What is the difference between right and wrong? This is no easy
question to answer, yet we constantly try to make it so, frequently
appealing to some hidden cache of cut-and-dried absolutes, whether
drawn from God, universal reason, or societal authority. Combining
cognitive science with a pragmatist philosophical framework
in Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the Perspective
of Cognitive Science, Mark Johnson argues that appealing solely to
absolute principles and values is not only scientifically unsound but
even morally suspect. He shows that the standards for the kinds of
people we should be and how we should treat one another—which we
often think of as universal—are in fact frequently subject to
change. And we should be okay with that. Taking context into
consideration, he offers a remarkably nuanced, naturalistic view of
ethics that sees us creatively adapt our standards according to given
needs, emerging problems, and social interactions.
Ethical naturalism is not just a revamped form
of relativism. Indeed, Johnson attempts to overcome the
absolutist-versus-relativist impasse that has been one of the most
intractable problems in the history of philosophy. He does so through
a careful and inclusive look at the many ways we reason about right
and wrong. Much of our moral thought, he shows, is automatic and
intuitive, gut feelings that we follow up and attempt to justify with
rational analysis and argument. However, good moral deliberation is
not limited merely to intuitive judgments supported after the fact by
reasoning. Johnson points out a crucial third element:
we imagine how our decisions will play out, how we or the world
would change with each action we might take. Plumbing this imaginative
dimension of moral reasoning, he provides a psychologically
sophisticated view of moral problem solving, one perfectly suited for
the embodied, culturally embedded, and ever-developing human creatures
that we are.
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Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science
Product details
ISBN
9780226113548
Published
2018
Edition
1. edition
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Author