Download or read book Evolutionary Moral Realism written by Michael Stingl and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against standard approaches to evolution and ethics, this book develops the idea that moral values may find their origin in regularly recurring features in the cooperative environments of species of organisms that are social and intelligent. Across a wide range of species that are social and intelligent, possibilities arise for helping others, responding empathetically to the needs of others, and playing fairly. The book identifies these underlying environmental regularities as biological natural kinds and as natural moral values. As natural kinds, moral values help to provide more complete explanations for the selection of traits that arise in response to them. For example, helping in an aquatic environment is quite different than helping in an arboreal environment, and so we can expect the selection of traits for helping to reflect these underlying environmental differences. With the human ability to name, talk, and reason about important features of our environment, moral values become part of moral discourse and argument, helping to produce coherent systems of moral thought. Combining a naturalistic approach to morality with an equal emphasis on moral argument and truth, this book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of biology, theoretical biologists, comparative psychologists, and moral philosophers.
Download or read book The Evolution of Morality written by Richard Joyce and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007-08-24 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.
Download or read book Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics written by Johan De Smedt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers have called for the study of morality to be naturalized, i.e., to explain it in terms of natural causes by looking at its historical and biological origins. The present literature has focused on the link between evolution and moral realism: if our moral beliefs enhance fitness, does this mean they track moral truths? In spite of the growing empirical evidence, these discussions tend to remain high-level: the mere fact that morality has evolved is often deemed enough to decide questions in normative and meta-ethics. This volume starts from the assumption that the details about the evolution of morality do make a difference, and asks how. It presents original essays by authors from various disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, developmental psychology, and primatology, who write in conversation with neuroscience, sociology, and cognitive psychology.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics written by Michael Ruse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces readers to the application of evolutionary ideas to moral thinking and justification, presenting contrasting perspectives on controversial issues.
Download or read book Life and Evolution written by Lorenzo Baravalle and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-10 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers to the international reader a collection of original articles of some of the most skillful historians and philosophers of biology currently working in Latin American universities. During the last decades, increasing attention has been paid in Latin America to the history and philosophy of biology, but since many local authors prefer to write in Spanish or in Portuguese, their ideas have barely crossed the boundaries of the continent. This volume aims to remedy this state of things, providing a good sample of this production to the English speaking readers, bringing together contributions from researchers working in Brazilian, Argentinean, Chilean, Colombian and Mexican universities. The stress on the regional provenance of the authors is not intended to suggest the existence of something like a Latin American history and philosophy of biology, supposedly endowed with distinctive features. On the contrary, the editors firmly believe that advances in this field can be achieved only by stimulating the integration in the international debate. Based on this assumption, the book focuses on two topics, life and evolution, and presents a selection of contributions addressing issues such as the history of the concept of life, the philosophical reflection on life manipulation and life extension, the structure and development of evolutionary theory as well as human evolution. Life and Evolution – Latin American Essays on the History and Philosophy of Biology will provide the international reader with a rather complete picture of the ongoing research in the history and philosophy of biology in Latin America, offering a snapshot of this dynamic community. It will also contribute to contextualize and develop the debate concerning life and evolution, and the relation between the two phenomena.
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 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 Compassionate Moral Realism written by Colin Marshall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colin Marshall offers a ground-up defense of objective morality, drawing inspiration from a wide range of philosophers, including John Locke, Arthur Schopenhauer, Iris Murdoch, Nel Noddings, and David Lewis. Marshall's core claim is compassion is our capacity to perceive other creatures' pains, pleasures, and desires. Non-compassionate people are therefore perceptually lacking, regardless of how much factual knowledge they might have. Marshall argues that people who do have this form of compassion thereby fit a familiar paradigm of moral goodness. His argument involves the identification of an epistemic good which Marshall dubs "being in touch". To be in touch with some property of a thing requires experiencing it in a way that reveals that property - that is, experiencing it as it is in itself. Only compassion, Marshall argues, lets us be in touch with others' motivational mental properties. This conclusion about compassion has two important metaethical consequences. First, it generates an answer to the question "Why be moral?", which has been a central philosophical concern since Plato. Second, it provides the keystone for a novel form of moral realism. This form of moral realism has a distinctive set of virtues: it is anti-relativist, naturalist, and able to identify a necessary connection between moral representation and motivation. The view also implies that there is an epistemic asymmetry between virtuous and vicious agents, according to which only morally good people can fully face reality.
Download or read book Taking Morality Seriously written by David Enoch and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-07-28 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view—according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths—is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive—defending Robust Realism against traditional objections—it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections. The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here—the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)—are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.
Download or read book An Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics written by Scott M. James and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering the first general introductory text to this subject, the timely Introduction to Evolutionary Ethics reflects the most up-to-date research and current issues being debated in both psychology and philosophy. The book presents students to the areas of cognitive psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics. The first general introduction to evolutionary ethics Provides a comprehensive survey of work in three distinct areas of research: cognitive psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics Presents the most up-to-date research available in both psychology and philosophy Written in an engaging and accessible style for undergraduates and the interested general reader Discusses the evolution of morality, broadening its relevance to those studying psychology
Download or read book Evolutionary Ethics written by Neil Levy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An increasing number of philosophers and scientists believe that moral judgment and behaviour emerged because it enhanced the fitness of our distant ancestors. This volume collects together key articles in the discussion as to whether human morality is a product of evolution, as well as papers which examine its implications.
Download or read book Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief written by Michael Bergmann and published by Berkeley Tanner Lectures. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen original essays by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists explore the challenges to moral and religious belief posed by disagreement and evolution. The collection represents both sceptical and non-skeptical positions about morality and religion, cultivates new insights, and moves the discussion forward in illuminating ways.
Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Download or read book Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics written by David Owen Brink and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-02-24 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic analysis considers the objectivity of ethics, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalist worldview and its role in a person's rational lifespan.
Download or read book The Price of Compassion written by Michael Stingl and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2010-05-12 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important book includes a compelling selection of original essays on euthanasia and associated legislative and health care issues, together with important background material for understanding and assessing the arguments of these essays. The book explores a central strand in the debate over medically assisted death, the so called "slippery slope" argument. The focus of the book is on one particularly important aspect of the downward slope of this argument: hastening the death of those individuals who appear to be suffering greatly from their medical condition but are unable to request that we do anything about that suffering because of their diminished mental capacities. Slippery slope concerns have been raised in many countries, including Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. This book concentrates most of its attention on the latter two countries. Stingl divides the book into four parts. Part I lays out the relevant public policies in the form of legal judgments, making them the philosophical point of departure for readers. Part II discusses the ever-present slippery slope objection to assisted suicide and other forms of euthanasia. Parts III and IV examine the role of social factors and political structures in determining the morality and legalization of voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia. These sections are especially valuable. The inclusion of a selection of papers on the relationship between the morality and legality of euthanasia and systems of health care delivery is of particular interest, especially to those who want to make statistical, legal and moral comparisons between the USA and Canada.
Download or read book Varieties of Moral Personality written by Owen Flanagan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Owen Flanagan argues in this book for a more psychologically realistic ethical reflection and spells out the ways in which psychology can enrich moral philosophy. Beginning with a discussion of such “moral saints” as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Oskar Schindler, Flanagan charts a middle course between an ethics that is too realistic and socially parochial and one that is too idealistic, giving no weight to our natures.
Download or read book Moral Disagreement written by Folke Tersman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-13 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Folke Tersman explores the nature of moral thinking by examining moral disagreement.
