Emerging Moral Vocabularies

Emerging Moral Vocabularies PDF Author: Brian M. Lowe
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739109809
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
A central observation of the social sciences has been that the modern age is one of constant change. This change has resulted in the emergence of new moral and ethical claims and understandings, which author Brian M. Lowe refers to as "moral vocabularies." Lowe skillfully seeks to explain conditions under which certain moral vocabularies are more likely to gain acceptance in the wider host society. By focusing on the animal rights and tobacco control movements, this absorbing work explores the process of moralization and the fragmentary nature of the emergence of new forms of moral and ethical meanings within the wider host society. Emerging Moral Vocabularies challenges the broad assertion that Western post-industrial societies are inevitably becoming more individualistic and self-centered, and instead encourages scholars to examine emerging forms of moral and ethical meanings, which create new moral boundaries. Book jacket.

Ethical Assessments of Emerging Technologies

Ethical Assessments of Emerging Technologies PDF Author: Federica Lucivero
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319232827
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
This book systematically addresses the issue of assessing the normative nature of visions of emerging technologies in an epistemologically robust way. In the context of democratic governance of emerging technologies, not only it is important to reflect on technologies’ moral significance, but also to address their emerging and future oriented character. The book proposes an original approach to deal with the issue of “plausible” ethical evaluation of new technologies. Taking its start from current debates about Technology Assessment, the proposed solution emerges as a combination of theoretical and methodological insights from the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies and a normative justification based on pragmatist ethics. The book’s main contribution is to engage a diverse and interdisciplinary audience (ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, technology assessment researchers and practitioners) in a reflection concerning the epistemological challenges that are associated to the endeavour of appraising the moral significance of emerging technologies in the attempt of democratically governing them. It brings together concepts and methodologies from different disciplines and shows their synergy in applying them to two specific case studies of emerging biomedical technologies.

Handbook of the Sociology of Morality

Handbook of the Sociology of Morality PDF Author: Steven Hitlin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441968962
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 592

Book Description
Human beings necessarily understand their social worlds in moral terms, orienting their lives, relationships, and activities around socially-produced notions of right and wrong. Morality is sociologically understood as more than simply helping or harming others; it encompasses any way that individuals form understandings of what behaviors are better than others, what goals are most laudable, and what "proper" people believe, feel, and do. Morality involves the explicit and implicit sets of rules and shared understandings that keep human social groups intact. Morality includes both the "shoulds" and "should nots" of human activity, its proactive and inhibitive elements. At one time, sociologists were centrally concerned with morality, issues like social cohesion, values, the goals and norms that structure society, and the ways individuals get socialized to reproduce those concerns. In the last half-century, however, explicit interest in these topics has waned, and modern sociology has become uninterested in these matters and morality has become marginalized within the discipline. But a resurgence in the topic is happening in related disciplines – psychology, neurology, philosophy, and anthropology - and in the wider national discourse. Sociology has much to offer, but is not fully engaged in this conversation. Many scholars work on areas that would fall under the umbrella of a sociology of morality but do not self-identify in such a manner, nor orient their efforts toward conceptualizing what we know, and should know, along these dimensions. The Handbook of the Sociology of Morality fills a niche within sociology making explicit the shared concerns of scholars across the disciplines as they relate to an often-overlooked dimension of human social life. It is unique in social science as it would be the first systematic compilation of the wider social structural, cultural, cross-national, organizational, and interactional dimension of human moral (understood broadly) thought, feeling, and behavior.

Moral Claims in the Age of Spectacles

Moral Claims in the Age of Spectacles PDF Author: Brian M. Lowe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113750241X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Book Description
This volume considers the rise of a new mode of creating, spreading, and encountering moral claims and ideas as they are expressed within spectacles. Brian M. Lowe explains how spectacles emerge when we are saturated with mediated representations—including pictures, texts, and videos—and exposed to television and movies and the myriad stories they tell us. The question of which moral issues gain our attention and which are neglected increasingly relates to how societal concerns are supported—or obscured—by spectacles. This project explores how this new form of moral understanding came to be. Through a series of case studies, including the use of radio and comic books; the crafting of Russian national identity through art; television and film; the evolution of human rights law through film and journalism; and the promotion of animal rights campaigns, this book unveils some of the ways in which our spectacular environment shapes moral understanding, and is in turn shaped by spectacle.

The Moral Conflict of Law and Neuroscience

The Moral Conflict of Law and Neuroscience PDF Author: Peter A. Alces
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022651353X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
"New insights offered by neuroscience have provoked discussions of the nature of human agency and responsibility. Alces draws on neuroscience to explore the internal contradictions of legal doctrines, and consider what would be involved in constructing novel legal regimes based on emerging understandings of human capacities and characteristics not only in criminal law but in contract and tort law."--Provided by publisher.

