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In this volume, leading philosophers advance our understanding of a wide range of moral issues and positions, from analysis of competing normative theories to questions of how we should act and live well.
This collection contains some of the best new work being done on the subject of character in philosophy, theology, and psychology. From a virtual reality simulation of the Milgram shock experiments to an understanding of the virtue of modesty in Muslim societies, these 31 chapters significantly advance our understanding of character.
Rational Intuition explores the concept of intuition as it relates to rationality through mediums of history, philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology.
Edited by David Rondel and Samir Chopra, The Moral Psychology of Anxiety presents new work on the causes, consequences, and value of anxiety. Straddling philosophy, psychology, clinical medicine, history, and other disciplines, the chapters in this volume explore anxiety from an impressively wide range of perspectives. The first part is more historical, exploring the meaning of anxiety in different philosophical traditions and historical periods, including ancient Chinese Confucianism, twentieth-century European existentialism, and the Roman Stoics. The second part focuses on a cluster of questions having to do with anxiety’s nature and significance: Is anxiety something biological or cult...
The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral thought and action, we're told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, shows the pervasive role played by reason our moral minds, and ultimately defuses sweeping debunking arguments in ethics. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don't come easily. However, despite the heavy influence of automatic and unconscious processes that have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we needn't reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed or in need of serious repair. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but a special pessimism about morality in particular is unwarranted. Moral judgment and motivation are fundamentally rational enterprises not beholden to the passions.
Michael Slote argues that emotion is involved in all human thought and action on conceptual grounds, rather than merely being causally connected with other aspects of the mind. This kind of general sentimentalism about the mind goes beyond that advocated by Hume, and the book's main arguments are only partially anticipated in German Romanticism and in the Chinese philosophical tendency to avoid rigid distinctions between thought and emotion. The new sentimentalist philosophy of mind Slote proposes can solve important problems about the nature of belief and action that other approaches -- including Pragmatism -- fail to address. In arguing for the centrality of emotion within philosophy of the mind, A Sentimentalist Theory of the Mind continues the critique of rationalist philosophical views that began with Slote's Moral Sentimentalism (OUP, 2010) and continued in his From Enlightenment to Receptivity (OUP, 2013). This new book also delves into what is distinctive about human minds, arguing that there is a greater variety to ordinary human motives than has been recognized and that emotions play a central role in this complex psychology.
Since immemorial times, persons have been engaged in disputes in metaphysics. This book reacts to this fact by supporting five theses. Thesis 1 is that disputes are micro-wars that have a significant social importance; they involve conflicting parties who may resort to some kind of violence and depend on normative factors. Thesis 2 is that disputes can be approached from right-wing or left-wing stances. Thesis 3 is that the grounds for endorsing an approach to a dispute are problematic starting points that may be rationally rejected. Thesis 4 is that disputes have an incommensurable greatness. Thesis 5 is that right-wing approaches to disputes may be less appealing than the left-wing one championed by the book for those who endorse that one is to avoid expressing “subtle” violence. This is the violence expressed by those who suggest that others who disagree with one’s criteria to deal with disputes fall short of logos or act as if such others did not exist.
Is it good to be trusting, or should we be wary of trusting others? Trust seems to be the basis of large-scale social cooperation and even of democracy itself, but in recent years many commentators and researchers have lamented the dawn of a post-trust era. Edited by David Collins, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, and Mark Alfano, The Moral Psychology of Trust examines trust from a variety of perspectives in philosophy and the social sciences. The contributors explore topics such as the nature of trust and its connection to a range of other emotions, conditions under which it is good to be trusting and trustworthy, and what role trust might play in our intellectual, moral, and political lives. The chapters apply theoretical perspectives on trust to a number of issues of current concern, including how trust can and should function in conditions of social oppression, trust and technology, trust and conspiracy theories, the place of trust in medical ethics, and the ethics of trust in a variety of interpersonal relationships.
Desires are central to our lives, yet we rarely understand them. What are they? And are they motivational or evaluative states? Should philosophy adopt an alternative picture entirely? Answering these questions is vital to a number of issues in philosophy of mind and ethics. This volume comprehensively explores this neglected, albeit crucial, dimension of the mind.
The relatively new movement of Experimental Philosophy applies different systematic experimental methods to further illuminate classical philosophical issues. This book brings together experts from the field to give the reader a compact yet extensive overview, offering a ready at hand introduction to the state of the art.