What It Means To Be Moral

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What It Means to Be Moral

Author : Phil Zuckerman
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1640094245
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis What It Means to Be Moral by : Phil Zuckerman

Download or read book What It Means to Be Moral written by Phil Zuckerman and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A thoughtful perspective on humans' capacity for moral behavior.” —Kirkus Reviews “A comprehensive introduction to religious skepticism.” —Publishers Weekly In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others. By deconstructing religious arguments for God–based morality and guiding readers through the premises and promises of secular morality, Zuckerman argues that the major challenges facing the world today—from global warming and growing inequality to religious support for unethical political policies to gun violence and terrorism—are best approached from a nonreligious ethical framework. In short, we need to look to our fellow humans and within ourselves for moral progress and ethical action. “In this brilliant, provocative, and timely book, Phil Zuckerman breaks down the myth that our morality comes from religion—compellingly making the case that when it comes to the biggest challenges we face today, a secular approach is the only truly moral one.” —Ali A. Rizvi, author of The Atheist Muslim

Why be Moral?

Author : Kai Nielsen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Why be Moral? by : Kai Nielsen

Download or read book Why be Moral? written by Kai Nielsen and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted philosopher Kai Nielsen offers an answer to this fundamental question - a question that reaches in to grasp at the very heart of ethics itself. Essentially, this innocent inquiry masks a confusion that so many of us get caught in as we think about moral issues. We fail to realize that there is a difference between judging human behavior within an ethical context, or set of moral principles, and justifying the principles themselves. According to Nielsen, it is precisely this basic muddle that has spawned all sorts of challenges to morality, from relativism and intuitionism to egoism and skepticism. Nielsen first argues the case for these challenges in the strongest possible terms; then he shows that their failure to establish themselves demonstrates a fundamental flaw - an inability to understand what it means to have good reasons for the moral claims we make. In his search for "good reasons," Nielsen must face the innocent question "Why be moral?" He tries to show us that skirmishes among supporters of specific moral principles require a different sort of resolution than those that occur between groups of ethical principles. Justifying an action within a moral point of view is quite different from making the case for having a moral point of view in the first place. In its relentless search for the very basis of morality and the limits of moral justification, Why Be Moral? outlines the essential questions that will help us clear away confusion. Nielsen's approach will interest and delight informed readers and professionals alike. This vital work addresses itself to thoughtful people everywhere who are perplexed about morality and about the foundations of the moral life.

The Moral Landscape

Author : Sam Harris
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 143917122X
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Moral Landscape by : Sam Harris

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.

Living the Secular Life

Author : Phil Zuckerman
Publisher : Penguin Books
ISBN 13 : 0143127934
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis Living the Secular Life by : Phil Zuckerman

Download or read book Living the Secular Life written by Phil Zuckerman and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sociology professor examines the demographic shift that has led more Americans than ever before to embrace a nonreligious life and highlights the inspirational stories and beliefs that empower modern-day secular culture.

Consciousness and Moral Status

Author : Joshua Shepherd
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315396327
Total Pages : 150 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (153 download)

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Book Synopsis Consciousness and Moral Status by : Joshua Shepherd

Download or read book Consciousness and Moral Status written by Joshua Shepherd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-23 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

What Is a Person?

Author : Christian Smith
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226765946
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis What Is a Person? by : Christian Smith

Download or read book What Is a Person? written by Christian Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The task of understanding human beings, what we ourselves are, our constitution and condition, is a perennial problem in philosophy and related disciplines. Smith argues here that our understanding of human persons is threatened by technological development and capricious academic theories alike, seeking to deny or relativize the personhood of humanity. Smith's book puts a stake in the ground, in defense of a view of the human that is genuinely humanistic in the traditional sense and capable of sustaining with intellectual coherence things like modern human rights and universal benevolence.

