In Genealogy of Obedience Justyna Wlodarczyk provides a long overdue look at the history of companion dog training methods in North America since the mid-nineteenth century, when the market of popular training handbooks emerged. Wlodarczyk argues that changes in the functions and goals of dog training are entangled in bigger cultural discourses; with a particular focus on how animal training has served as a field for playing out anxieties related to race, class and gender in North America. By applying a Foucauldian genealogical perspective, the book shows how changes in training methods correlate with shifts in dominant regimes of power. It traces the rise and fall of obedience as a category for conceptualizing relationships with dogs.

The Ethical Technologist is an exploration of what it is to be a change agent during this most dynamic period of human history. Hundreds, even thousands of years in the future, the technological advances of the late 20th and 21st Centuries will be recognised in history as a pivotal point in human evolution. Technologists today have the power to do what humans have never before been able to do. But with great power must come responsibility if we are to avoid trouble. Technologists working today are busy creating the future of humanity. We need full awareness of the impact of what we are doing if we are going to create the best future we can. While technology is merely a tool, this book makes the case that the best kind of technology is that which helps people come to a fuller expression of their humanity, their human potential, to help a person become self-actualized. On the other hand, the worst kind of technology dehumanises people, reduces them to a component in a machine, a mere unit of production. Ethical conduct in technology development comes down to a simple, two-part proposition; people must be told what the consequences of using a technology will be and give their informed consent, and secondly, that they must not be harmed by using it. At a personal level, an ethical person has integrity; they are the same person regardless of who they are with, they do not adjust their morals to gain the approval of the people they are currently with. An ethical person is autonomous in the sense that they are the embodiment of right action. They do not need to look outside of themselves to know how to behave. The knowledge is already there inside them. This can only come from careful introspection; this book shows you how. It comes down to being fully aware of what you are thinking and doing every moment, and consciously making choices that will produce beneficial outcomes for yourself and those affected by your actions.

We daily classify actions by their morality and their voluntariness, and beliefs by their rationality. But in light of persistent skepticism about morality, free will, and (to a lesser extent) epistemology, we must ask what justifies us in making these various claims. This book defends a sophisticated version of pragmatism, resting on a novel account of strategy-based (as opposed to act-based) cooperative rationality. It will show that we can give a genuinely pragmatist account of morality and epistemology, while denying that truth is mere usefulness and maintaining the connection between truth and objectivity. The sophisticated pragmatist approach is shown to be particularly fruitful in that we can justify a range of important practices, including our practices of moral and epistemic evaluation, as well as our practice of making judgments regarding free will and moral responsibility.

In Why It Is Good to be Good, John H. Riker argues that modernity, by undermining traditional religious and metaphysical grounds for moral belief, has left itself no way to explain why it is personally good to be a morally good person. Furthermore, modernity's regnant concept of the self as an independent agent organized around the optimal satisfaction of desires and involved in an intense economic competition with others intensifies the likelihood that modern persons will see morality as a set of limiting constraints that stand in the way of personal advantage and will tend to cheat when they believe there is little likelihood of getting caught. This cheating has begun to severely undermine modernity's economic and social institutions. Riker proposes that Heinz Kohut's psychoanalytic understanding of the self can provide modernity with a naturalistic ground for saying why it is good to be good. Kohut sees the self as a dynamic, unconscious structure which, when coherent and actively engaged with the world, provides the basis for a heightened sense of lively flourishing. The key to the self's development and sustained coherence is the presence of empathically responsive others persons Kohut terms selfobjects. Riker argues that the best way to sustain vitalized selfobject relations in adulthood is by becoming an ethical human being. It is persons who develop the Aristotelian moral virtues empathy for others, a sense of fairness, and a resolute integrity who are best able to engage in the reciprocal selfobject relations that are necessary to maintain self-cohesion and who are most likely to extend empathic ethical concern to those beyond their selfobject matrixes. Riker also explores how Kohut's concept of the self incorporates a number of the most important insights about the self in the history of philosophy, constructs an original meta-psychology that differentiates the ego from the self, re-envisions ethical life on the basis of a psychoanalytically informed view of human nature, explores how pe"

