Customer Reviews

Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics

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3 star:		(1)
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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

Mark Johnson is a capable writer, who demonstrates the weaknesses of any moral theory that insists on absolutes. In a redundant manner most of the book is about this weakness. However, didn't we already know this? That absolutes were guidelines, helpful rules of thumb, but not always completely applicable. Still it is a very good review (why I gave it three stars). Yet Johnson does not demonstrate that "moral imagination" really gets us anywhere. Is it really any more insightful than the old rules? Johnson takes us up a flight of stairs only to find the door at the top locked.