Moral Minds
The Nature of Right and Wrong
Chapter One
What's wrong?
You first parents of the human race . . . who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
—Brillat-Savarin1
Hundreds of self-help books and call-in radio stations, together with the advice of such American ethic gurus as William Bennett and Randy Cohen, provide us with principled reasons and methods for leading a virtuous life. Law schools across the globe graduate thousands of scholars each year, trained to reason through cases of fraud, theft, violence, and injustice; the law books are filled with principles for how to judge human behavior, both moral and amoral. Most major universities include a mandatory course in moral reasoning, designed to teach students about the importance of dispassionate logic, moving from evidence to conclusion, checking assumptions and explicitly stating inferences and hypotheses. Medical and legal boards provide rational and highly reasoned policies in order to set guidelines ... read full excerpt from: Moral Minds ebook
