Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition 1st Edition

by Patricia Churchland (Author)

10 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1324000891

ISBN-10: 1324000899

Why is ISBN important?

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Condition: Used - Like New

In Stock. Sold by Housing Works Bookstore Cafe

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

20 Used from $21.45

+ $3.99 shipping

Deliver to Finland

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

This item ships to Finland. Get it by Friday, Sept. 6 Choose this date at checkout. Learn more

List Price: $27.95
Save: $9.00 (32%)

40 New from $18.95

Deliver to Finland

More Buying Choices

40 New from $18.95 20 Used from $21.45

60 used & new from $18.95

See All Buying Options

Free Two-Day Shipping for College Students with Amazon Student

How do we determine right from wrong? Conscience illuminates the answer through science and philosophy.

In her brilliant work Touching a Nerve, Patricia S. Churchland, the distinguished founder of neurophilosophy, drew from scientific research on the brain to understand its philosophical and ethical implications for identity, consciousness, free will, and memory. In Conscience, she explores how moral systems arise from our physical selves in combination with environmental demands.

All social groups have ideals for behavior, even though ethics vary among different cultures and among individuals within each culture. In trying to understand why, Churchland brings together an understanding of the influences of nature and nurture. She looks to evolution to elucidate how, from birth, our brains are configured to form bonds, to cooperate, and to care. She shows how children grow up in society to learn, through repetition and rewards, the norms, values, and behavior that their parents embrace.

Conscience delves into scientific studies, particularly the fascinating work on twins, to deepen our understanding of whether people have a predisposition to embrace specific ethical stands. Research on psychopaths illuminates the knowledge about those who abide by no moral system and the explanations science gives for these disturbing individuals.

Churchland then turns to philosophy―that of Socrates, Aquinas, and contemporary thinkers like Owen Flanagan―to explore why morality is central to all societies, how it is transmitted through the generations, and why different cultures live by different morals. Her unparalleled ability to join ideas rarely put into dialogue brings light to a subject that speaks to the meaning of being human.

13 illustrations

More items to explore

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

564

Paperback
$9.54

Editorial Reviews

Review

“There are fascinating nuggets in the research Churchland cites…Her examples are varied and provocative.”
- Olivia Goldhill, New York Times

“Illuminating, entertaining and wise.”
- Nicholas A. Christakis, Nature

“Lucid, stimulating accounts of recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology.”
- Sissela Bok, American Scholar

“Informative, accessible, and engaging.”
- Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today

“A thoughtful, accessible, and enlightening book.”
- Kirkus Reviews

“Patricia S. Churchland takes us on a fascinating journey intertwining philosophy from Socrates and Aristotle to Kant and Solzhenitsyn to the latest ideas in neuroscience, covering a vast span of knowledge in a graceful and appealing style that is spellbinding. A jewel among books about human nature.”
- Ann Graybiel, investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT

“Conscience is an entertaining, erudite, and timely reminder of the neurobiological origins of those voices in our head telling us to behave. Moral philosophers, zealots and ideologues have been arguing for their versions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for millennia; now it’s time for Patricia S. Churchland to remind us that morality doesn’t come from a stone tablet or a logical axiom, but is rather one of Nature’s inventions enabling our greatest superpower: sociality. It’s messy, useful, and very human―like thumbs.”
- Blaise Agüera y Arcas, distinguished scientist, Google AI

“In Conscience, Patricia S. Churchland pulls back the curtains and takes us behind the scenes to show where our morals come from. Packed with the latest neuroscience research, the surprising answer turns out to be our very own brains. A must-read for anyone with a conscience.”
- Gregory Berns, author of How Dogs Love Us

“Patricia S. Churchland has done it again! She wisely guides readers on a lively romp through recent research in neuroscience, genetics, evolution, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, economics, politics, and philosophy in order to reach a more complete understanding of how and why we can get along despite our deep disagreements about what is wrong or right. This fun and fascinating journey shows why morality cannot be fully understood without the wide variety of perspectives and of scientific information that this tour de force provides.”
- Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, author of Think Again

“No one blends philosophy and neuroscience as well as Patricia S. Churchland. Here she provides a much-needed correction to the usual emphasis on reasoning and logic in moral philosophy. Our judgements are guided by ancient intuitions and brain processes shared with other mammals.”
- Frans de Waal, author of Mama’s Last Hug

About the Author

Patricia Churchland is the author of, most recently, Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition and Touching a Nerve: Our Brains, Our Selves. She is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She lives in San Diego.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (June 4, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1324000899
ISBN-13: 978-1324000891
Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 10 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #118 in Ethics
- #414 in Evolution (Books)
- #287 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

10 customer reviews

Review this product

Write a customer review

Showing 1-8 of 10 reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Jason Peirce

The neurobiology is better than the philosophy

June 17, 2019

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

She does a great job of describing our conscience and our morality generally in neurobiological terms. This includes our evolved social nature and the complex interaction between our dopaminergic basal ganglia and our executive frontal cortex.

