conflict management field and co-published with the American Bar Association, this book outlines seven major dilemmas that conflict practitioners face every day. Readers will find expert guidance toward getting to the heart of the conflict and will be challenged to adopt a new way to think about the choices disputants face,. They will also be offered practical tools and techniques for more successful intervention. Using stories, experiences, and reflective exercises to bring these concepts to life, the author provides actionable advice for overcoming roadblocks to effective conflict work. Disputants and interveners alike are often stymied by what appear to be unacceptable alternatives,. The Conflict Paradox offers a new way of understanding and working with these so that they become not obstacles but opportunities for helping people move through conflict successfully.. Examine the contradictions at the center of almost all conflicts Learn how to bring competition and cooperation, avoidance and engagement, optimism and realism together to make for more power conflict intervention Deal effectively with the tensions between emotions, and logic, principles and compromise, neutrality and advocacy, community and autonomy Discover the tools and techniques that make conflicts less of a hurdle to overcome and more of an opportunity to pursue Conflict is everywhere, and conflict intervention skills are valuable far beyond the professional and legal realms. With insight and creativity, solutions are almost always possible. For conflict interveners and disputants looking for an effective and creative approach to understanding and working with conflict , The Conflict Paradox provides a powerful and important roadmap for conflict intervention.

Download or read book Paradoxes written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A paradox (from the Greek word meaning "contrary to expectation") is a statement that seems self-contradictory but may be true. Exploring the distinction between truth and plausibility, the author presents a standardized, straightforward approach for deciphering paradoxes -- one that can be applied to all their forms, whether clever wordplay or more complex issues.

Download or read book Condemned to Repeat written by Fiona Terry and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian groups have failed, Fiona Terry believes, to face up to the core paradox of their activity: humanitarian action aims to alleviate suffering, but by inadvertently sustaining conflict it potentially prolongs suffering. In Condemned to Repeat?, Terry examines the side-effects of intervention by aid organizations and points out the need to acknowledge the political consequences of the choice to give aid. The author makes the controversial claim that aid agencies act as though the initial decision to supply aid satisfies any need for ethical discussion and are often blind to the moral quandaries of aid. Terry focuses on four historically relevant cases: Rwandan camps in Zaire, Afghan camps in Pakistan, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan camps in Honduras, and Cambodian camps in Thailand. Terry was the head of the French section of Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) when it withdrew from the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire because aid intended for refugees actually strengthened those responsible for perpetrating genocide. This book contains documents from the former Rwandan army and government that were found in the refugee camps after they were attacked in late 1996. This material illustrates how combatants manipulate humanitarian action to their benefit. Condemned to Repeat? makes clear that the paradox of aid demands immediate attention by organizations and governments around the world. The author stresses that, if international agencies are to meet the needs of populations in crisis, their organizational behavior must adjust to the wider political and socioeconomic contexts in which aid occurs.

Download or read book Paradoxes in Social Work Practice written by Merlinda Weinberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the helping professions, codes of ethics and decision-making models have been the primary vehicles for determining what constitutes ethical practice. These strategies are insufficient since they assume that shared meanings exist and that the contradictory universal principles of codes can be reconciled. Also, these tools do not emphasize the significance of context for ethical practice. This book takes a new critical theoretical approach, which involves exploring how social workers construct what is ’ethical’ in their work, especially when they are positioned at the intersection of multiple paradoxes, including that of two opposing responsibilities in society: namely, to care for others but also to prevent others from harm. The book is built on narratives from actual front-line workers and therefore is more applicable and grounded for practitioners and students, offering many suggestions for sound practice. It illustrates that an understanding of ethics differs from worker to worker and is heavily influenced by context, workers’ values, and what they take up as the primary discourses that frame their perceptions of the profession. While recognizing the oppressive potential of social work, the book is rooted in a perspective that ethical practice can contribute to a more socially just society.