The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent
Author: Lionel Trilling
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 753
Release: 2001-10-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1466832142

A landmark reissue of a great teacher's finest work Lionel Trilling was, during his lifetime, generally acknowledged to be one of the finest essayists in the English language, the heir of Hazlitt and the peer of Orwell. Since his death in 1974, his work has been discussed and hotly debated, yet today, when writers and critics claim to be "for" or "against" his interpretations, they can hardly be well acquainted with them, for his work has been largely out of print for years. With this re-publication of Trilling's finest essays, Leon Wieseltier offers readers of many new generations a rich overview of Trilling's achievement. The essays collected here include justly celebrated masterpieces--on Mansfield Park and on "Why We Read Jane Austen"; on Twain, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Isaac Babel; on Keats, Wordsworth, Eliot, Frost; on "Art and Neurosis"; and the famous Preface to Trilling's book The Liberal Imagination. This exhilarating work has much to teach readers who may have been encouraged to adopt simpler systems of meaning, or were taught to exchange the ideals of reason and individuality for those of enthusiasm and the false romance of group identity. Trilling's remarkable essays show a critic who was philosophically motivated and textually responsible, alive to history but not in thrall to it, exercised by art but not worshipful of it, consecrated to ideas but suspicious of theory.

The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape
Author: Sam Harris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2011-09-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 143917122X

Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

Intelligent Disobedience

Intelligent Disobedience
Author: Ira Chaleff
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2015-07-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1626564280

Torture in Abu Ghraib prison. Corporate fraud. Falsified records at Veterans Administration hospitals. Teachers pressured to feed test answers to students. These scandals could have been prevented if, early on, people had said no to their higher-ups. Ira Chaleff discusses when and how to disobey inappropriate orders, reduce unacceptable risk, and find better ways to achieve legitimate goals. He delves into the psychological dynamics of obedience, drawing in particular on what Stanley Milgram's seminal Yale experiments-in which volunteers were induced to administer shocks to innocent people-teach us about how to reduce compliance with harmful orders. Using vivid examples of historical events and everyday situations, he offers advice on judging whether intelligent disobedience is called for, how to express opposition, and how to create a culture where citizens are educated and encouraged to think about whether orders make sense. --

The Liberal Imagination

The Liberal Imagination
Author: Lionel Trilling
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2012-07-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1590175514

The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling’s essays examine the promise —and limits—of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naïve liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social sciences, and asserting in their stead the irreducible complexity of human motivation and the tragic inevitability of tragedy. Only the imagination, Trilling argues, can give us access and insight into these realms and only the imagination can ground a reflective and considered, rather than programmatic and dogmatic, liberalism. Writing with acute intelligence about classics like Huckleberry Finn and the novels of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also on such varied matters as the Kinsey Report and money in the American imagination, Trilling presents a model of the critic as both part of and apart from his society, a defender of the reflective life that, in our ever more rationalized world, seems ever more necessary—and ever more remote.

The Moral Demands of Memory

The Moral Demands of Memory
Author: Jeffrey Blustein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 13
Release: 2008-03-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139470795

Despite an explosion of studies on memory in historical and cultural studies, there is relatively little in moral philosophy on this subject. In this book, Jeffrey Blustein provides a systematic and philosophically rigorous account of a morality of memory. Drawing on a broad range of philosophical and humanistic literatures, he offers a novel examination of memory and our relations to people and events from our past, the ways in which memory is preserved and transmitted, and the moral responsibilities associated with it. Blustein treats topics of responsibility for one's own past; historical injustice and the role of memory in doing justice to the past; the relationship of collective memory to history and identity; collective and individual obligations to remember those who have died, including those who are dear to us; and the moral significance of bearing witness.

Common Morality

Common Morality
Author: Bernard Gert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2004-08-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198038720

Distinguished philosopher Bernard Gert presents a clear and concise introduction to what he calls "common morality"--the moral system that most thoughtful people implicitly use when making everyday, common sense moral decisions and judgments. Common Morality is useful in that--while not resolving every disagreement on controversial issues--it is able to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable answers to moral problems.

SINCERITY AND AUTHENTICITY

SINCERITY AND AUTHENTICITY
Author: Lionel TRILLING
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674044460

“Now and then,” writes Lionel Trilling, “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a mutation: the process by which the arduous enterprise of sincerity, of being true to one’s self, came to occupy a place of supreme importance in the moral life—and the further shift which finds that place now usurped by the darker and still more strenuous modern ideal of authenticity. Instances range over the whole of Western literature and thought, from Shakespeare to Hegel to Sartre, from Robespierre to R.D. Laing, suggesting the contradictions and ironies to which the ideals of sincerity and authenticity give rise, most especially in contemporary life. Lucid, and brilliantly framed, its view of cultural history will give Sincerity and Authenticity an important place among the works of this distinguished critic.

Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI

Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI
Author: Markus D. Dubber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1000
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190067411

This volume tackles a quickly-evolving field of inquiry, mapping the existing discourse as part of a general attempt to place current developments in historical context; at the same time, breaking new ground in taking on novel subjects and pursuing fresh approaches. The term "A.I." is used to refer to a broad range of phenomena, from machine learning and data mining to artificial general intelligence. The recent advent of more sophisticated AI systems, which function with partial or full autonomy and are capable of tasks which require learning and 'intelligence', presents difficult ethical questions, and has drawn concerns from many quarters about individual and societal welfare, democratic decision-making, moral agency, and the prevention of harm. This work ranges from explorations of normative constraints on specific applications of machine learning algorithms today-in everyday medical practice, for instance-to reflections on the (potential) status of AI as a form of consciousness with attendant rights and duties and, more generally still, on the conceptual terms and frameworks necessarily to understand tasks requiring intelligence, whether "human" or "A.I."

The Life You Can Save

The Life You Can Save
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812981561

Argues that for the first time in history we're in a position to end extreme poverty throughout the world, both because of our unprecedented wealth and advances in technology, therefore we can no longer consider ourselves good people unless we give more to the poor. Reprint.