Download or read book The Value of a Human Life written by Karel Innemée and published by . This book was released on 2022-04-20 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts from different disciplines present new insights into the subject of ritual homicide in various regions of the ancient world.

Download or read book Euthanasia Ethics and Public Policy written by John Keown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-25 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the law should permit voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is one of the most vital questions facing all modern societies. Internationally, the main obstacle to legalisation has proved to be the objection that, even if they were morally acceptable in certain 'hard cases', voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide could not be effectively controlled; society would slide down a 'slippery slope' to the killing of patients who did not make a free and informed request, or for whom palliative care would have offered an alternative. How cogent is this objection? This book provides the general reader (who need have no expertise in philosophy, law or medicine) with a lucid introduction to this central question in the debate, not least by reviewing the Dutch euthanasia experience. It will interest all in any country whether currently for or against legalisation, who wish to ensure that their opinions are better informed.

Download or read book The Value of Human Life in Soviet Warfare written by Amnon Sella and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a key question for all Western military strategists. If the Soviets are indeed willing to tolerate high human sacrifice in warfare this obviously puts them at a military advantage. The perceived wisdom, hitherto, is that the Soviets are indeed willing to tolerate high casualties in battle - this, initial, view is reinforced by myths about Stalin clearing minefields by marching penal battalions across them. Professor Sella, however, comes to a different conclusion. He surveys Soviet attitudes to the military-medical service; to its own prisoners of war; and to the ethos of fighting to the death, considering how attitudes have changed from Czarist times to the present. He concludes that the Soviets are less ready to tolerate massive sacrifices than has been supposed; but that this position stems as much from utilitarian-military logic as from compassion.

Download or read book The Value of Life written by Stephen R. Kellert and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Value of Life is an exploration of the actual and perceived importance of biological diversity for human beings and society. Stephen R. Kellert identifies ten basic values, which he describes as biologically based, inherent human tendencies that are greatly influenced and moderated by culture, learning, and experience. Drawing on 20 years of original research, he considers: the universal basis for how humans value nature differences in those values by gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, and geographic location how environment-related activities affect values variation in values relating to different species how vlaues vary across cultures policy and management implications Throughout the book, Kellert argues that the preservation of biodiversity is fundamentally linked to human well-being in the largest sense as he illustrates the importance of biological diversity to the human sociocultural and psychological condition.

Download or read book The Economists Hour written by Binyamin Appelbaum and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this "lively and entertaining" history of ideas (Liaquat Ahamed, The New Yorker), New York Times editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum tells the story of the people who sparked four decades of economic revolution. Before the 1960s, American politicians had never paid much attention to economists. But as the post-World War II boom began to sputter, economists gained influence and power. In The Economists' Hour, Binyamin Appelbaum traces the rise of the economists, first in the United States and then around the globe, as their ideas reshaped the modern world, curbing government, unleashing corporations and hastening globalization. Some leading figures are relatively well-known, such as Milton Friedman, the elfin libertarian who had a greater influence on American life than any other economist of his generation, and Arthur Laffer, who sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin that helped to make tax cuts a staple of conservative economic policy. Others stayed out of the limelight, but left a lasting impact on modern life: Walter Oi, a blind economist who dictated to his wife and assistants some of the calculations that persuaded President Nixon to end military conscription; Alfred Kahn, who deregulated air travel and rejoiced in the crowded cabins on commercial flights as the proof of his success; and Thomas Schelling, who put a dollar value on human life. Their fundamental belief? That government should stop trying to manage the economy.Their guiding principle? That markets would deliver steady growth, and ensure that all Americans shared in the benefits. But the Economists' Hour failed to deliver on its promise of broad prosperity. And the single-minded embrace of markets has come at the expense of economic equality, the health of liberal democracy, and future generations. Timely, engaging and expertly researched, The Economists' Hour is a reckoning -- and a call for people to rewrite the rules of the market. A Wall Street Journal Business BestsellerWinner of the Porchlight Business Book Award in Narrative & Biography

Download or read book Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life written by Fabrizio Amerini and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary discussions of abortion, both sides argue well-worn positions, particularly concerning the question, When does human life begin? Though often invoked by the Catholic Church for support, Thomas Aquinas in fact held that human life begins after conception, not at the moment of union. But his overall thinking on questions of how humans come into being, and cease to be, is more subtle than either side in this polarized debate imagines. Fabrizio Amerini—an internationally-renowned scholar of medieval philosophy—does justice to Aquinas’ views on these controversial issues. Some pro-life proponents hold that Aquinas’ position is simply due to faulty biological knowledge, and if he knew what we know today about embryology, he would agree that human life begins at conception. Others argue that nothing Aquinas could learn from modern biology would have changed his mind. Amerini follows the twists and turns of Aquinas’ thinking to reach a nuanced and detailed solution in the final chapters that will unsettle familiar assumptions and arguments. Systematically examining all the pertinent texts and placing each in historical context, Amerini provides an accurate reconstruction of Aquinas’ account of the beginning and end of human life and assesses its bioethical implications for today. This major contribution is available to an English-speaking audience through translation by Mark Henninger, himself a noted scholar of medieval philosophy.