Society Without God

Author : Phil Zuckerman
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814797237
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Society Without God by : Phil Zuckerman

Download or read book Society Without God written by Phil Zuckerman and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-06-07 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are lawyers, by their very nature, agents of the state, of capital, of institutions of power? Or are there ways in which they can work constructively or transformatively for the disempowered, the working class, the underprivileged? Lawyers in a Postmodern World explores how lawyers actively create the forms of power which they and others deploy. Through engaging case studies, the book examines how lawyers work within and for powerful institutions and provides suggestions--both general and practical--for ways in which the practice of law can be made to work with and for the powerless. Individuals chapters address such subjects as the contradictions of radical law practice; legal work in South Africa; the economics and politics of negotiating justice; feminist legal scholarship and women's gendered lives; the overlapping worlds of law, business, and politics; theories of legal practice; and how lawyers are constitutive of gender relations. Contributing to the book are Maureen Cain (University of West Indies), Yves Dezalay (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), Martha Fineman (Columbia University), Sue Lees (University of North London), Doreen McBarnet (Wolfson College, Oxford), Frank Munger (SUNY, Buffalo), Wilfried Scharf (University of Cape Town), Stuart Scheingold (University of Washington), David Sugarman (Lancaster University), and Sally Wheeler (University of Nottingham).

Moral Tribes

Author : Joshua Greene
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143126059
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis Moral Tribes by : Joshua Greene

Download or read book Moral Tribes written by Joshua Greene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-12-30 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.

The Good Life

Author : Cheryl Mendelson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1608198359
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis The Good Life by : Cheryl Mendelson

Download or read book The Good Life written by Cheryl Mendelson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Good Life is a deeply reasoned but entertaining polemic about how the notion of morality has been co-opted by the political right, as the culture increasingly embraces the shallow charms of celebrity, gives a pass when it comes to failings in the realm of marital fidelity, and lives comfortably with the notion that we are all driven, more or less, by greed and the desire for power over others. Mendelson, who is for gay rights, sexual equality, labor unions, and the strong regulation of business and finance, is decidedly conservative when it comes to personal morality. She believes that while the right manages to effectively portray its opponents as socialist slackers, it claims a moral superiority it doesn't at all exhibit, lacking, as she says, moral compassion, one of the essential moral virtues. Provocative, inspiring, and deeply grounded, The Good Life shows that while the moral life is a hard road, the more of us who recognize that it is out there to be attempted, the better our culture will be.

Moral Imagination

Author : Mark Johnson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022622323X
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Moral Imagination by : Mark Johnson

Download or read book Moral Imagination written by Mark Johnson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.

A Decent Life

Author : Todd May
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022678634X
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis A Decent Life by : Todd May

Download or read book A Decent Life written by Todd May and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we lead a fundamentally decent life without taking such drastic steps? Todd May has answers. He's not the sort of philosopher who tells us we have to be model citizens who display perfect ethics in every decision we make. He's realistic: he understands that living up to ideals is a constant struggle. May leads readers through the traditional philosophical bases of a number of arguments about what ethics asks of us, then he develops a more reasonable and achievable way of thinking about them, one that shows us how we can use philosophical insights to participate in the complicated world around us.

The Moral Compass

Author : Lindsay J. Thompson
Publisher : IAP
ISBN 13 : 1607520575
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (75 download)

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Book Synopsis The Moral Compass by : Lindsay J. Thompson

Download or read book The Moral Compass written by Lindsay J. Thompson and published by IAP. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Moral Compass presents a model of morality as a guide to values-based leadership. In a free, pluralist society, diverse stakeholders with competing moral claims present serious challenges to the strategic momentum of business, government, NGOs, and community organizations. Leaders need to know how to manage these challenges effectively. The Moral Compass is their guide. As recent history has repeatedly demonstrated, leaders who avoid, impose, or gloss over the centrality of values in realizing a strategic vision can produce severely flawed outcomes such as loss of confidence, corruption, and market failure. The Moral Compass provides leaders with effective tools to manage this complex, strategic environment by engaging directly with stakeholders to clarify and articulate normative values without privileging or diminishing specific moral traditions. The Moral Compass is rich blend of scholarship, practical wisdom, and usable tools. It is a readable, accessible book that draws from a range of scholarship in humanities, business, science, and social sciences to explain the dynamics of human morality. Academically oriented readers will find intellectually challenging resources and references. Pragmatic readers will be able to use this knowledge to cultivate a robust personal moral compass as a leadership tool for building ethical teams, practice groups, and organizational cultures, for framing and managing moral dilemmas, and for conducting an ethical discernment and decisionmaking process. Ethics in business and leadership studies is emerging as a rich field for scholarship. As an active business faculty member in the field, Dr Thompson is familiar with the published literature of colleagues in the Society for Business Ethics, the International Society for Business Ethics and Economics, the Academy of Management, and the American Philosophical Association. As a blend of theory and practice, The Moral Compass is unique among business ethics books in providing a framework for including and managing the volatility of ethical issues arising from tensions between traditional religious and modern secular morality. Rather than avoid these conflicts, the book anchors their source in the inherent complexity of human neurochemistry, individuation, and socialization as a context for moral meaning and conscience. The book includes numerous exercises in reflection, dialogue, and discernment that enable readers to find common moral ground with people from divergent wisdom traditions. The book synthesizes a wide range of knowledge in a presenting practical model for moral discernment, dialogue, and decision making.

