Ara Norenzayan asserts that religion is not necessarily a basis for morality. Norenzayan is a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, giving him the credentials to discuss humans’ moral compass and its origins. However, his judgements on religion are not completely justified as he is not a religion expert. This said, Norenzayan argues that “foraging societies that give… clues… of ancestral human conditions” show they do not have religions with a basis in morality. He also gives an account of a psychological study by Henrich that uses 15 pastoral and horticultural societies that showed “greater prosocial behavior” most prominently when experiencing “economic exchange with strangers” and not just a religion.
Kyle Lascano Sociology Chapter 1 Journal In the early 1800’s, two men planted the seeds that would later burgeon in to a heavily debated study about a perfect society. Herbert Spencer coined the idea of Social Darwinism. In a society as such, the theory of evolution plays a big role. Survival of the fittest is the main idea here.
Selfishness and selflessness can be balanced, and this balance is crucial to a functioning
Today we live in a world where nothing is free, and many people have an expectation on receiving something in return when they provide some sort of service for someone. However, society is helping create a norm of altruism by asking, advertising, and announcing situations when selfless acts are performed. Altruism behavior consists of being selfless and wanting to help others in need, without feeling obligated. Several psychologists define altruism as “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare” (Batson, 1981). Thanks to the media, we are able to witness people demonstrating concerns for the welfare and well-being of others which has helped the encouragement for people to have altruistic behavior.
Biologically, altruism is defined any behavior that increases the reproductive fitness of other organisms at the expense of itself. In simpler words, the biological definition of altruism does
In his brief essay, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives”, Immanuel Kant emphasizes how essential it is to be truthful and how our duty to be truthful outweighs any other duties we have to ourselves to ourselves or to humanity. Altruistic can be described as a genuinely moral act. People who are altruistic take action for the benefit of others and deem other people’s interests more important than their own interests. Kant believes that people should always do what is right, no matter what the outcome holds. I affirm that Kant believes praising truthfulness above all other duties because he believes it is morally wrong to hurt the dignity of others.
In this set of materials, the listening passage challenges the points made in the reading passage. The reading passage basically states that altruism is a behavior type which presents sharing a food or other type of feature with other members of the group without expecting any reward for it. The passage points out that an example of this type of phenomena in human’s society is a donation of an organ. This behavior is seen in the animal’s reign as well.
The word altruism may come to mind for some. When performing acts of kindness we
Heroic Helping – Jason Austin Cole Helping behaviour is a form of prosocial behaviour, a term which according to Batson (1998, pg. 282) “was created by social scientists as an antonym for antisocial”. It is defined as acts that intentionally benefit someone else (Eisenberg, 1989, pg. 3). However, there are two major perspectives on helping. The first is the Evolutionary perspective which states that we, like animals, have evolved innate tendencies to eat and drink, so too have we evolved innate tendencies to help others (Stevens, Cushman & Hauser, 2005, pg. 499). The second is the Social Psychology perspective which states that helping behaviour can be either Egoistic, meaning that helping is motivated by self-interest (Piliavin, 1973), or
An issue of morality has been the center of philosophical debate for a long time; Plato uses the story of Gyges of Lydia in order to portray that moral ones will suffer behind while the immoral benefit. If people act strictly for their own betterment, the justice seems to fail. However, morality could be explained by Ethical Egoism, an idea that emphasizes one’s self-interest. Before jumping into Ethical Egoism, it is imperative to define what morality entails. To our common sense, people strive to help each other when an opportunity arises.
Theories of deindividuation endorse that it is a psychological state of diminished self-analysis and a reduced evaluation of apprehension causing abnormal collective conduct, similar to violent crowds and lynch mobs. 3) Identify the times when people are most—and least—likely to help. Altruism is unselfish regard for the welfare of others. Risking one’s life to save lots of victims of genocide without an expectation of personal reward is an illustration of altruism. The bystander outcomes is the tendency for any given bystander to an emergency to be less likely to provide support if other bystanders are present.
Social Darwinism is the result of applying Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution to human society, and one of the forefront Social Darwinists was none other than William Graham Sumner. In general, the concept of Social Darwinism has many pros such as “breeding” out weakness and disease, supporting the strong, and encouraging the development of a more advanced society. It also as many disadvantages, however, such as a smaller gene pool, hindering the weak, and controlling who gets to have children. Using the writings of both Darwin and Sumner, these pros and cons will be explored to prove that the negatives of Social Darwinism outweigh the positives. To begin, the first pro of Social Darwinism is the elimination of weakness and disease.
Virtue ethicists accent the importance of self – respect. Each of these theories insists that the pursuit of self – interest must be balanced and kept under control by moral responsibilities to other people. Now let us consider a view called “Ethical Egoism” which challenges all the ethical theories and it tries to reduce morality to the pursuit of self-interest. It is called ‘egoism’, because it says that our main duty is to maximize our own good. According to Thomas Hobbes and Any Rand, moral values are reduced to concern for oneself but always a rational concern which requires consideration of a person’s long-term interests.
We go through our everyday lives performing random acts of kindness but sometimes we fail to notice them. Over the last five days, I have documented some of the acts of kindness that I already did but failed to reflect on them after. Some of the things that I noticed was the reactions people had after being nice to them or asking them how their day was going. Their reactions were mostly positive, but sometimes they looked at me kind of weird and gave me very brief answers. Not all of my acts of kindness were towards others, I added some personal acts of kindness because they helped me relax and decompress.
Since the 17th century, people all over the world have been trying to figure out how society works and the ways in which people are influenced by their society. Traditionally, these questions were answered using superstition and myth (Henslin, 4). The “founding fathers” of sociology -Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber- all broke apart from the traditional ways of thinking and developed their own worldviews. Auguste Comte first coined the term “sociology,” or the process of applying the scientific method in order to discover social laws.