Beyond Bad: How obsolete morals are holding us back
Mar 2021 · Hachette UK
Ebook
272
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
'Brilliantly unillusioned thinking... It could hardly be more necessary in these all-too-moralistic times' - James Marriott, THE TIMES
Morals have held empires together, kept soldiers marching under fire, fed the hungry, passed laws, built walls, welcomed immigrants, destroyed careers and governed our sex lives. But what if morality's all meaningless rubbish, a malfunctioning relic of our evolutionary past?
This is the provocative argument that Chris Paley makes. This isn't an attack on one set of moral codes or one way of thinking about ethics: it's a call for abolishing the whole caboodle.
He uses evolutionary psychology to show how and why morality emerged: they
enabled our forebears to survive and prosper in tribal groups. Today, our morals constrain us, bias us, and push us in the wrong direction.
The biggest challenges our species faces, whether global warming, nuclear proliferation or the rise of the robots, are pan-human. These challenges are beyond what our moral minds were designed to cope with. You can't build smartphones with stone-age axes, and you can't solve modern humanity's problems with tools that are designed to create primitive, competitive groups.
From Chris Paley, author of the 'extraordinary', 'startling' and 'thought-provoking' Unthink, comes Beyond Bad, which shows morals hinder us from achieving what we want to achieve. Beyond Bad is the book that 'does for morals what Dawkins did for God'.
Morals have held empires together, kept soldiers marching under fire, fed the hungry, passed laws, built walls, welcomed immigrants, destroyed careers and governed our sex lives. But what if morality's all meaningless rubbish, a malfunctioning relic of our evolutionary past?
This is the provocative argument that Chris Paley makes. This isn't an attack on one set of moral codes or one way of thinking about ethics: it's a call for abolishing the whole caboodle.
He uses evolutionary psychology to show how and why morality emerged: they
enabled our forebears to survive and prosper in tribal groups. Today, our morals constrain us, bias us, and push us in the wrong direction.
The biggest challenges our species faces, whether global warming, nuclear proliferation or the rise of the robots, are pan-human. These challenges are beyond what our moral minds were designed to cope with. You can't build smartphones with stone-age axes, and you can't solve modern humanity's problems with tools that are designed to create primitive, competitive groups.
From Chris Paley, author of the 'extraordinary', 'startling' and 'thought-provoking' Unthink, comes Beyond Bad, which shows morals hinder us from achieving what we want to achieve. Beyond Bad is the book that 'does for morals what Dawkins did for God'.
About the author
Dr Chris Paley has an MSci and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Unthink: Why You Don't Think The Way You Think You Think. In Chris's view the greatest scientific leap of his generation is throwing off common-sense assumptions about the mind: what it's doing for us, why we have morals, and how we make decisions. This leaves scientists free to overturn millennia of fruitless theorising and truly explain why we are what we are and think what we think. He has a wife, three blameless daughters and an imaginary, but mischievous, cat. Chris might believe himself to be thoroughly amoral, but his wife thinks him 'a good man'.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
