The Moral Authority Of Nature

Author : Lorraine Daston
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226136825
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Moral Authority of Nature written by Lorraine Daston and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. The Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the connection of cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as "against nature," race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome The Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal

Author : Lorraine Daston
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262353814
Total Pages : 88 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Against Nature written by Lorraine Daston and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders. Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the “is” of natural orders with the “ought” of moral orders. In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition—specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws—and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.

Author : Dale Dorsey
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198728905
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Limits of Moral Authority written by Dale Dorsey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dale Dorsey considers one of the most important questions in philosophical ethics: to what extent do the demands of morality have authority over us and our lives? He defends a position that runs counter to the traditional view, and argues that we are not required to conform to moral demands. Furthermore, doing so can be (quite literally) wrong.

Author : Richard T. De George
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Nature and Limits of Authority written by Richard T. De George and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Roger Lundin
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780742548404
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Nature to Experience written by Roger Lundin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Volume Two, the second of two volumes which describe techniques for the inspection of railroad track in the United States. Track inspection is described from the personal perspective of a retired railroad and Federal Railroad Administration track inspector. This volume covers rail flaws, crossties, continuous welded rail, and other structural conditions. Volume Two ends with a chapter on new automated inspection systems. The book is recommended for new and experienced railroad track inspectors and anyone interested in railroad track safety.

Author : I. Hunter
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1403919534
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty written by I. Hunter and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-06-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty new research by leading international scholars is brought to bear on a single crucial issue: the role of early modern natural law doctrines in reconstructing the relations between moral right and civil authority in the face of profound religious and political conflict. In addition to providing fresh insights into the hard-fought struggle to legitimate a desacralised civil order, the book also shows the degree to which the legitimacy of the modern secular state remains dependent on this decisive set of developments.

Author : Patricia S. Churchland
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691180970
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Braintrust written by Patricia S. Churchland and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality. Moral values, Churchland argues, are rooted in a behavior common to all mammals--the caring for offspring. The evolved structure, processes, and chemistry of the brain incline humans to strive not only for self-preservation but for the well-being of allied selves--first offspring, then mates, kin, and so on, in wider and wider "caring" circles. Separation and exclusion cause pain, and the company of loved ones causes pleasure; responding to feelings of social pain and pleasure, brains adjust their circuitry to local customs. In this way, caring is apportioned, conscience molded, and moral intuitions instilled. A key part of the story is oxytocin, an ancient body-and-brain molecule that, by decreasing the stress response, allows humans to develop the trust in one another necessary for the development of close-knit ties, social institutions, and morality. A major new account of what really makes us moral, Braintrust challenges us to reconsider the origins of some of our most cherished values.

Author : Marc D. Hauser
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061864781
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Minds written by Marc D. Hauser and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Harvard scientist illuminates the biological basis for human morality in this groundbreaking book. With the diversity of moral attitudes found across cultures around the globe, it is easy to assume that moral perspectives are socially developed—a matter of nurture rather than nature. But in Moral Minds, Marc Hauser presents compelling evidence to the contrary, and offers a revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct. Hauser argues that certain biologically innate moral principles propel us toward judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

Author : Peter J. Woodford
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022653992X
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Moral Meaning of Nature written by Peter J. Woodford and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, if anything, does biological evolution tell us about the nature of religion, ethical values, or even the meaning and purpose of life? The Moral Meaning of Nature sheds new light on these enduring questions by examining the significance of an earlier—and unjustly neglected—discussion of Darwin in late nineteenth-century Germany. We start with Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings staged one of the first confrontations with the Christian tradition using the resources of Darwinian thought. The lebensphilosophie, or “life-philosophy,” that arose from his engagement with evolutionary ideas drew responses from other influential thinkers, including Franz Overbeck, Georg Simmel, and Heinrich Rickert. These critics all offered cogent challenges to Nietzsche’s appropriation of the newly transforming biological sciences, his negotiation between science and religion, and his interpretation of the implications of Darwinian thought. They also each proposed alternative ways of making sense of Nietzsche’s unique question concerning the meaning of biological evolution “for life.” At the heart of the discussion were debates about the relation of facts and values, the place of divine purpose in the understanding of nonhuman and human agency, the concept of life, and the question of whether the sciences could offer resources to satisfy the human urge to discover sources of value in biological processes. The Moral Meaning of Nature focuses on the historical background of these questions, exposing the complex ways in which they recur in contemporary philosophical debate.

Author : Andy Scerri
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438472153
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Postpolitics and the Limits of Nature written by Andy Scerri and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores why past generations of radical ecological and social justice scholarship have been ineffective, and considers the work of a new wave of scholarship that aims to reinvent the radical project and combat injustice. In Postpolitics and the Limits of Nature, Andy Scerri offers a comprehensive overview of the critical theory project from the 1960s to the present, refracted through the lens of US politics and the American Left. He examines why past generations of radical ecological and social justice scholarship have been ineffective in the fight against injustice and rampant environmental exploitation. Scerri then engages a new wave of radicals and reformists who, in the wake of the Occupy movement and the 2016 presidential election, are reinventing the radical project as a challenge to injustice in the Anthropocene era. Along the way, he provides a fresh account of the thought of one of the major contributors to critical theory, Theodor Adorno, and of recent work that seeks to link Adorno’s ideas to the so-called new realism in political philosophy and political theory. Andy Scerri is Assistant Professor of Politics at Virginia Tech and author of Greening Citizenship: Sustainable Development, the State and Ideology.