Facebook Twitter Pinterest
FREE Delivery in the UK.
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Moral Minds: How Nature D... has been added to your Basket
Dispatch to:
France - Mainland
To see addresses, please
Or
Please enter a valid UK postcode.
Or
+ £2.80 UK delivery
Used: Good | Details
Sold by The Ryde Bookshop
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Publisher: Abacus, imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
Date of Publication: 2008
Binding: soft cover
Edition:
Condition: Good
Description: Foxing on free end papers and yellow spotting on a few pages inside. A few page corner creases and general light handing wear.

Have one to sell?
Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See this image

Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong Paperback – 3 Apr 2008

by Marc Hauser (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars 6 customer reviews
See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price
New from Used from
Hardcover
"Please retry"
—
£9.99 £5.92
Paperback
"Please retry"
£14.99
£6.52 £4.00
Want it delivered by Thursday, 20 Oct.? Order within 7 hrs 17 mins and choose Priority Delivery at checkout. Details
Note: This item is eligible for click and collect. Details
Pick up your parcel at a time and place that suits you.
  • Choose from over 13,000 locations across the UK
  • Prime members get unlimited deliveries at no additional cost
How to order to an Amazon Pickup Location?
  1. Find your preferred location and add it to your address book
  2. Dispatch to this address when you check out
Learn more
£14.99 FREE Delivery in the UK. Only 1 left in stock (more on the way). Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Frequently Bought Together

  • Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
  • +
  • The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition
Total price: £20.83
Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

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.
Back
  1. What Kind of Creatures are We? (Columbia Themes in Philosophy)
    Noam Chomsky
    4.6 out of 5 stars 5
    Hardcover
    £11.28 Amazon Prime
  2. Why Only Us: Language and Evolution
    Robert C. Berwick
    4.3 out of 5 stars 3
    Hardcover
    £15.56 Amazon Prime
Next

Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.

Product details

  • Paperback: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus (3 April 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0349118094
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349118093
  • Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 3.6 x 19.9 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 304,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

The theory set out in MORAL MINDS is certainly intriguing. It could yet remap the way moral philosophers think (THE TIMES)

This book describes many fascinating findings from a wide range of psychological experiments (INDEPENDENT)

Hauser's theory . . . has implications for everything, from the personal - our levels of guilt, how we judge others or respond to temptation - to religion, ethics and the law. The results are far-reaching and fascinating (PSYCHOLOGIES MAGAZINE)

Book Description

A ground-breaking book that will do for morality what THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT did for language.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
5 star
3
4 star
1
3 star
0
2 star
0
1 star
2
See all 6 customer reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsTaking the "Trolley Test" . . . and beyond
By Stephen A. Haines HALL OF FAME on 14 Dec. 2006
Format: Hardcover
The most dangerous question Charles Darwin implied [but didn't ask] was what Nature imposed on humans. It was bad enough for Victorians to be confronted with the idea of an ape-like ancestor. If this was so, what did it say about our sense of values? Whatever else Darwin challenged about our fixed notions of who we are, that one remains in central place. There have been several attempts recently to address the question. Marc Hauser's is not only the most recent, but perhaps the most thorough, of these efforts. In this gracefully written account, he takes us through his reasoning and the evidence supporting it.

Following his earlier "Wild Minds" on other animals, Hauser turns to what makes up human values and how they're achieved. To anyone understanding the process of natural selection, the idea of "morals" as the product of evolution should be a given. Unsatisfied with assumptions, Hauser collects a wealth of information in support of how we derive our values. He sets the data against some "standard" views of what is right and proper behaviour. Drawing on well-known thinkers, he synopsises their views into fabricated entities: the Kantian, Humean, and Rawlsian "creatures". Each represents a different approach in determining what is "fair" and just in the works of Immanuel Kant, David Hume and John Rawls [Hauser provides little cartoon figures as visual aids to help remember these. The publisher had the wit to keep these minimally sized.]. As might be expected, none of these stances are absolutes, and Hauser often confronts us with amalgamations of the positions. What's important isn't the melding itself, but why it has taken place. As humans, we can avoid absolutes and do so on a daily basis.Read more ›
Comment 17 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Is of the Ought
By Michael Murauer on 14 Feb. 2007
Format: Hardcover
Marc D. Hauser sums up a wealth of findings on our moral status quo collected by evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and developmental psychology and he does this in a very readable manner. Then and now he also throws a sidelong glance on culturally determined varieties of morals. Altruistic impulses and behavior can be proved to have a far-reaching cross-cultural statistical homogeneity. On request we come up with moral judgments and decisions spontaneously following intuitions. Rational deliberation and justification limps behind - as far as individuals are able to provide it at all. Thus we are allowed to assume a universal moral grammar in analogy to linguistic universal grammar. From the fact that we are natural moral beings Hauser concludes that the "marriage between morality and religion is not only forced but unnecessary, crying out for a divorce." (p. XX) On the other hand he presents experiments which demonstrate that moral reactions and norms originating in bygone sociocultural conditions (as those of a nomadic or livestock herders society) keep influencing behaviour for generations after fundamental change in society has occurred. A warning for all euphorics of enlightenment and rapid political progress. But on the whole the book tilts a little bit to much to the optimistic side as far as moral naturalism is concerned. Hausers point of view is somewhat concentrated on the lab perspective. He describes the well-known harrowing Milgram experiments on authority. But he doesn't really take into account that aggression and violence can grasp whole societies under unfavourable conditions. A critical stadium of such a development passed there remains no adequate reward for peaceful behaviour and altruism. And all this is also part and consequence of our nature, our "moral minds".Read more ›
Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsIs there an inherent basic sense of morality shared by all humans?
By Wallenius Jaakko on 25 Jan. 2010
Format: Paperback
One of the central claims of nearly all religions is that one cannot be moral without the aid of the religions and some even claim that religions are even the sole source of morality in societies. Evolutionary biologist Marc D. Hauser tackles head on these assumptions in his fine book called "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right & Wrong".

Moral Minds - Marc D. Hauser

He basically answers in this book the puzzling question of if religions haven invented morality, why all societies all over the world do have so very similar basic rules on morality even if they have not been are connected.
He shows in 538 pages how dozens of recent field studies and laboratory studies and experiments all lead to a very similar conclusions. They seem to imply that we have some very basic genetically coded basic rules of morality that are observable already in very little children and are discernible in all different cultures all over the world.

Marc D. Hauser is saying that even if the practical deeds and things that are thought as moral and immoral vary greatly because of different state of cultural evolution in different cultures, there is an deep underlying moral machinery that classifies certain larger classes of actions as moral or immoral.
He calls it "the moral acquisition device" and points out that this system forms a building block on which the actual moral system of every society is in the end built.

His ideas have been to great deal influenced by the findings on Noam Chomsky on the basic common linguistic faculties of humans. Noam Chomsky has shown that there are some very basic ground rules that all languages use as building blocks that are genetically inherent in all human beings.Read more ›
Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

Look for similar items by category

Feedback