Download or read book The Rational Good written by Leonard T. Hobhouse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1921, this book explores the function of Reason in practical life. It considers whether there is a Rational, demonstrable, standard of values to which the actions of man and the institutions of society may be referred for judgement, and to what authority and power does it possess to influence the actual conduct of men and society.
Download or read book Against Empathy written by Paul Bloom and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.
Download or read book The 88 Laws of the Masculine Mindset written by John Winters and published by . This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powerful Mindset Principles Combined With Real World Practical Information To Transform Your Life: The 88 Laws of The Masculine Mindset This book is not like other books. It is written and designed to be practical and useful. The Problem with most self-help books is that people get bored and don't finish them. This book can be started at any chapter and can be read as you see fit. The book is a collection of the most important mindset and personal development laws or guidelines for men. The laws are listed from 1-88. The format allows you to load up 88 important ideas into your mind very quickly. This book is designed to be an introduction to all of the most valuable personal development ideas I have used to change and improve my own life. If you had 1 hour to find the most important ideas to change your life, then this book will help you achieve that goal. We live in a world that is out of balance and one big reason for that is the lack of mindset control. Your mindset is the software you load into your mind. If you don't take conscious control over that then you might find yourself ending up at a place you did not want to be. Most people on this planet just go with the flow and have no idea that they are going in the wrong direction in life. They are being affected by outside influences and don't even know it. When you understand and accept this reality then you can change it. You can take your power back. You can start living life on your own terms. So if you want to change your life or improve your current position then this book will help you get there. Inside this book You Will Learn: The Masculine Approach To Living The Most Important Choice Of Your Life How To Take Control Of Your Mind How To Change Your Current Reality How To Start Winning In Life The Things You Have To Change To Become Successful How Your Habits Control Your Life Why You Have To Believe In Yourself How To Live With Purpose How To Transform Your Life How To Live Free Much, much more!
Download or read book Rational Choice in an Uncertain World written by Reid Hastie and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2010 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Second Edition of Rational Choice in an Uncertain World the authors compare the basic principles of rationality with actual behaviour in making decisions. They describe theories and research findings from the field of judgment and decision making in a non-technical manner, using anecdotes as a teaching device. Intended as an introductory textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, the material not only is of scholarly interest but is practical as well. The Second Edition includes: - more coverage on the role of emotions, happiness, and general well-being in decisions - a summary of the new research on the neuroscience of decision processes - more discussion of the adaptive value of (non-rational heuristics) - expansion of the graphics for decision trees, probability trees, and Venn diagrams.
Download or read book The Case for Rational Optimism written by Frank S. Robinson and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Case for Rational Optimism tackles a host of challenging subjects in an engaging, accessible, down-to-earth style. It is intellectually serious, ceaselessly intriguing, and devoid of banalities. While other books in this genre tend to be oriented toward self-help, this volume brings evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, economics, and a keen sense of history to the topic. Robinson begins with three goals: making the case for feeling good about oneself, about humanity in general, and about the global situation. He addresses such seemingly disparate subjects as selfi shness versus altruism, mind and free will, human nature, and issues relating to economics, technology, the environment, and more. Unifying these ideas into a coherent philosophical whole are central concepts: evolution has endowed our species with more good qualities than bad, and why; those qualities, and our use of reason, are the foundations of civilization, and how; and, consistent with our nature, we make a better world by valuing human life therefore enabling others to fl ourish in ways they freely choose. The Case for Rational Optimism argues that the highly challenging conditions confronting early man created a Darwinian selective pressure for cooperation, even altruism, among members of a tribe. Th e author fi nds evidence for this in the way our brains work, and in observable human behavior. He argues against existential despair over the human condition. Even though there probably is no grand celestial design investing life with meaning, he considers this liberating, giving every person the freedom to craft their own meaning. To Robinson, whether sentient beings experience suff ering or joy is the only thing that matters; without emotive highs and lows, the Universe would hardly matter.
Download or read book The Rationality Quotient written by Keith E. Stanovich and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to assess critical aspects of cognitive functioning that are not measured by IQ tests: rational thinking skills. Why are we surprised when smart people act foolishly? Smart people do foolish things all the time. Misjudgments and bad decisions by highly educated bankers and money managers, for example, brought us the financial crisis of 2008. Smart people do foolish things because intelligence is not the same as the capacity for rational thinking. The Rationality Quotient explains that these two traits, often (and incorrectly) thought of as one, refer to different cognitive functions. The standard IQ test, the authors argue, doesn't measure any of the broad components of rationality—adaptive responding, good judgment, and good decision making. The authors show that rational thinking, like intelligence, is a measurable cognitive competence. Drawing on theoretical work and empirical research from the last two decades, they present the first prototype for an assessment of rational thinking analogous to the IQ test: the CART (Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking). The authors describe the theoretical underpinnings of the CART, distinguishing the algorithmic mind from the reflective mind. They discuss the logic of the tasks used to measure cognitive biases, and they develop a unique typology of thinking errors. The Rationality Quotient explains the components of rational thought assessed by the CART, including probabilistic and scientific reasoning; the avoidance of “miserly” information processing; and the knowledge structures needed for rational thinking. Finally, the authors discuss studies of the CART and the social and practical implications of such a test. An appendix offers sample items from the test.
