San Antonio College Library

The moral mind is an important part of what makes us human, but for much of the twentieth century there was a sustained attempt to persuade us that morality was of little account and should not be taken seriously. Recent years have seen a welcome reversal of this trend. There is renewed interest in morality, and a wish to find values that believers and non-believers can share. This survey of the moral mind shows how our moral sense engaged with different...

A reassessment of what is special about being human.

"This book presents the results of an experiment in interdisciplinary collaboration to clarify theories of morality and anthropology and philosophy, showing how each may be enriched by borrowing from the other. Pooling the resources and methods of their respective fields - anthropology and philosophy - May and Abraham Edel examine the wide range of moral differences in the world "to establish 'coordinates' for the more systematic mapping of particular...

Much recent thought on the ethics of new biomedical technologies, and work in ethics and political philosophy more generally, is committed to hidden and contestable views about the nature of biological reality. The essays collected in this book, which include two previously unpublished pieces and a substantial introduction, tease out these biological foundations of bioethical writing and subject them to scrutiny. The topics covered include human enhancement,...

What do we really know? What are we in relation to the world around us? Playwright and novelist Frayn takes on the great questions of his career--and of our lives. Humankind, scientists agree, is an insignificant speck in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would there be numbers if there were no one to count them? With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work...

Foreword / Walter Bodmer -- Contributors -- 1. Imitation makes us human / Susan Blackmore -- 2. Memory, time, and language / Michael Corballis and Thomas Suddendorf -- 3. Why are humans not just great apes? / Robin Dunbar -- 4. The hominid that talked / Maurizio Gentilucci and Michael Corballis -- 5. Half ape, half angel? / the Rt. Reverend Richard Harries -- 6. Material facts from a nonmaterialist perspective / David Hulme -- 7. What makes us human?...

This is a book about the human sciences. However, it is not a treatise on scientific methodology nor is it a proposal for a unification of the human sciences through an integration of their findings within a general conceptual scheme.

"In Neither Beast nor God, Gilbert Meilaender elaborates the philosophical, social, theological, and political implications of the question of dignity, and suggests a path through the thicket. Meilaender traces the ways in which notions of dignity shape societies, families, and individual lives. He cuts through some of the confusions that cloud our thinking on key moral questions. The dignity of humanity and the dignity of the person, he argues, are...