Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics

Couverture
University of Chicago Press, 1993 - 287 pages
Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation.

Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.
 

Table des matières

How Cognitive Science Changes Ethics
1
The Moral Law Folk Theory
13
2 Metaphoric Morality
32
3 The Metaphoric Basis of Moral Theory
63
4 Beyond Rules
78
Our Enlightenment Legacy
108
6 Whats Wrong with the Objectivist Self
126
7 The Narrative Context of Self and Action
150
8 Moral Imagination
185
Objectivity and the Conditions for Criticism
217
10 Preserving Our Best Enlightenment Moral Ideals
244
Notes
261
Index
283
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À propos de l'auteur (1993)

Mark Johnson is the Philip H. Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon and the author of numerous books.

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