This fascinating and timely volume explores current thinking on vital topics in moral psychology, spanning the diverse disciplines that contribute to the field. Academics from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, anthropology, philosophy, and political science address ongoing and emerging questions aimed at understanding the thought processes and behaviors that underlie our moral codes-and our transgressions. Cross-cutting themes speak to individual, interpersonal, and collective morality in such areas as the development of ethical behavior, responses to violations of rules, moral judgments in the larger discourse, and universal versus specific norms. This wide-angle perspective also highlights the implications of moral psychology research for policy and justice, with cogent viewpoints from: * Philosophy: empiricism and normative questions, moral relativism. * Evolutionary biology: theories of how altruism and moral behavior evolved. * Anthropology: common moral values seen in ethnographies from different countries. * Cognitive and neural sciences: computational models of moral systems and decision-making. * Political science: politics, governance, and moral values in the public sphere. * Advice on moral psychology research-and thoughts about its future-from prominent scholars. With the goal of providing a truly multidisciplinary forum for moral psychology, this volume is sure to spark conversations across disciplines and advance the field as a whole. Sampling the breadth and depth of an equally expansive and transformative field, Moral Psychology: A Multidisciplinary Guide will find an engaged audience among psychologists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, lawyers, and policymakers, as well as a more general audience interested in better understanding the complexity of moral psychology research.

This book examines key trends in emerging strategic technologies and the implications for geopolitics and human dignity. Al-Rodhan argues that future evolution into transhumans is inevitable. In preparation, the global community is urged to establish strict moral and legal guidelines balancing innovation with the guarantee of dignity for all.

What is the human heart like? Theologians and philosophers have attempted to address this question, not just in the abstract, but concretely in personal, as well as social and political, dimensions. Patrick Downey explores the biblical writings of Genesis and the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, the Greek tragedies, Plato, Aristotle, and political philosophers--such as Rousseau, Hobbes, Nietzsche and Rene Girard--to seek answers to this profound question. Recognizing our resistance to know the truth about our own hearts, Downey calls his readers to join with these thinkers in the search for truth and serious self-reflection. Not for the faint of heart, this book courageously addresses the most foundational question of our existence as individuals in community. What is the nature of the human heart and can we, will we, know it?

To comprehensively address the complexities of current socio-ecological problems involved in global environmental change, it is indispiseble to achieve an integration of ecological understanding and ethical values. Contemporary science proposes an inclusive ecosystem concept that recognizes humans as components. Contemporary environmental ethics includes eco-social justice and the realization that as important as biodiversity is cultural diversity, inter-cultural, inter-institutional, and international collaboration requiring a novel approach known as "biocultural "conservation. Right action in confronting the challenges of the 21st century requires science and ethics to be seamlessly integrated. This book resulted from the 14th Cary Conference that brought together leading scholars and practitioners in ecology and environmental philosophy to discuss core terminologies, methods, questions, and practical frameworks for long-term socio-ecological research, education, and decision making.

Two aspects link together the notions of corruption and integrity from an epistemological perspective: the complexity of defining the two notions, and their richness in forms. This volume brings together the perspectives of six disciplines - business, political science, law, philosophy, anthropology and behavioural science - to the debate on integrity and corruption. The main goal is to promote a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue on complex themes such as integrity and corruption in business and politics. The book investigates possible ways in which corruption and integrity apply to everyday practices, ideas and ideologies, and avoids the stigmatizations and oversimplifications that often plague these fields of research.

In this ground-breaking book, Aristotelian and evolutionary understandings of human social nature are brought together to provide an integrative, psychological account of human ethics. The book emphasizes the profound ways that human identity and action are immersed in an ongoing social world.

This is the first comprehensive handbook in the philosophy of criminal law. It contains seventeen original essays by leading thinkers in the field and covers the field's major topics including limits to criminalization, obscenity and hate speech, blackmail, the law of rape, attempts, accomplice liability, causation, responsibility, justification and excuse, duress, provocation and self-defense, insanity, punishment, the death penalty, mercy, and preventive detention and other alternatives to punishment. It will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students whose research and studies concern philosophical issues in criminal law and criminal law theory.

A distinguished international team of scholars under the editorship of Carlo Natali have collaborated to produce a systematic, chapter-by-chapter study of one of the most influential texts in the history of moral philosophy. The seventh book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics discusses weakness of will in its first ten chapters, then turns in the last four chapters to pleasure and its relation to the supreme human good.