Genomics, Obesity and the Struggle over Responsibilities

Genomics, Obesity and the Struggle over Responsibilities PDF Author: Michiel Korthals
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400701276
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Book Description
This volume addresses the overlapping aspects of the fields of genomics, obesity and (non-) medical ethics. It is unique in its examination of the implications of genomics for obesity from an ethical perspective. Genomics covers the sciences and technologies involved in the pathways that DNA takes until the organism is completely built and sustained: the range of genes (DNA), transcriptor factors, enhancers, promoters, RNA (copy of DNA), proteins, metabolism of cell, cellular interactions, organisms. Genomics offers a holistic approach, which, when applied to obesity, can have surprising and disturbing implications for the existing networks tackling this phenomenon. The ethical concerns and consideration presented are inspired by the interaction between the procedural perspective emphasizing the necessity of consultative and participatory organizational relationships in the new gray zones between medicine and food, and the substantive perspective that both cherishes individual autonomy and embeds it in socio-cultural contexts.

Animals and War

Animals and War PDF Author: Ryan Hediger
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004241744
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
Animals and War is the first collection of essays to explore its important, yet neglected, topic. Scholars from sociology, history, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies investigate the presence of animals in human wars. The essays analyze a wide range of phenomena, including the new militarization of bees, zoo animals during war, war dogs, Finish horses in World War II, Canadian war literature, and the effort to memorialize nonhuman war animals. Although animals are often forced to participate in human wars, their presence also signals human vulnerability and dependence. Several chapters demonstrate that in the frequently horrible circumstances of war, powerful sympathies nonetheless flourish between humans and animals. Animals and War thus exposes the often paradoxical contours of human-animal relationships.

Fire in the Heart

Fire in the Heart PDF Author: Mark R. Warren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199780293
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Fire in the Heart uncovers the dynamic processes through which some white Americans become activists for racial justice. The book reports powerful accounts of the development of racial awareness drawn from in-depth interviews with fifty white activists in the fields of community organizing, education, and criminal justice reform. Drawing extensively on the rich interview material, Mark Warren shows how white Americans can develop a commitment to racial justice, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because they embrace the cause as their own. Contrary to much contemporary thinking on racial issues focused on altruism or interests, Warren finds that cognitive and rational processes alone do little to move whites to action. Rather, the motivation to take and sustain action for racial justice is profoundly moral and relational. Warren shows how white activists come to find common cause with people of color when their core values are engaged, as they build relationships with people of color that lead to caring, and when they develop a vision of a racially just future that they understand to benefit everyone--themselves, other whites, and people of color. Warren also considers the complex dynamics and dilemmas white people face in working in multiracial organizations committed to systemic change in America's racial order, and provides a deeper understanding and appreciation of the role that white people can play in efforts to promote racial justice. The first study of its kind, Fire in the Heart brings to light the perspectives of white people who are working day-to-day to build not a post-racial America but the foundations for a truly multiracial America rooted in a caring, human community with equity and justice at its core.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination PDF Author: Amy Kind
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317329457
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Book Description
Imagination occupies a central place in philosophy, going back to Aristotle. However, following a period of relative neglect there has been an explosion of interest in imagination in the past two decades as philosophers examine the role of imagination in debates about the mind and cognition, aesthetics and ethics, as well as epistemology, science and mathematics. This outstanding Handbook contains over thirty specially commissioned chapters by leading philosophers organised into six clear sections examining the most important aspects of the philosophy of imagination, including: Imagination in historical context: Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Husserl, and Sartre What is imagination? The relation between imagination and mental imagery; imagination contrasted with perception, memory, and dreaming Imagination in aesthetics: imagination and our engagement with music, art, and fiction; the problems of fictional emotions and ‘imaginative resistance’ Imagination in philosophy of mind and cognitive science: imagination and creativity, the self, action, child development, and animal cognition Imagination in ethics and political philosophy, including the concept of 'moral imagination' and empathy Imagination in epistemology and philosophy of science, including learning, thought experiments, scientific modelling, and mathematics. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, aesthetics, and ethics. It will also be a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology and art.

Reimagining Rural

Reimagining Rural PDF Author: Gregory M. Fulkerson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498534074
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
Reimagining Rural: Urbanormative Portrayals of Rural Life examines the ways in which rural people and places are being portrayed by popular television, reality television, film, literature, and news media in the United States. It is also an examination of the social processes that reinforce urbanormative standards that normalize urban life and render rural life as something unusual, exotic, or deviant. This includes exploring the role of the media as agenda setting agent, informing people what and how to think about rural life. Further it includes scrutinizing the institution of formal education that promotes a homogenous urban-oriented curriculum, while in the process, marginalizing the unique characteristics of local rural communities. These contributions are some of the only studies of their kind, investigating popular cultural representations of rural life, while providing powerful evidence and unique challenges for an urban society to rethink and reimagine rural life, while confronting the many stereotypes and myths that exist.