Download or read book Calculation and Morality written by Caroline Oudin-Bastide and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates about whether to maintain or abolish slavery revolved around two key values: the morality of enslaving other human beings and the economic benefits and costs of slavery as compared to free labor. Various and conflicting arguments were presented by abolitionists, colonists, and administrators in slave-holding societies, all of whom used calculations about the relative cost and productivity of slavery to defend their own point of view in an impassioned debate. In Calculation and Morality, Caroline Oudin-Bastide and Philippe Steiner consider how economic calculations, estimations, and arguments informed the long debate over French slavery between 1771 and 1848. They show how calculation was introduced into moral debate and became a critical social object in regard both to its consistency and its manifest effects. To do so they trace a process in which phenomena were classified into groups, becoming a category, and then how metrics and calculations were used to analyze the possible effects of emancipating slaves in French colonies. Abolitionists sought to demonstrate that it was in the interest of slaveowners and/or the entire nation to employ free labour in the colonies, and to show the irrationality of the colonial and metropolitan defenders of servitude; their aim was to enlighten various parties as to their real interest, and how that real interest coincided with justice. In turn, colonists accused those opposed to slavery of being blinded by their own philanthropic principles and insisted on the rationality of the slave system as the only means of meeting the interests of everyone, including slaves, at least in the short and medium term. Oudin-Bastide and Steiner closely examine the positions and reasoning of such influential French thinkers as Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet, Simonde de Sismondi, Jean Baptiste Say, and Alexis de Tocqueville. In doing so they shed light on the interaction of moral precepts and econonomic calculations in a trenchant study in the history of ideas.
Download or read book Calculation and Morality written by Caroline Oudin-Bastide and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates about whether to maintain or abolish slavery revolved around two key values: the morality of enslaving other human beings and the economic benefits and costs of slavery as compared to free labor. Various and conflicting arguments were presented by abolitionists, colonists, and administrators in slave-holding societies, all of whom used calculations about the relative cost and productivity of slavery to defend their own point of view in an impassioned debate. In Calculation and Morality, Caroline Oudin-Bastide and Philippe Steiner consider how economic calculations, estimations, and arguments informed the long debate over French slavery between 1771 and 1848. They show how calculation was introduced into moral debate and became a critical social object in regard both to its consistency and its manifest effects. To do so they trace a process in which phenomena were classified into groups, becoming a category, and then how metrics and calculations were used to analyze the possible effects of emancipating slaves in French colonies. Abolitionists sought to demonstrate that it was in the interest of slaveowners and/or the entire nation to employ free labour in the colonies, and to show the irrationality of the colonial and metropolitan defenders of servitude; their aim was to enlighten various parties as to their real interest, and how that real interest coincided with justice. In turn, colonists accused those opposed to slavery of being blinded by their own philanthropic principles and insisted on the rationality of the slave system as the only means of meeting the interests of everyone, including slaves, at least in the short and medium term. Oudin-Bastide and Steiner closely examine the positions and reasoning of such influential French thinkers as Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Antoine Nicolas de Condorcet, Simonde de Sismondi, Jean Baptiste Say, and Alexis de Tocqueville. In doing so they shed light on the interaction of moral precepts and econonomic calculations in a trenchant study in the history of ideas.
Download or read book Moral Calculations written by Laszlo Mero and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does game theory tell us about rational behavior? Is there such a thing as rational behavior, and if so, is it of any use to us? In this fascinating book, renowned Hungarian economist Laszlo Mero shows how game theory provides insight into such aspects of human psychology as altruism, competition, and politics, as well as its relevance to disparate fields such as physics and evolutionary biology. This ideal guide shows us how mathematics can illuminate the human condition.
Download or read book Economic Calculation and Social Morality as Seen in Chinese Peasant Proverbs written by R. David Arkush and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Politics and Morality written by Susan Mendus and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public disenchantment with politics has become a key feature of the world in which we live. Politicians are increasingly viewed with suspicion and distrust, and electoral turnout in many modern democracies continues to fall. But are we right to display such contempt towards our elected representatives? Can politicians be morally good or is politics destined to involve dirty hands or the loss of integrity, as many modern philosophers claim? In this book, Susan Mendus seeks to address these important questions to assess whether this apparent tension between morality and politics is real and, if so, why. Beginning with an account of integrity as involving a willingness to stand by ones most fundamental moral commitments, the author discusses three reasons for thinking that politics undermines integrity and is incompatible with morality. These are: the relationship between politics and utilitarian calculation; the possibility that the realm of politics is a separate realm of value; and the difficulty of reconciling the demands of different social roles. She concludes that, in the modern world, we all risk losing our integrity. To that extent, we are all politicians. Moreover, we have reason to be glad that politicians are not always morally good. Written with verve and clarity, this book provides students and general readers an accessible guide to the philosophical debates about the complex relationship between politics and morality in the contemporary world.