The part of the book that disappointed me is that in her quest to describe morality in biological terms, she wades into the naturalistic fallacy, something she never explicitly responds to in her book. This means she considers what is natural to be good. Of course she does not believe this if pressed in real life, but she offers very little recourse in her book.

She favors virtue ethics, but then she ends up defining morality in terms of social cohesion and well-being (p. 169). Is she implicitly a consequentialist? Furthermore, she fawns over our wise customs, traditions, and institutions, but gives no advice on how to know when they are outdated or how to upgrade them if they are. I feel like her response might be more utilitarian than she would be comfortable with.

Her main point is that we should be skeptical of moral authority, and I agree. But we shouldn't let our evolved neurobiology, traditions, and institutions be our implicit authority instead. Her 'virtue ethics' is much more consequentialist and utilitarian than she admits.

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Luther

Something Is Missing

July 7, 2019

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I finished reading the book, which I enjoyed very much, with the nagging thought
that her explanations of our moral behavior are not complete. She refers to tribal norms,
group norms, family values, and local societal mores, but she never says anything about
the ideals and motivations of the humanist concern for the world at large beyond the
local group. Her definition of morality refers to the “. . . well-being among the individuals
in the group” (169). Does she think that some of us regard mankind as our “group”? She
doesn’t address this issue.
Human rights, natural law: where do they come from? And their opposite: the intense tribal loyalties of the Middle East and elsewhere? Biological adaptation may explain the origin of our values, but it doesn’t explain the culture-wide humanism that has been prevalent in the West during the last five centuries or the enduring hostilities that remain among some of the world’s tribes.
“Conscience is a brain construct rooted in our neural circuitry, not a theological entity thoughtfully parked in us by a divine being” (147). This is simplistic. No one believes that the humanist values of the West were planted in us by God. She represents as an example of religion the rigid rules of the Ten Commandments. There is a lot more to Christianity than the Ten Commandments. Where does our moral intuition/conscience come from when it comes to promoting values for all of mankind? Christian humanism represents what are considered Christian values
—social justice, concern for the poor, and above all, the equal worth of all human lives —for everybody. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights represent these humanist values. However, Christian, humanism, and religion are not even in her index.
How does biology explain the moral intuition of the Quakers?
Other religions may have some of the same values as Christianity (see HUMAN RIGHTS, Andrew Clapham,
OUP, 2007, p 5, for a summary of similar values in other religions and traditions). But for me, secular humanism,
in spite of being secular, is deep-rooted in Christianity. Where is her biological explanation for humanism? Maybe history has more explanatory power than biology in this case.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

A Good Synthesis of the Physiology of Morality

July 7, 2019

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

One can review Conscience from at least three different perspectives. First, as a review of the evolutionary and physiological origins of moral behavior in human beings. Here the book seems relatively accurate, to a non-biologist, but this is pretty well-traveled ground. Robert Sapolsky reviews and synthesizes much of the same material in his publicly available lectures and in his magnum opus Behave.

A small part of the book is devoted to arguing against common philosophical systems which deal with human behavior. Churchill chooses Christian natural law theory, Kantianism and Utilitarianism as her targets. Unfortunately, it’s hard to summarize centuries of argument in a mere thirty pages and the opposing systems are reduced to little more than caricatures.

Lastly, one can look at it as offering its own scientifically informed philosophical account of human morality. Her perspective is interesting but briefly exposited. She seems to think that conscience is largely the training of the punishment/reward system via changes in dopamine levels in line with community norms. Instances such as when communities must change their stances become hard cases.

Above all, Churchland argues against ideology or adapting one cognitive framework that determines morality for all and for all time. It’s a fairly conventional sentiment in the modern academy and is likely to be well-received. It annoyed me that she twists the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates to find some ancient grounding for this position but it is otherwise well-articulated.

If you are looking for a layperson’s guide to the biology of morality this book is an excellent source. I found the more philosophical parts of the book too brief to be actually constructive but non-specialists in the Western philosophic tradition may differ.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition

Set up a giveaway

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy

Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web	Sell on Amazon Start a Selling Account	Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Handpicked Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources

Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services	Audible Listen to Books & Original Audio Performances	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Box Office Mojo Find Movie Box Office Data	ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics

CreateSpace Indie Print Publishing Made Easy	DPReview Digital Photography	East Dane Designer Men's Fashion	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities

IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital Publishing Made Easy	Prime Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Zappos Shoes & Clothing

Ring Smart Home Security Systems	eero WiFi Stream 4K Video in Every Room	Neighbors App Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts	Subscribe with Amazon Discover & try subscription services	PillPack Pharmacy Simplified	Amazon Second Chance Pass it on, trade it in, give it a second life

Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition 1st Edition

More items to explore