Moral Failure

Author : Lisa Tessman
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199396140
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Moral Failure by : Lisa Tessman

Download or read book Moral Failure written by Lisa Tessman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality asks what happens when the sense that "I must" collides with the realization that "I can't." Bringing together philosophical and empirical work in moral psychology, Lisa Tessman here examines moral requirements that are non-negotiable and that contravene the principle that "ought implies can." In some cases, it is because two non-negotiable requirements conflict that one of them becomes impossible to satisfy, and yet remains binding. In other cases, performing a particular action may be non-negotiably required -- even if it is impossible -- because not performing the action is unthinkable. After offering both conceptual and empirical explanations of the experience of impossible moral requirements and the ensuing failures to fulfill them, Tessman considers what to make of such experience, and in particular, what role such experience has in the construction of value and of moral authority. According to the constructivist account that the book proposes, some moral requirements can be authoritative even when they are impossible to fulfill. Tessman points out a tendency to not acknowledge the difficulties that impossible moral requirements and unavoidable moral failures create in moral life, and traces this tendency through several different literatures, from scholarship on Holocaust testimony to discussions of ideal and nonideal theory, from theories of supererogation to debates about moral demandingness and to feminist care ethics.

Against Moral Responsibility

Author : Bruce N. Waller
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262016591
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Against Moral Responsibility by : Bruce N. Waller

Download or read book Against Moral Responsibility written by Bruce N. Waller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vigorous attack on moral responsibility in all its forms argues that the abolition of moral responsibility will be liberating and beneficial. In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms—including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts—is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want—natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities—would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.

The Definition of Morality

Author : G. Wallace
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000078272
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Definition of Morality by : G. Wallace

Download or read book The Definition of Morality written by G. Wallace and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-20 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1970, the papers in this volume discuss the essential and defining characteristics of morality and moral issues and examine how moral views differ from political views, moral beliefs from religious beliefs, and moral judgements from aesthetic judgements. Some of the chapters discuss problems of method and shed light on the complex conditions which any successful definition of morality must satisfy. Taken collectively, these papers reflect he wide variety of approaches adopted by contemporary philosophers.

Moral Dimensions

Author : T. M. Scanlon
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674057457
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Moral Dimensions by : T. M. Scanlon

Download or read book Moral Dimensions written by T. M. Scanlon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibility may seem to depend on the agentÕs reasons for performing an action. For example, there seems to be an important moral difference between tactical bombing and a campaign by terroristsÑeven if the same number of non-combatants are killedÑand this difference may seem to lie in the agentsÕ respective aims. However, Scanlon argues that the apparent dependence of permissibility on the agentÕs reasons in such cases is merely a failure to distinguish between two kinds of moral assessment: assessment of the permissibility of an action and assessment of the way an agent decided what to do. Distinguishing between these two forms of assessment leads Scanlon to an important distinction between the permissibility of an action and its meaning: the significance for others of the agentÕs willingness to act in this way. An actionÕs meaning depends on the agentÕs reasons for performing it in a way that its permissibility does not. Blame, he argues, is a response to the meaning of an action rather than its permissibility. This analysis leads to a novel account of the conditions of moral responsibility and to important conclusions about the ethics of blame.

Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

Author : Julian Baggini
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780192804242
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Atheism: A Very Short Introduction by : Julian Baggini

Download or read book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction written by Julian Baggini and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-26 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you think of atheists as immoral pessimists who live their lives without meaning, purpose, or values? Think again! Atheism: A Very Short Introduction sets out to dispel the myths that surround atheism and show how a life without religious belief can be positive, meaningful, and moral.