Showing results for "What" in Ethics & Morality

In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, that idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. It’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed, counter the end of moral progress, and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human. If we set humanity’s course right, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything to give them a world of justice, hope, and beauty.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.

When we think about whether we are good people leading a good life, we usually think about actions. Bad people do bad things that hurt others. Good people do good things that help others, and they avoid doing bad things. Simple. But while our actions certainly have consequences, today our inactions have far greater and far graver consequences. Bad actions can result in the suffering of a few or several dozen others; inaction can result in the extreme misery of thousands.

Valerie Tiberius introduces you to a way of thinking about your goals that enables you to reflect on them effectively throughout your life. She illustrates her approach with vivid examples, many of which are drawn from her own life, ranging from the silly to the serious, from shopping to navigating prejudice. Throughout, the book emphasizes the importance of interconnectedness, reminding us of the profound influence other people have on our lives, our goals, and how we should pursue them.

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature - human nature in particular. The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life. Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life.

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history. What is sustainability? Is it always about the environment? What science do we need to fully grasp what it requires? What does sustainability mean for business? How can governments plan for a sustainable future?

Do you wonder what your true path in life is? We each have a purpose and a mission. However, uncovering this purpose can be challenging, and often daunting. If you are like most, you have probably asked yourself, "Why am I here?" But where do you turn for answers? Religion? Psychology? Spirituality? This book will help you dismantle tired, old traditions that tell us that we should avoid pain and seek pleasure or pursue power, and shows us that even pain can play an important part in how we choose to live.

Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world - uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances.

Divided into short chapters that can be listened to in brief sittings, What Is Stoicism? compiles two millennia of Stoic thought into simple conversational prose.

Judith Butler shows how COVID-19 and all its consequences-political, social, ecological, economic-have challenged us to reconsider the sense of the world that such disasters bring about. Drawing on the work of Max Scheler, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and critical feminist phenomenology, Butler illuminates the conditions in which we seek to make sense of our disorientation, precarity, and social bonds. What World Is This? offers a new account of interdependency in which touching and breathing challenge the boundaries of the body and selfhood.

Torture in Abu Ghraib prison. Corporate fraud. Falsified records at Veterans Administration hospitals. Teachers pressured to feed test answers to students. These scandals could have been prevented if, early on, people had said no to their higher-ups. In this timely new book, Ira Chaleff goes deeply into when and how to disobey inappropriate orders, reduce unacceptable risk, and find better ways to achieve legitimate goals.The inspiration for the book and its title came from a concept used in guide-dog training.

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.

In this new revised edition of his groundbreaking work, Professor J. Budziszewski questions the modern assumption that moral truths are unknowable. With clear and logical arguments he rehabilitates the natural law tradition and restores confidence in a moral code based upon human nature. What We Can't Not Know explains the rational foundation of what we all really know to be right and wrong and shows how that foundation has been kicked out from under western society.

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?

While exploring Shakespeare's plays with her students, Paula Marantz Cohen discovered that teaching and discussing his plays unlocked a surprising sense of compassion in the classroom. In this short and illuminating book, she shows how Shakespeare's genius lay with his ability to arouse empathy, even when his characters exist in alien contexts and behave in reprehensible ways.

What if the secret to being your best, attracting people, and leading people was merely knowing what, why, and how to commit to people? All you have ever wanted was to have more meaningful relationships, attract others to your cause, and be able to make a difference in the lives of the people around you. You can have all this and more when you harness the power of the commitment.

For the last 20 years, John Corvino - widely known as the author of the weekly column "The Gay Moralist" - has traversed the country responding to moral and religious arguments against same-sex relationships. In this timely audiobook, he shares that experience - addressing the standard objections to homosexuality and offering insight into the culture wars more generally. Is homosexuality unnatural? Does the Bible condemn it? Are people born gay (and should it matter either way)? Corvino approaches such questions with precision, sensitivity, and good humor.

Charles Spinosa, Matthew Hancocks, and Haridimos Tsoukas tell us that today's business leaders are the misunderstood moral artists of our time. When these leaders follow their instincts, they create morally distinctive organizations that shift moral orders in their industries and communities. Anita Roddick did that with The Body Shop where she created an organization devoted to fun, compassion, and drawing on women's traditional care for their bodies.

In this charming journey into the past, a historian reveals medieval wisdom that can still guide us today "One of the most compelling medieval history books I have ever read." –Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England Peter Jones was teaching medieval history at...

Life doesn’t always give us easy answers. It gives us questions, doubts, setbacks, and moments that shake us awake. We fall. We get hurt. We search for meaning in the small places—conversations, memories, storms, quiet mornings, and the people we’ve loved and lost. The Nature Within Us is a book about those moments. Albert Alarcon writes with the voice of someone who isn’t pretending to have everything figured out.