Download or read book How to Enhance Morality written by Vojin Rakić and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-18 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an innovative approach to moral enhancement. We, as humans, have a moral duty to be as good as we can be. Hence, moral bio-enhancement (MBE), if effective and safe, is our moral duty. However, it has to be voluntary because if it is made compulsory, human freedom (of the will) would be curtailed. As freedom (of the will) is an essential component of humanness, compulsory MBE would infringe upon our humanness. An essential question is; what will motivate humans to subject themselves voluntarily to MBE?The book argues - and supports by using empirical/experimental evidence - that morality and happiness operate in a circularly supportive relationship that applies to most humans most of the time: the better they are, the happier they will be; the happier they are, the better they will be. Hence, the grounding rationale for MBE ought not to be the prevention of “ultimate harm” based on compulsory MBE (as argued by Persson and Savulescu), but human happiness based on voluntary MBE. The primary objective of the book is to provide the readers with an original view on moral enhancement, whilst proposing a novel conception of moral enhancement that is informed by new biotechnological developments.
Download or read book Moral Uncertainty written by William MacAskill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About the bookToby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics. Very often we are uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We do not know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into existence. But we still need to act. So how should we make decisions in the face of such uncertainty? Though economists and philosophers have extensively studied the issue of decision-making in the face of uncertainty about matters of fact, the question of decision-making given fundamental moral uncertainty has been neglected. In Moral Uncertainty, philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics.
Download or read book Moral Tribes written by Joshua Greene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book Outlines of Moral Philosophy written by Abhoy Kumar Mazumdar and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Moral Markets written by Paul J. Zak and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics), and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy.
Download or read book Moral Calculations written by Laszlo Mero and published by . This book was released on 1998-07-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Morality and Mathematics written by Justin Clarke-Doane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent are the subjects of our thoughts and talk real? This is the question of realism. In this book, Justin Clarke-Doane explores arguments for and against moral realism and mathematical realism, how they interact, and what they can tell us about areas of philosophical interest more generally. He argues that, contrary to widespread belief, our mathematical beliefs have no better claim to being self-evident or provable than our moral beliefs. Nor do our mathematical beliefs have better claim to being empirically justified than our moral beliefs. It is also incorrect that reflection on the genealogy of our moral beliefs establishes a lack of parity between the cases. In general, if one is a moral antirealist on the basis of epistemological considerations, then one ought to be a mathematical antirealist as well. And, yet, Clarke-Doane shows that moral realism and mathematical realism do not stand or fall together — and for a surprising reason. Moral questions, insofar as they are practical, are objective in a sense that mathematical questions are not, and the sense in which they are objective can only be explained by assuming practical anti-realism. One upshot of the discussion is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension. Another is that the objective questions in the neighborhood of factual areas like logic, modality, grounding, and nature are practical questions too. Practical philosophy should, therefore, take center stage.
Download or read book The Perspective of Morality written by Martin Rhonheimer and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Perspective of the Acting Person introduces readers to one of the most important and provocative thinkers in contemporary moral philosophy
Download or read book Morality written by Bernard Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Morality Bernard Williams confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page. Williams explains, analyses and distinguishes a number of key positions, from the purely amoral to notions of subjective or relative morality, testing their coherence before going on to explore the nature of 'goodness' in relation to responsibilities and choice, roles, standards, and human nature. A classic in moral philosophy.
Download or read book Public and Private Morality written by Stuart Hampshire and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978-10-31 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of essays by well-known British and American philosophers on the moral principles by which public policies and political decisions should be judged: does effective political action necessarily involve and justify actions which the individual would regard as unacceptable in "private" morality?
Download or read book The Evolution of Morality written by Todd K. Shackelford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-10 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary collection presents novel theories, includes provocative re-workings of longstanding arguments, and offers a healthy cross-pollination of ideas to the morality literature. Structures, functions, and content of morality are reconsidered as cultural, religious, and political components are added to the standard biological/environmental mix. Innovative concepts such as the Periodic Table of Ethics and evidence for morality in non-human species illuminate areas for further discussion and research. And some of the book’s contributors question premises we hold dear, such as morality as a product of reason, the existence of moral truths, and the motto “life is good.” Highlights of the coverage: The tripartite theory of Machiavellian morality: judgment, influence, and conscience as distinct moral adaptations. Prosocial morality from a biological, cultural, and developmental perspective. The containment problem and the evolutionary debunking of morality. A comparative perspective on the evolution of moral behavior. A moral guide to depravity: religiously-motivated violence and sexual selection. Game theory and the strategic logic of moral intuitions. The Evolution of Morality makes a stimulating supplementary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in the evolutionary sciences, particularly in psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology, political science, religious studies, and philosophy
Download or read book The Morality of Money written by A. Walsh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-07-31 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The morality of sex, violence and money is at the centre of much human life. While the first two have been subject to intensive historical and philosophical investigation, the latter has largely been neglected. The authors provide the first comprehensive introduction to the morality of money.