Download or read book Priceless written by Frank Ackerman and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As clinical as it sounds to express the value of human lives, health, or the environment in cold dollars and cents, cost-benefit analysis requires it. More disturbingly, this approach is being embraced by a growing number of politicians and conservative pundits as the most reasonable way to make many policy decisions regarding public health and the environment. By systematically refuting the economic algorithms and illogical assumptions that cost-benefit analysts flaunt as fact, Priceless tells a ''gripping story about how solid science has been shoved to the backburner by bean counters with ideological blinders'' (In These Times). Ackerman and Heinzerling argue that decisions about health and safety should be made ''to reflect not economists' numbers, but democratic values, chosen on moral grounds. This is a vividly written book, punctuated by striking analogies, a good deal of outrage, and a nice dose of humor'' (Cass Sunstein, The New Republic). Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of human health and environmental protection, Priceless ''shines a bright light on obstacles that stand in the way of good government decisions''.

Download or read book Replacing Guilt written by Nate Soares and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-29 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal is to address the guilt that comes from a feeling of listlessness, the vague feeling of guilt that one might get when they play video games all day, or when they turn desperately towards drugs or parties, in attempts to silence the part of themselves that whispers that there must be something else to life.This sort of guilt cannot be removed by force of will, in most people. The trick to removing this sort of guilt, I think, is to start exploring that feeling that there must be something else to life, that there must be something more to do---and either find something worth working towards, or find that there really isn't actually anything missing. This first sort of listless guilt, I think, comes from someone who wants to find something else to do, and hasn't yet.Unfortunately, addressing this sort of guilt isn't as easy as just finding a hobby. In my experience, this listless guilt tends to be found in people who have fallen into the nihilistic trap---people who either believe they can't matter, or who believe that no one can matter. It tends to be found in people who believe that humans only ever do what they want, that nothing is truly "better'' than anything else, that there is no such thing as altruism, that "morality'' is a pleasant lie---that class of beliefs is the class that I will address first, starting with the Allegory of the Stamp Collector...

Download or read book Markets and Mortality written by Peter Dorman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-02-23 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author examines and ultimately rejects the conventional economic view that workers who have more dangerous jobs accept their risks voluntarily and are compensated through higher wages. In doing so, he attacks widely used techniques for assigning a monetary value to human life for cost-benefit analysis and other purposes. Arguments are drawn from the history of occupational safety and health, econometric analysis of wage and risk data, and formal models of the labour market. In place of the conventional view, Peter Dorman proposes a view based on new work in decision theory (thick rationality) and the theory of repeated games. These insights are combined with comparative policy analysis to support an approach to risk that promotes both regulatory effectiveness and democratic values. Despite its technical content, the book is written in highly accessible style, and is concerned with matters of general interest in the development of critical social science.

Download or read book Ultimate Price written by Howard Steven Friedman and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2021-05-05 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How much is a human life worth? Individuals, families, companies, and governments routinely place a price on human life. The calculations that underlie these price tags are often buried in technical language, yet they influence our economy, laws, behaviors, policies, health, and safety. These price tags are often unfair, infused as they are with gender, racial, national, and cultural biases that often result in valuing the lives of the young more than the old, the rich more than the poor, whites more than blacks, Americans more than foreigners, and relatives more than strangers. This is critical since undervalued lives are left less-protected and more exposed to risk. Howard Steven Friedman explains in simple terms how economists and data scientists at corporations, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies develop and use these price tags and points a spotlight at their logical flaws and limitations. He then forcefully argues against the rampant unfairness in the system. Readers will be enlightened, shocked, and, ultimately, empowered to confront the price tags we assign to human lives and understand why such calculations matter.

Download or read book How Will You Measure Your Life Harvard Business Review Classics written by Clayton M. Christensen and published by Harvard Business Review Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Download or read book What Money Can t Buy written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?In his New York Times bestseller Justice, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society—and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets don't honor and that money can't buy?

Download or read book Is Human Life Absurd A Philosophical Inquiry into Finitude Value and Meaning written by Raymond Angelo Belliotti and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belliotti unravels the paradoxes of human existence to reveal paths for crafting meaningful, significant, valuable, even important lives. He argues that human life is not inherently absurd; examines the implications of mortality; contrasts subjective and objective meaning, and evaluates contemporary renderings of meaningful human lives.

