Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics

by Mark Johnson

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226401693
• ISBN13: 9780226401690
• Release Date: November 1994
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Imagining the Consequences

This is a very important book; though aimed at philosophers and the cognitive science communities, most general readers should enjoy it. Here are several quotes: "[There is] a deep tension and dissonance within our cultural understanding of morality, for we try to live according to a view that is inconsistent with how human beings actually make sense of things, I am trying to point out this deep tension, to diagnose the source of the dissonance, and to offer a more psychologically realistic view of moral understanding -- a view we could live by and that would help us live better lives." (p.19). "Narrative is not just an explanatory device, but is actually constitutive of the way we experience things. No moral theory can be adequate if it does not take into account the narrative character of our experience." (p. 11