San Antonio College Library

One of the central theses of this book is that value is neither identical with nor reducible to psychological phenomena such as liking or disliking, preferring, evaluating, and valuing or disvaluing. He examines various kinds of value, the place of moral value within them, the ontological status of the bearers of value, and the relationship between morality and rationality. In clear writing he defines the issues he considers, sets out his position,...

"Do you believe in God? Nine out of ten Americans unhesitatingly answer yes. But for Douglas V. Porpora, the real questions begin where pollsters leave off. What, he asks, does religious belief actually mean in our lives? Does it shape our identities and our actions? Or, despite our professions of faith, are we morally adrift?" "Landscapes of the Soul paints a disturbing picture of American spiritual life. In his search for answers to his questions,...

"It's a fact that there are fewer citations in the refereed scientific literature providing evidence for the moderate view of global warming, but that's to be expected. In Climate of Extremes, climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. explain that climate science is hardly unbiased, even though the global climate community itself believes that any new finding has an equal probability of making our climatic future appear more or less...

"Written in a conversational tone and requiring only an early undergraduate level of mathematical knowledge, When Least Is Best is full of fascinating examples and ready-to-try-at-home experiments. This is the first book on optimization written for a wide audience, and math enthusiasts of all backgrounds will delight in its lively topics."--Jacket.

Amitai Etzioni has devoted a lifetime of study to the question of what makes a good society, and his work as the founder of the communitarian movement attests to his influence in moving the public debate away from a preoccupation with rights to a balance between individual rights and social responsibilities. In this landmark new book, he invites us to examine how a communitarian society should operate in practice and what values we must bring to our...

What does it mean to be an American today? What does it mean to be middle class? Public opinion polls tell us that the nation is deeply divided between the Right, which is religious, traditional, as well as distressed by the belief that the nation has gone seriously downhill, and the Left, which is pro-choice, pro-welfare, as well as sympathetic to multiculturalism and gay rights. After spending two years speaking with middle-class Americans of many...

Presents the classic and controversial argument that morality is based in human nature.--From publisher description.

"If philosophy has any business in the world, it is the clarification of our thinking and the clearing away of ideas that cloud the mind. In this book, one of the world's pre-eminent philosophers takes issue with an idea that has found an all-too-prominent place in popular culture and philosophical thought: the idea that while factual claims can be rationally established or refuted, claims about value are wholly subjective, not capable of being rationally...

Well-known works including fables, folklore, fiction, drama, and more, by such authors as Aesop, Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and Baldwin, are presented to teach virtues, including compassion, courage, honesty, friendship, and faith.