Download or read book Selfishness Altruism and Rationality written by Howard Margolis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1984-10-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we volunteer time? Why do we contribute money? Why, even, do we vote, if the effect of a single vote is negligible? Rationality-based microeconomic models are hard-pressed to explain such social behavior, but Howard Margolis proposes a solution. He suggests that within each person there are two selves, one selfish and the other group-oriented, and that the individual follows a Darwinian rule for allocating resources between those two selves. "Howard Margolis's intriguing ideas . . . provide an alternative to the crude models of rational choice that have dominated economics and political science for too long."—Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Selfishness Altruism and Money written by Antonio Luigi Paolilli and published by Scientific Research Publishing, Inc. USA. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book I present a study about the human economic relations, at the light of what I believe to be their main factors: selfishness, altruism in its various forms and then the aptitude to cooperation and to exchange. After a short comparison between social insects and human societies, I identify a peculiar instrument of human relations: money. I explain why money cannot be considered neutral and how it is the basis of the functioning of an economic system, often determining its behaviors and results.

Download or read book Selfish Altruism and Money written by Antonio Luigi Paolilli and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Compassionate Instinct The Science of Human Goodness written by Dacher Keltner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-01-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scientists and science writers reflect on the life-changing, perspective-changing, new science of human goodness. In these pages you will hear from Steven Pinker, who asks, “Why is there peace?”; Robert Sapolsky, who examines violence among primates; Paul Ekman, who talks with the Dalai Lama about global compassion; Daniel Goleman, who proposes “constructive anger”; and many others. Led by renowned psychologist Dacher Keltner, the Greater Good Science Center, based at the University of California in Berkeley, has been at the forefront of the positive psychology movement, making discoveries about how and why people do good. Four times a year the center publishes its findings with essays on forgiveness, moral inspiration, and everyday ethics in Greater Good magazine. The best of these writings are collected here for the first time. A collection of personal stories and empirical research, The Compassionate Instinct will make you think not only about what it means to be happy and fulfilled but also about what it means to lead an ethical and compassionate life.

Download or read book The Selfish Altruist written by Tony Vaux and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2013 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an analysis of some of the most traumatic situations involving famine and war of the last two decades, helping us to understand what it takes to be an aid worker and how important humanitarian action is today. Famine and war evoke strong emotional reactions, and for most people there is a limited amount they can do. But the relief worker has to convert emotional responses into practical action and difficult choices - whom to help and how. Their own feelings have to motivate action for others. But can they separate out their own selfish feelings and prejudices in such an emotive climat.

Download or read book The Virtue of Selfishness written by Ayn Rand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1964-11-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays that sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's controversial, groundbreaking philosophy. Since their initial publication, Rand's fictional works—Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged—have had a major impact on the intellectual scene. The underlying theme of her famous novels is her philosophy, a new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that offers a robust challenge to altruist-collectivist thought. Known as Objectivism, her divisive philosophy holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature. In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness. More Than 1 Million Copies Sold!

Download or read book The Price of Altruism George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness written by Oren Harman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-06-20 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat.

Download or read book The Life You Can Save written by Peter Singer and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2010 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that for the first time in history we're in a position to end extreme poverty throughout the world, both because of our unprecedented wealth and advances in technology, therefore we can no longer consider ourselves good people unless we give more to the poor. Reprint.

Download or read book Does Altruism Exist written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that altruism is an inherent factor of group functionality and discusses how studying group function can promote positive changes to the human condition.

Download or read book In Defense of Selfishness written by Peter Schwartz and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From childhood, we're taught one central, non-controversial idea about morality: self-sacrifice is a virtue. It is universally accepted that serving the needs of others, rather than our own, is the essence of morality. To be ethical—it is believed—is to be altruistic. Questioning this belief is regarded as tantamount to questioning the self-evident. Here, Peter Schwartz questions it. In Defense of Selfishness refutes widespread misconceptions about the meaning of selfishness and of altruism. Basing his arguments on Ayn Rand's ethics of rational self-interest, Schwartz demonstrates that genuine selfishness is not exemplified by the brutal plundering of an Attila the Hun or the conniving duplicity of a Bernard Madoff. To the contrary, such people are acting against their actual, long-range interests. The truly selfish individual is committed to moral principles and lives an honest, productive, self-respecting life. He does not feed parasitically off other people. Instead, he renounces the unearned, and deals with others—in both the material and spiritual realms—by offering value for value, to mutual benefit. The selfish individual, Schwartz maintains, lives by reason, not force. He lives by production and trade, not by theft and fraud. He disavows the mindlessness of the do-whatever-you-feel-like emotionalist, and upholds rationality as his primary virtue. He takes pride in his achievements, and does not sacrifice himself to others—nor does he sacrifice others to himself. According to the code of altruism, however, you must embrace self-sacrifice. You must subordinate yourself to others. Altruism calls, not for cooperation and benevolence, but for servitude. It demands that you surrender your interests to the needs of others, that you regard serving others as the moral justification of your existence, that you be willing to suffer so that a non-you might benefit. To this, Schwartz asks simply: Why? Why should the fact that you have achieved any success make you indebted to those who haven't? Why does the fact that someone needs your money create a moral entitlement to it, while the fact that you've earned it, doesn't? Using vivid, real-life examples, In Defense of Selfishness illustrates the iniquity of requiring one man to serve the needs of another. This provocative book challenges readers to re-examine the standard by which they decide what is morally right or wrong.