People have strong moral beliefs about right and wrong, yet commonly act contrary to those beliefs. Most of us, at some time or another, have crossed a moral line and yet still view ourselves as moral and have a clean conscience. From intimate relationships to national politics, we define ourselves in large part by how we - and our friends, family, and members of our social groups - draw moral lines around our actions, thoughts, and intentions. While philosophers have weighed in on these issues for thousands of years, social scientists often underplay social life's moral dimension. "Moral Selves, Evil "Selves highlights our individual sense of moral coherence and develops a theory of the development and maintenance of this sense in an ambiguous and complicated social world. By conceptualizing a social psychology of conscience, this book explains how we can properly include individual and societal notions of morality into understanding the self across time and situation.

In this title, drawing on insights from Continental, Feminist and Religious thought, an international team of leading scholars explore alternative approaches to medical ethics. Exploring alternative approaches to medical ethics emerging from the latest research in a broad range of philosophical disciplines and traditions, "Reconceiving Medical Ethics" brings together an international team of leading scholars to explore some of the most important topics in the field. Drawing on insights from Continental, Feminist and Religious thought that are often neglected in discussions of the field, the book takes as its focus a philosophical exploration of the doctor-patient relationship that lies at the heart of any consideration of medical ethics. From this starting point the book goes on to consider such important subjects as attitudes to the body, informed consent, paternalism and the role of the law in medicine. Including discussion of case studies in each chapter, "Reconceiving Medical Ethics" opens up new avenues for discussion of this crucial topic in practical ethics today. "Continuum Studies in Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in all the major areas of research and study. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.

A Feminist Perspective on Virtue Ethics provides of historical survey of feminist virtue ethics, and shows how the ethical theorizing of women in the past can be brought to bear on that of women in the present.

The use of measures of economic output to guide policymaking has been criticized for decades because of their weak ties to human well-being. Recently, many scholars and politicians have called for measures of happiness or subjective well-being to be used to guide policy in people's true interests. In The Illusion of Well-Being, Mark D. White explains why using happiness as a tool for policymaking is misguided and unethical. Happiness is too vague a term to define, and too general a concept, to measure in a way that captures people's true feelings. He extends this critique to well-being in general and concludes that no measure of well-being can do justice to people's true interests, which are complex, multifaceted, and subjective. White suggests instead that policymaking be conducted according to respect and responsiveness, promoting the true interests of citizens while addressing their real needs, and devoting government resources to where they can do the most good.

"The Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism" volume is an ideal commentary for students on Mill's classic essay.
Contains the complete text of Utilitarianism and twelve related essays.
Essays cover the background to Mill's classic essay, analyses of the arguments, and contemporary debates within the utilitarian tradition.
Also includes a case study demonstrating the application of utilitarian theory to military or non-violent responses to terrorism.
Each contribution is an original essay written by a specialist at the cutting edge of philosophical scholarship.

Rachel Cohon offers an original interpretation of the moral philosophy of David Hume, focusing on two areas. Firstly, his metaethics. Cohon reinterprets Hume's claim that moral distinctions are not derived from reason and explains why he makes it. She finds that Hume did not actually hold three "Humean" claims: 1) that beliefs alone cannot move us to act, 2) that evaluative propositions cannot be validly inferred from purely factual propositions, or 3) that moral judgments lack truth value. According to Hume, human beings discern moral virtues and vices by means of feeling or emotion in a way rather like sensing; but this also gives the moral judge a truth-apt idea of a virtue or vice as a felt property. Secondly, Cohon examines the artificial virtues. Hume says that although many virtues are refinements of natural human tendencies, others (such as honesty) are constructed by social convention to make cooperation possible; and some of these generate paradoxes. She argues that Hume sees these traits as prosthetic virtues that compensate for deficiencies in human nature. However, their true status clashes with our common-sense conception of a virtue, and so has been concealed, giving rise to the paradoxes.

"The Ethical" is a collection of readings on ethics and the nature of morality by some of the most important contemporary philosophers in the continental tradition.

Recent attention to ethics in continental thought - often taken to be antithetical to Anglo-American moral philosophy - demonstrates how much these two traditions have in common. The essays in this volume indicate the rich history and contemporary vitality of ethics in continental philosophy. They reflect a variety of currents in continental thought, including phenomenology, genealogy, deconstruction, and discourse ethics. Topics addressed include the status of the moral agent and its constitution or formation, the priority to be assigned to the other in relation to the self, the critique of rigid models of moral reasoning, and the limits of the moral.This is the first anthology of its kind devoted to emphasizing continental ethical philosophy as an important area of study in its own right.