Download or read book Rationality written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'Punchy, funny and invigorating ... Pinker is the high priest of rationalism' Sunday Times 'If you've ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead. It's cheaper, more entertaining, and more effective' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower. 'A terrific book, much-needed for our time' Peter Singer
Download or read book Why Think written by Ronald de Sousa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where natural selection has shaped adaptations of astonishing ingenuity, what is the scope and unique power of rational thinking? In this short but wide-ranging book, philosopher Ronald de Sousa looks at the twin set of issues surrounding the power of natural selection to mimic rational design, and rational thinking as itself a product of natural selection. While we commonly deem ourselves superior to other species, the logic of natural selection should not lead us to expect that nature does everything for the best. Similarly, rational action does not always promote the best possible outcomes. So what is the difference? Is the pursuit of rationality actually an effective strategy? Part of the answer lies in language, including mathematics and science. Language is the most striking device by which we have made ourselves smarter than our nearest primate cousins. Sometimes the purely instinctual responses we share with other animals put explicit reasoning to shame: the movements of a trained athlete are faster and more accurate than anything she could explicitly calculate. Language, however, with its power to abstract from concrete experience and to range over all aspects of nature, enables breathtakingly precise calculations, which have taken us to the moon and beyond. Most importantly, however, language enables us to formulate an endless multiplicity of values, in potential conflict with one another as well as with instinctual imperatives. In short, this sophisticated and entertaining book shows how our rationality and our irrationality are inextricably intertwined. Ranging over a wide array of evidence, it explores the true ramifications of being human in the natural world.
Download or read book Rational Mechanics written by R. Catesby Taliaferro and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developed from a classic Notre Dame undergraduate course on the study of the motion of bodies, this volume stresses the history of science as well as the relevant physics and mathematics. Starting with ancient Greek celestial mechanics, topics include the Keplerian Revolution, displacement and kinematics, the special theory of relativity, and much more. 2013 edition.
Download or read book The Rational Guide to Building Small Business Credit written by Barbara Weltman and published by Mann Publishing Group. This book was released on 2007 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small businesses figure importantly in the American economy, yet few resources exist for small business owners looking to build their credit. In The Rational Guide to Building Small Business Credit, Barbara Weltman offers an indispensable new guide that clearly explains how to build and maintain a credit profile for your company. This book covers the fundamentals of credit building, including the five C's of credit analysis and how to register your D-U-N-S(r) number with Dunn & Bradstreet. Advanced concepts include re-establishing poor credit, working with the government, and running credit checks on your customers.This book uses a rational, no-nonsense approach to give you the information you need to proactively manage your credit!
Download or read book The Rational Male written by Rollo Tomassi and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on the core works of The Rational Male - Preventive Medicine presents a poignant outline of the phases of maturity and the most commonly predictable experiences men can expect from women as they progress through various stages of life.Rational and pragmatic, the book explores the intergender and social dynamics of each stage of women's maturity and provides a practical understanding for men in dealing with women in those phases. Preventive Medicine also provides revealing outlines of feminine social primacy, Hypergamy, the 'Hierarchies of Love' and the importance of understanding the conventional nature of complementary masculinity in a world designed to keep men ignorant of it.The Rational Male - Preventive Medicine seeks to help men who "wish they knew then what they know now."The book is the first in of series complements to The Rational Male, the twelve-year core writing of author/blogger Rollo Tomassi from therationalmale.com. Rollo Tomassi is one of the leading voices in the globally growing, male-focused online consortium known as the "Manosphere".
Download or read book The Rational Animal written by Douglas T Kenrick and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do three out of four professional football players go bankrupt? How can illiterate jungle dwellers pass a test that tricks Harvard philosophers? And why do billionaires work so hard -- only to give their hard-earned money away? When it comes to making decisions, the classic view is that humans are eminently rational. But growing evidence suggests instead that our choices are often irrational, biased, and occasionally even moronic. Which view is right -- or is there another possibility? In this animated tour of the inner workings of the mind, psychologist Douglas T. Kenrick and business professor Vladas Griskevicius challenge the prevailing views of decision making, and present a new alternative grounded in evolutionary science. By connecting our modern behaviors to their ancestral roots, they reveal that underneath our seemingly foolish tendencies is an exceptionally wise system of decision making. From investing money to choosing a job, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, our choices are driven by deep-seated evolutionary goals. Because each of us has multiple evolutionary goals, though, new research reveals something radical -- there's more than one "you" making decisions. Although it feels as if there is just one single "self" inside your head, your mind actually contains several different subselves, each one steering you in a different direction when it takes its turn at the controls. The Rational Animal will transform the way you think about decision making. And along the way, you'll discover the intimate connections between ovulating strippers, Wall Street financiers, testosterone-crazed skateboarders, Steve Jobs, Elvis Presley, and you.
