Author: Sam Harris Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439171238 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 399
Book Description
New York Times Bestseller: “Makes a powerful case for a morality that is based on human flourishing and thoroughly enmeshed with science and rationality.” —Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists—agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the primary justification for religious faith. In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In his view, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at an increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our “culture wars,” Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation. “Backed by copious empirical evidence.” —Scientific American “I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have already discovered that they can’t duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhilaratingly upside down.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene
Author: Nathan Wood Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1498585337 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 175
Book Description
Virtue ethics occupies the strange position of being one of the oldest and most prominently discussed ethical theories throughout history, and yet many contemporary moral philosophers do not recognize it as a genuine alternative to currently prominent normative theories, such as utilitarianism or Kantian ethics. In Virtue Rediscovered: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics in the Contemporary Moral Landscape, Nathan Wood argues that this discrepancy requires us to rethink how we understand the function and purpose of normative ethical theories, especially insofar as such theories are expected to be action guiding. All ethical theories guide action, but they do so in two different ways. One way is through stipulating criteria for what we ought to do, but another way is setting a core concern that represents an account of what lies at the heart of morality and determines the moral salience of features in the world. This framework not only clarifies the nature of deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, but also recasts the debate among them.
Author: Josephine Carubia Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134300832 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
This volume, a feminist inquiry into the landscape, provides a bridge between feminist discussions of space and place and landscape interpretations.
Author: Dr Jai Galliott Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN: 1472426622 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
Philosophers have wrestled over the morality and ethics of war for nearly as long as human beings have been waging it. The death and destruction that unmanned warfare entails magnifies the moral and ethical challenges we face in conventional warfare and everyday society. This book provides a comprehensive and unifying analysis of the moral, political and social questions concerning the rise of drone warfare.
Author: Michael Shermer Publisher: Henry Holt and Company ISBN: 0805096930 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 560
Book Description
Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people, and society as a whole, more moral From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics, and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In The Moral Arc, Shermer will explain how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepticism--scientific ways of thinking--have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever closer to a more just world.
Author: Sam Harris Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062857800 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 435
Book Description
A New York Times New and Noteworthy Book From the bestselling author of Waking Up and The End of Faith, an adaptation of his wildly popular, often controversial podcast “Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, unafraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. With his literate intelligence and fluency with words, he brings out the best in his guests, including those with whom he disagrees.” -- Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene “Civilization rests on a series of successful conversations.” —Sam Harris Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher, and bestselling author—has been exploring some of the most important questions about the human mind, society, and current events on his podcast, Making Sense. With over one million downloads per episode, these discussions have clearly hit a nerve, frequently walking a tightrope where either host or guest—and sometimes both—lose their footing, but always in search of a greater understanding of the world in which we live. For Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or controversial, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress. This book includes a dozen of the best conversations from Making Sense, including talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glenn Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically. Together they shine a light on what it means to “make sense” in the modern world.
Author: Joshua Greene Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0143126059 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 434
Book Description
“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.
Author: Arthur Kleinman Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520950518 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
Deep China investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua delve into intimate and sometimes hidden areas of personal life and social practice to observe and narrate the drama of Chinese individualization. The essays explore the remaking of the moral person during China’s profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and struggles of contemporary life.
Author: Sam Harris Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451683405 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Author: Sam Harris
Author: Sam Harris
Author: Nathan Wood
Author: Josephine Carubia
Author: Dr Jai Galliott
Author: Michael Shermer
Author: Sam Harris
Author: Joshua Greene
Author: Arthur Kleinman
Author: Sam Harris