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staycee_franklyn's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoyed Appiah’s musing through an argument for psychology in empirical ethics. I like the idea of working towards an universal moral language to form healthy global relationships.
kavinay's review against another edition
5.0
"Astronomers have stars, geologists have rocks, but what do moral theorists have to work with?"
In a field that is full of abstraction, Appiah brings you what you rarely get in a philosophy classroom: a collision with real world research on applied ethics. The thrust of this book is not so much the Appiah is championing contemporary experiments so much as he's exploring how such works complicate the ivory tower normative systems that we've used from Aristotle, to Kant to Rawls.
This is not the sort of book you read to tie up your moral theories in a bow, which not by accident, is also why it's such an interesting work no matter where you fall in between deontological, consequentialist or virtue approaches to moral reasoning.
In a field that is full of abstraction, Appiah brings you what you rarely get in a philosophy classroom: a collision with real world research on applied ethics. The thrust of this book is not so much the Appiah is championing contemporary experiments so much as he's exploring how such works complicate the ivory tower normative systems that we've used from Aristotle, to Kant to Rawls.
This is not the sort of book you read to tie up your moral theories in a bow, which not by accident, is also why it's such an interesting work no matter where you fall in between deontological, consequentialist or virtue approaches to moral reasoning.
platypusinplaid's review against another edition
2.0
AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS
The intersection between science and morality is wildly fascinating, so obviously it had to be nerfed with obscure literary allusions, completely inaccessible terminology, and tangential anecdotes to the point where getting even a nugget of information is as frustrating and impenetrable a task as cracking a Brazil nut with your bare hands
The intersection between science and morality is wildly fascinating, so obviously it had to be nerfed with obscure literary allusions, completely inaccessible terminology, and tangential anecdotes to the point where getting even a nugget of information is as frustrating and impenetrable a task as cracking a Brazil nut with your bare hands
harvio's review against another edition
4.0
- distinguished Princeton University Professor Kwame Appiah contrasts "virtue ethics" with "situational/contextual ethics"
- the experiments include: how you are much more likely to be courteously helped by someone emerging from a phone both if that person has just found abandoned money in the coin return slot; how you are more likely to get change for a dollar in front of a fragrant bakery than in front of a dry-goods store, etc.
- although it is almost always attributed to a rock-solid character trait, one is generally more virtuous when one is feeling good otherwise
- the experiments include: how you are much more likely to be courteously helped by someone emerging from a phone both if that person has just found abandoned money in the coin return slot; how you are more likely to get change for a dollar in front of a fragrant bakery than in front of a dry-goods store, etc.
- although it is almost always attributed to a rock-solid character trait, one is generally more virtuous when one is feeling good otherwise
ericlawton's review
5.0
This is my second third time reading this book and it won't be the last. Pages are full of stickies to remind me of important points. Now with more stickies.
Good for most readers. I found it interesting reading throughout, with much light shed by the "experiments" part, that shed light on how people actually think about ethical and moral issues (in addition to how they say they think about them), while Appiah also points out how the experiments need to be augmented by thinking and not just in the same way as the hard(er) sciences reason about their experiments and observations but also using some traditional and more recent philosophical techniques.
The book also serves to answer the accusations that philosophy makes no progress (because we still teach Plato, Kant,...). There are plenty of examples of new thinking here.
If you are only ever going to read one or very few books on ethics, I think this should be on your list.
For professional philosophers, there are arguments in here that demolish famous theories and that shed more light on the is/ought boundary (naturalistic fallacy). Appiah writes very much in the Anglo/American tradition.
Good for most readers. I found it interesting reading throughout, with much light shed by the "experiments" part, that shed light on how people actually think about ethical and moral issues (in addition to how they say they think about them), while Appiah also points out how the experiments need to be augmented by thinking and not just in the same way as the hard(er) sciences reason about their experiments and observations but also using some traditional and more recent philosophical techniques.
The book also serves to answer the accusations that philosophy makes no progress (because we still teach Plato, Kant,...). There are plenty of examples of new thinking here.
If you are only ever going to read one or very few books on ethics, I think this should be on your list.
For professional philosophers, there are arguments in here that demolish famous theories and that shed more light on the is/ought boundary (naturalistic fallacy). Appiah writes very much in the Anglo/American tradition.
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