Evolutionary Debunking Arguments

Author : Hanno Sauer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108423698
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Debunking Arguments in Ethics written by Hanno Sauer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers the first book-length discussion of debunking arguments in ethics and the reliability of moral judgment.

Author : Richard Joyce
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262263254
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Lorenzo Baravalle
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030395898
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Michael Ruse
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107132959
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Justin Clarke-Doane
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192556800
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Joshua May
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192539604
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind written by Joshua May and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Peter Königs
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 311075021X
Total Pages : 166 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Problems for Moral Debunkers written by Peter Königs and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-02-21 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike.

Author : Thomas Pölzler
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351383337
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences written by Thomas Pölzler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there objective moral truths (things that are morally right or wrong independently of what anybody thinks about them)? To answer this question more and more scholars have recently begun to appeal to evidence from scientific disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, biology, and anthropology. This book investigates this novel scientific approach in a comprehensive, empirically focused, partly clarificatory, and partly metatheoretical way. It argues for two main theses. First, it is possible for the empirical sciences to contribute to the moral realism/anti-realism debate. And second, most appeals to science that have so far been proposed are insufficiently empirically substantiated. The book’s main chapters address four prominent science-based arguments for or against the existence of objective moral truths: the presumptive argument, the argument from moral disagreement, the sentimentalist argument, and the evolutionary debunking argument. For each of these arguments Thomas Pölzler first identifies the sense in which its underlying empirical hypothesis would have to be true in order for the argument to work. Then he shows that the available scientific evidence fails to support this hypothesis. Finally, he also makes suggestions as to how to test the hypothesis more validly in future scientific research. Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences is an important contribution to the moral realism/anti-realism debate that will appeal both to philosophers and scientists interested in moral psychology and metaethics.

Author : Alvin Plantinga
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0195078632
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Warrant and Proper Function written by Alvin Plantinga and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author argues that what is crucial to turning true belief into knowledge is the 'proper functioning' of one's cognitive faculties, and this clears the way for the proposal that a belief is warranted whenever it is the product of properly functioning cognitive processes.

Author : D. Jason Slone
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350033707
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cognitive Science of Religion written by D. Jason Slone and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cognitive Science of Religion introduces students to key empirical studies conducted over the past 25 years in this new and rapidly expanding field. In these studies, cognitive scientists of religion have applied the theories, findings and research tools of the cognitive sciences to understanding religious thought, behaviour and social dynamics. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar, and summarizes in non-technical language the original empirical study conducted by the scholar. No prior or statistical knowledge is presumed, and studies included range from the classic to the more recent and innovative cases. Students will learn about the theories that cognitive scientists have employed to explain recurrent features of religiosity across cultures and historical eras, how scholars have tested those theories, and what the results of those tests have revealed and suggest. Written to be accessible to undergraduates, this provides a much-needed survey of empirical studies in the cognitive science of religion.