Download or read book The Selfish Gene written by Richard Dawkins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

Download or read book The Altruistic Brain written by Donald W. Pfaff and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unlike any other study in its field, The Altruistic Brain synthesizes into one theory the most important research into how and why - by purely physical mechanisms - humans empathize with one another and respond altruistically."--Jacket.

Download or read book Standing at the Edge written by Joan Halifax and published by . This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This book is] an ... examination of how we can respond to suffering, live our fullest lives, and remain open to the full spectrum of our human experience"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book Social Psychology written by K.J. Gergen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 3. Greater sensitivity to European work: We have can cut common experience so close to the bone. long felt very close to European social psychol In the present volume we wish to share what we ogy, and the European responsiveness to the first believe to be some of the most significant and edition suggested that we were communicating stimulating insights to emerge from social psy with this audience. Further, there has been a chology, from its birth to the present. Our writ steadily increasing awareness among American ing has been guided in particular by the follow and Canadian social psychologists of significant mg concerns: work in Europe. We thus made a special effort in the second edition to reflect this work. No, we Theoretical coherence The emphasis on the did not succeed in capturing all the work of im oretical ideas begins in the first chapter; we portance. Space limitations and organizational compare the behaviorist, cognitive, and rule requirements also meant that work of many wor role orientations. We believe that these para thy colleagues in the United States and Canada digms form the generating context for subse was not included. However, we do feel that the quent chapters. We show how these perspectives present volume is superior to all others in its have influenced the questions that have been integration across continents. asked and the explanations that have been of fered for various kinds of social behavior.

Download or read book Cultivating Conscience written by Lynn Stout and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the science of unselfish behavior can promote law, order, and prosperity Contemporary law and public policy often treat human beings as selfish creatures who respond only to punishments and rewards. Yet every day we behave unselfishly—few of us mug the elderly or steal the paper from our neighbor's yard, and many of us go out of our way to help strangers. We nevertheless overlook our own good behavior and fixate on the bad things people do and how we can stop them. In this pathbreaking book, acclaimed law and economics scholar Lynn Stout argues that this focus neglects the crucial role our better impulses could play in society. Rather than lean on the power of greed to shape laws and human behavior, Stout contends that we should rely on the force of conscience. Stout makes the compelling case that conscience is neither a rare nor quirky phenomenon, but a vital force woven into our daily lives. Drawing from social psychology, behavioral economics, and evolutionary biology, Stout demonstrates how social cues—instructions from authorities, ideas about others' selfishness and unselfishness, and beliefs about benefits to others—have a powerful role in triggering unselfish behavior. Stout illustrates how our legal system can use these social cues to craft better laws that encourage more unselfish, ethical behavior in many realms, including politics and business. Stout also shows how our current emphasis on self-interest and incentives may have contributed to the catastrophic political missteps and financial scandals of recent memory by encouraging corrupt and selfish actions, and undermining society's collective moral compass. This book proves that if we care about effective laws and civilized society, the powers of conscience are simply too important for us to ignore.

Download or read book Pathological Altruism written by Barbara Oakley and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pathological Altruism is a groundbreaking new book - the first to explore the negative aspects of altruism and empathy, seemingly uniformly positive traits. In fact, pathological altruism, in the form of an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, may underpin some personality disorders. Hyperempathy - an excess of concern for what others think and how they feel - helps explain popular but poorly defined concepts such as codependency. The contributing authors of this book provide a scientific, social, and cultural foundation for the subject of pathological altruism, creating a new field of inquiry. Each author's approach points to one disturbing truth: what we value so much, the altruistic "good" side of human nature, can also have a dark side that we ignore at our peril.

Download or read book Atlas of Moral Psychology written by Kurt Gray and published by Guilford Publications. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 1195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive and cutting-edge volume maps out the terrain of moral psychology, a dynamic and evolving area of research. In 57 concise chapters, leading authorities and up-and-coming scholars explore fundamental issues and current controversies. The volume systematically reviews the empirical evidence base and presents influential theories of moral judgment and behavior. It is organized around the key questions that must be addressed for a complete understanding of the moral mind.