Download or read book The Rational Good written by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unsettled Thoughts written by Julia Staffel and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? What makes their degrees of belief rational, and how should they reason about uncertain matters? In epistemology, recent research has attempted to answer these questions by developing formal models of ideally rational credences. However, we know from psychological research that perfect rationality is unattainable for human thinkers--and so this raises the question of how rational ideals can apply to human thinkers. A popular reply is that the more a thinker's imperfectly rational credences approximate compliance with norms of ideal rationality, the better. But what exactly does this mean? Why is it better to be less irrational, if we can't ever be completely rational? And what does being closer to ideally rational amount to? If ideal models of rationality are supposed to help us understand the rationality of human, imperfect thinkers, we need answers to these questions. Unsettled Thoughts breaks new ground in the study of rationality in providing these answers: we can explain why it's better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions. Moreover, the way in which approximating ideal rationality is beneficial can be made formally precise by using a variety of distance measures that track the benefits of being more rational.
Download or read book The Rational Good written by L. T. Hobhouse and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Rational Good: A Study in the Logic of Practice Chapter III. The Rational (1) The rational judgment is that which is consistent, grounded and objective, the first two characters being the test of the third. (2) The search for grounds leads up to immediate judgments both particular and general. Particular immediate judgments, however, are not indubitably true, but are corroborated by interconnexion. (3) Immediate general judgments likewise require interconnexion. (4) Interconnectedness is in fact the rational basis of belief. (5) The grounds on which interconnexion rests are universal relations. (6) The principles of interconnexion rest on the consilience of all consistent acts of inference. (7) The rational in cognition is then the effort to attain truth by the persistent interconnexion of judgments through universal relations. Chapter IV The Good (1) Is there any reason in the choice of ultimate ends, i.e. is there a Rational Good? (2) Generically the Good appears as a harmony (mutual support) of feeling and effort, (3) or of feeling and passive experience including, e.g., observation of the behaviour of another. Generically pleasure is feeling in harmony and pain in disharmony. (4) The fact asserted by the judgment "This is Good" is thus a relation between an experience and a feeling. Either element may be called good as pertaining to the whole. Chapter V The Rational Good (1) The Rational Good must be a consistent scheme of purposes interconnected by universal relations in which subjective disturbance is eliminated, (2) This involves a dual harmony of feeling with feeling and of feeling with experience. (3) There may be internal consistency from a more partial point of view but rationality involves universalism, i.e. a system comprehending the whole world of all minds in a single scheme. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Download or read book Rational Ritual written by Michael Suk-Young Chwe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-28 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why do beer commercials dominate Super Bowl advertising? How do political ceremonies establish authority? Why were circular forms favored for public festivals during the French Revolution? This book answers these questions using a single concept: common knowledge. Game theory shows that in order to coordinate its actions, a group of people must form "common knowledge." Each person wants to participate only if others also participate. Members must have knowledge of each other, knowledge of that knowledge, and so on. Michael Chwe applies this insight, with striking erudition, to analyze a range of rituals across history and cultures. He shows that public ceremonies are powerful not simply because they transmit meaning from a central source to each audience member but because they let audience members know what other members know. In a new afterword, Chwe delves into new applications of common knowledge, both in the real world and in experiments, and considers how generating common knowledge has become easier in the digital age." -- From the jacket.
Download or read book Time Biases written by Meghan Sullivan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should you care less about your distant future? What about events in your life that have already happened? How should the passage of time affect your planning and assessment of your life? Most of us think it is irrational to ignore the future but completely harmless to dismiss the past. But this book argues that rationality requires temporal neutrality: if you are rational you don't engage in any kind of temporal discounting. The book draws on puzzles about real-life planning to build the case for temporal neutrality. How much should you save for retirement? Does it make sense to cryogenically freeze your brain after death? How much should you ask to be compensated for a past injury? Will climate change make your life meaningless? Meghan Sullivan considers what it is for you to be a person extended over time, how time affects our ability to care about ourselves, and all of the ways that our emotions might bias our rational planning. Drawing substantially from work in social psychology, economics and the history of philosophy, the book offers a systematic new theory of rational planning.