Download or read book Epiphany Z written by Thomas Frey and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A trend expert predicts what’s next for fields like education and government while sharing how readers can shape their own futures. Epiphany Z is a dynamic approach to envisioning, comprehending, and ultimately thriving in the radically different futures emerging around us at the speed of light. Distilling decades of research, experience, and proven success in correctly identifying and accurately extrapolating today’s trends and innovations into tomorrow’s realities, futurist Thomas Frey gives you an advance ticket to the most explosive period of change in all of human history. Frey’s unparalleled ability to detect emerging trends from the smallest of clues gives him an edge on other futurists. Now he’s sharing the edge with you! · What are tomorrow’s hottest industries? · What huge industries of today are doomed to extinction? · How will our lives be changed by advancements in robotics, in drone technology, and in manufacturing and transportation? · How can education cope with the explosive new world of enhanced information, hyperactive business environments, and unimaginable cultural shifts? · Who will be the masters of tomorrow’s universe—and who will be left behind? · Above all, how can you protect yourself from the most disruptive aspects of the changes sweeping your way—as well as become one of the masters of these changes? Those changes are taking place now. Thomas Frey shows where they will be taking all of us tomorrow and offers a roadmap for the future.

Download or read book Value in Ethics and Economics written by Elizabeth Anderson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995-08-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Anderson offers a new theory of value and rationality that rejects cost-benefit analysis in our social lives and in our ethical theories. This account of the plurality of values thus offers a new approach, beyond welfare economics and traditional theories of justice, for assessing the ethical limitations of the market. In this light, Anderson discusses several contemporary controversies involving the proper scope of the market, including commercial surrogate motherhood, privatization of public services, and the application of cost-benefit analysis to issues of environmental protection. Table of Contents: Preface 1. A Pluralist Theory of Value A Rational Attitude Theory of Value Ideals and Self-Assessment How Goods Differ in Kind (I): Different Modes of Valuation How Goods Differ in Kind (II): Social Relations of Realization 2. An Expressive Theory of Rational Action Value and Rational Action The Framing of Decisions The Extrinsic Value of States of Affairs Consequentialism Practical Reason and the Unity of the Self 3. Pluralism and Incommensurable Goods The Advantages of Consequentialism A Pragmatic Theory of Comparative Value Judgments Incommensurable Goods Rational Choice among Incommensurable Goods 4. Self-Understanding, the Hierarchy of Values, and Moral Constraints The Test of Self-Understanding The Hierarchy of Values Agent-Centered Restrictions Hybrid Consequentialism A Self-Effacing Theory of Practical Reason? 5. Criticism, Justification, and Common Sense A Pragmatic Account of Objectivity The Thick Conceptual Structure of the Space of Reasons How Common Sense Can Be Self-Critical Why We Should Ignore Skeptical Challenges to Common Sense 6. Monistic Theories of Value Monism Moore's Aesthetic Monism Hedonism Rational Desire Theory 7. The Ethical Limitations of the Market Pluralism, Freedom, and Liberal Politics The Ideals and Social Relations of the Modern Market Civil Society and the Market Personal Relations and the Market Political Goods and the Market The Limitations of Market Ideologies 8. Is Women's Labor a Commodity? The Case of Commercial Surrogate Motherhood Children as Commodities Women's Labor as a Commodity Contract Pregnancy and the Status of Women Contract Pregnancy, Freedom, and the Law 9. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Safety, and Environmental Quality Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Form of Commodification Autonomy, Labor Markets, and the Value of Life Citizens, Consumers, and the Value of the Environment Toward Democratic Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis Conclusion Notes References Index Reviews of this book: Anderson/auhtor is anxious to combat what she sees as a tendency for commercial values to invade areas of human life where they do not belong...A useful contribution to debate about the proper scope of the market. "Not everything is a commodity, insists Anderson, and her brief should shake up social science technocrats." DD--Philadelphia Inquirer "The book is rich in both argument and application." DD--Alan Hamlin, Times Higher Education Supplement "In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson's principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude 'economistic' reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy...This is an important book...For anyone interested in political philosophy this is essential reading." DD--A. J. Walsh, Australasian Journal of Philosophy --Hugo Dixon, Financial Times [UK] Reviews of this book: Not everything is a commodity, insists Anderson, and her brief should shake up social science technocrats. --Philadelphia Inquirer Reviews of this book: The book is rich in both argument and application. --Alan Hamlin, Times Higher Education Supplement Reviews of this book: In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson's principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude 'economistic' reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy...This is an important book...For anyone interested in political philosophy this is essential reading. --A. J. Walsh, Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Download or read book The Moral Landscape written by Sam Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

Download or read book People Economics written by Laura Queen and published by Middle Market Press. This book was released on 2021-10-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shatters the barriers between traditional Finance and Human Resources by demonstrating that People Economics is a win-win for both companies and their employees. There have been many attempts to bring clarity to the term 'human capital', People Economics breaks through with common language and a relevant framework. The stories, real-life examples and calculable metrics provide tangible ways to bring human capital measurement to life. ESG and sustainability reporting, corporate transparency and disclosure of human capital measures are rapidly gaining prominence for investors, analysts, regulators and consumers. The United States lags other nations in this field; People Economics offers a path to rapidly accelerate understanding of this complex and challenging arena. It is an essential reference for investors, executives, human resources and finance professionals, and business educators.