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Experiments in Ethics (Mary Flexner Lectures of Bryn Mawr College) Paperback – September 28, 2009

3.7 out of 5 stars 9 customer reviews

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Product Details

  • Series: Mary Flexner Lectures of Bryn Mawr College (Book 3)
  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press; 60804th edition (March 30, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0674034570
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674034570
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #971,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

By The Spinozanator VINE VOICE on February 18, 2008
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
The "experiments" from which the book derives its name are on page 41: You are far more likely to be courteously helped by someone emerging from a phone booth if that person has just found abandoned money in the coin return slot...ambient noise levels of 85 decibels rather than 65 decibels decreased offers of aid to someone in minor distress...seminary students who had just been discussing the "Good Samaritan" story were much less likely to stop and aid someone in moderate to major distress if they were under time constraints...you are much more likely to get change for a dollar in front of fragrant bakery shop than in front of a dry-goods store.

This author contrasts virtue ethics with situational, contextual ethics. Over and over, experiments show that ethical behavior depends on the situation. It's easier to be virtuous when you're feeling good otherwise, but the act is almost always attributed to a rock-solid trait of one's character. Ben Franklin saw it otherwise. His famous personal virtue experiment revealed that when you managed to be virtuous in one way, you're likely to expose a vice somewhere else. His "list of virtues" comprised 13 traits, each to be practiced for a week at a time. At the end of thirteen weeks, they would all have been practiced once; after a year, four weeks each. One of his famous statement concerned "humility" week - during this week, he found himself becoming vain for having achieved so much humbleness (or something like that).

I try to like philosophy, I really do. But this book is like other philosophy books where logical arguments abound, splitting hairs where I didn't know hairs grew. That being said, I liked Appiah's approach. If you just take one virtue, like honesty, things are simple.
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Format: Paperback
Yes, you get what you may expect and the title sounds like in the first moment: an overview describing experiments in moral psychology from the influences of minor situative modifications having decisive influences on our moral behaviour to all the well-known "trolleology". And Appiah rightly defends experiments in general as a traditional and valuable part of philosophical work. But that's not all about the book. The title is full of ambiguity. The whole book itself is a big experiment in ethics looking for an eclectic way which preserves the best insights of virtue ethics, value ethics, utilitarianism, moral universalism - more or less any important ethical concept presented during the history of philosophy. And it succeeds pretty well in proposing to us an ethics of difficult trade-offs between different values and obligations which takes into account timeless truths of all the mentioned concepts. Looking for the good life in the tradition of greek "eudaimonia" - not just an ethics of social engineering. You don't waste your time reading this book.
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Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Great book and gave me lots to think about.
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Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
fast and reasonably priced
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Format: Paperback
Don't be misled by the assurances by its prologue, and one reviewer, that this book is accessible to the lay public. I did not find it so.

Here are a couple of examples of Professor Appiah's prose -

`We can now return to the problem posed for virtue theory by the allegation that its idealizations are remote from our human capacities. Let's try out the obvious solution suggested by the model I just discussed. If we're not capable of being virtuous - of reliably doing the right thing for the right reason - can we, faute de mieux, adopt "moral heuristics" that will help steer us right? To do so, as we saw, we will need to identify a task, a standard, an assessment of our own resources and circumstances, and so on.

`Well, in the domain of ethics, as Aristotle defined it, the task is, very broadly, to decide how to live our lives; but when virtue theorists apply themselves to moral issues, the task seems - a tad less broadly - to figure out what to do in the circumstances we face. As for our standard, let's stipulate (for the moment) that, as our virtue ethicists say, the right thing to do is what a virtuous person would do. We're supposing that our capacities don't include globalist virtues . . . . . . . .' (p. 56)

and

`For cognitive heuristics are, so to speak, twice dipped in means-end rationality. First, the right outcome is defined by what someone equipped with ideal means-end rationality, someone possessed of infinite cognitive resources, would do. Second, we then employ means-end rationality to determine how people with limited cognitive resources can maximize their chances of doing what's right according to the first test.
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