What do you mean "This book is linked to Richard Carrier's" book? Your comment is all about Carrier's book--Wielenberg's book is not self-published, Carrier's is. Wielenberg's book is published by Cambridge University Press.
Are you trying to dismiss Wielenberg's book by reference to Carrier's?
They are being sold together on Amazon. My book was "linked" to another Lewis book on Amazon, but we did not know each other. So there is no reason to judge Wielenberg's book by Carrier's, for example, I think Wielenberg's book is pretty short.
I've added that book to my amazon.com wish list, that is open for anyone to read simply by searching for it at amazon.com under my name:
Edward T. Babinski
My wish list is broken down into categories, usually items I've read reviews of in different journals and they sounded interesting. I'm fortunate enough to work in a university library and have easy access to interlibrary loan.
Vic and J.D., do you have an amazon.com wish list?
Marc D. Hauser has a new book, ``Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong." In other recent papers Hauser suggests we may have a moral ``faculty" in our brains that acts as a sort of in-house philosopher--parsing situations quickly, before emotion or conscious reason come into play. Hauser compares this faculty to the mental quality that allows human beings to acquire and use language naturally and effortlessly.
It's a suggestive analogy, inviting questions about just how far the similarities run. Is human morality, like language, largely universal (gratuitous killing is bad) but with plenty of room for local variation (in some cultures, killing your daughter if she loses her virginity before marriage is not considered gratuitous)? Is it easy for children to adapt to these local differences, depending on where and how they are raised, but difficult for adults-just as it's hard to learn French at 40?
Whether the analogy to language is ``airtight" or ``useful because it allows you to ask good questions" is an open issue, Hauser says.
Not to mention these other new and relevant works:
Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (The University Center for Human Values Series) ed., Frans de Waal, Stephen Macedo, Josiah Ober Princeton University Press (September 1, 2006)
The Evolution of Morality (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology) by Richard Joyce The MIT Press (February 1, 2006)
The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness by Lee Alan Dugatkin Princeton University Press (September 1, 2006)
The Ethical Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga Dana Press (April 29, 2005)
Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality by Laurence Tancredi Cambridge University Press (September 19, 2005)
Wickedness (Routledge Classics, 2001) by Mary Midgley And her other books published by Routledge: Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Desire (2002) The Essential Mary Midgley (2005) Science and Poetry (2006)
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 16, 2006)
I look forward to reading the new Hauser book, but Steven Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" has already done a good job of convincing me that humans have a naturally evolved innate moral sense.
What do you mean "This book is linked to Richard Carrier's" book? Your comment is all about Carrier's book--Wielenberg's book is not self-published, Carrier's is. Wielenberg's book is published by Cambridge University Press.
ReplyDeleteAre you trying to dismiss Wielenberg's book by reference to Carrier's?
They are being sold together on Amazon. My book was "linked" to another Lewis book on Amazon, but we did not know each other. So there is no reason to judge Wielenberg's book by Carrier's, for example, I think Wielenberg's book is pretty short.
ReplyDeleteI've added that book to my amazon.com wish list, that is open for anyone to read simply by searching for it at amazon.com under my name:
ReplyDeleteEdward T. Babinski
My wish list is broken down into categories, usually items I've read reviews of in different journals and they sounded interesting. I'm fortunate enough to work in a university library and have easy access to interlibrary loan.
Vic and J.D., do you have an amazon.com wish list?
Marc D. Hauser has a new book, ``Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong." In other recent papers Hauser suggests we may have a moral ``faculty" in our brains that acts as a sort of in-house philosopher--parsing situations quickly, before emotion or conscious reason come into play. Hauser compares this faculty to the mental quality that allows human beings to acquire and use language naturally and effortlessly.
ReplyDeleteIt's a suggestive analogy, inviting questions about just how far the similarities run. Is human morality, like language, largely universal (gratuitous killing is bad) but with plenty of room for local variation (in some cultures, killing your daughter if she loses her virginity before marriage is not considered gratuitous)? Is it easy for children to adapt to these local differences, depending on where and how they are raised, but difficult for adults-just as it's hard to learn French at 40?
Whether the analogy to language is ``airtight" or ``useful because it allows you to ask good questions" is an open issue, Hauser says.
Not to mention these other new and relevant works:
Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (The University Center for Human Values Series)
ed., Frans de Waal, Stephen Macedo, Josiah Ober
Princeton University Press (September 1, 2006)
The Evolution of Morality (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
by Richard Joyce
The MIT Press (February 1, 2006)
The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness
by Lee Alan Dugatkin
Princeton University Press (September 1, 2006)
The Ethical Brain
by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Dana Press (April 29, 2005)
Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality
by Laurence Tancredi
Cambridge University Press (September 19, 2005)
Wickedness (Routledge Classics, 2001)
by Mary Midgley
And her other books published by Routledge:
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Desire (2002)
The Essential Mary Midgley (2005)
Science and Poetry (2006)
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
by Philip Ball
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (May 16, 2006)
I look forward to reading the new Hauser book, but Steven Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" has already done a good job of convincing me that humans have a naturally evolved innate moral sense.
ReplyDelete