The Moral Molecule

Author: Paul J. Zak
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0142196908
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
"Philosophy, economics, and biology have rarely been so entertaining."—Matt Ridley, author of Genome Paul J. Zak's proclivity for taking blood samples has earned him a nickname as the "vampire economist." But his sanguinary habit is backed by his scientific quest: What if there was a master switch for human behavior? On, and people are loving and generous. Off, and they revert to violence and greed. By studying thousands of blood samples, Zak has pinpointed just such a switch: a brain chemical called oxytocin. Sprinting around the globe and into the human brain, The Moral Molecule is a dazzling narrative as erudite and entertaining as bestsellers like Flow, Drive, and Why We Love.

The Moral Molecule

Author: Paul J. Zak
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593067495
Category : Cooperation
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Why are men less faithful than women? Why are some people altruists and others cold-hearted bastards? Why do some businesses succeed while others collapse? In his entertaining and groundbreaking book, Paul Zak uses neuroscience and the fundamentals of economics to answer essential questions about human nature and explore exactly what goodness is.

Trust Factor

Author: Paul J. Zak
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0814437672
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
Why is the culture of a stagnant workplace so difficult to improve? Learn to cultivate a workplace where trust, joy, and commitment compounds naturally by harnessing the power of neurochemistry! For decades, business leaders have been equipping themselves with every book, philosophy, reward, and program, yet companies everywhere continue to struggle with toxic cultures, and the unhappiness and low productivity that go with them. In Trust Factor, neuroscientist Paul Zak shows that innate brain functions hold the answers we’ve been looking for. Put simply, the key to providing an engaging, encouraging, positive culture that keeps your employees energized is trust. When someone shows you trust, a feel-good jolt of oxytocin surges through your brain and triggers you to reciprocate. Within this book, Zak explains topics such as: How brain chemicals affect behavior Why trust gets squashed How to stimulate trust within your employees And much more! This book also incorporates science-based insights for building high-trust organizations with successful examples from The Container Store, Zappos, and Herman Miller. Stop recycling the same ineffective strategies and programs for improving culture. By using the simple mechanisms in Trust Factor, you can create a perpetual trust-building cycle between your management and staff, thus ending stubborn workplace patterns.

Braintrust

Author: Patricia S. Churchland
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180970
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
A provocative new account of how morality evolved What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality. Moral values, Churchland argues, are rooted in a behavior common to all mammals—the caring for offspring. The evolved structure, processes, and chemistry of the brain incline humans to strive not only for self-preservation but for the well-being of allied selves—first offspring, then mates, kin, and so on, in wider and wider "caring" circles. Separation and exclusion cause pain, and the company of loved ones causes pleasure; responding to feelings of social pain and pleasure, brains adjust their circuitry to local customs. In this way, caring is apportioned, conscience molded, and moral intuitions instilled. A key part of the story is oxytocin, an ancient body-and-brain molecule that, by decreasing the stress response, allows humans to develop the trust in one another necessary for the development of close-knit ties, social institutions, and morality. A major new account of what really makes us moral, Braintrust challenges us to reconsider the origins of some of our most cherished values.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule

Author: Rick Strassman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594779732
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. • A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research. • Provides a unique scientific explanation for the phenomenon of alien abduction experiences. From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives. Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that "alien abduction experiences" are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.

The Molecule of More

Author: Daniel Z. Lieberman
Publisher: BenBella Books
ISBN: 1946885290
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Why are we obsessed with the things we want only to be bored when we get them? Why is addiction perfectly logical to an addict? Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference? Why are some people die-hard liberals and others hardcore conservatives? Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times—and so good at figuring them out? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas—and progress itself. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something—anything—that's new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion—and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.

Think Talk Create

Author: David Brendel
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541730542
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
A brilliant counter-narrative for restoring humanity to the bottom-line, numbers-obsessed culture of the modern, 21st century workplace. In a time of unusual stress, with a pandemic raging and economic insecurity and dislocation increasing, we need to rediscover the values that make us human, that give us a sense of meaning in order to increase our potential for productivity and success. What stands in the way, however, is a professional culture where human connectedness is a lost art: the frenzied numbers-obsessed, bottom-line thinking, the "scratch and claw" workplace, and organizations where the boss can literally be an algorithm. Through moving stories and a modern spin on the ancient framework of Socratic dialogue, David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer show how to move forward and build workplaces fit for humans through what uniquely defines us as human beings: our ability to think, talk, and create. By thinking carefully about a challenge, engaging peers in dialogue via open-ended questioning, and building a strategy collaboratively. Think Talk Create enables us to cultivate trust and define collective values, seemingly "soft" attributes that nonetheless markedly increase innovation and, ultimately, financial performance. Think: Step back, slow down, avoid impulsive, short-sighted decision making. Talk: Ask non-judgmental, open ended questions, with your mind as a blank slate, pursuing the problem like an empirical scientist or a judge presiding in court. Create: Bring something new and meaningful into play, a novel solution to a pesky problem that can move the world in surprising, positive directions.

The Data of Ethics

Author: Herbert Spencer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description

Ethics Of Chemistry: From Poison Gas To Climate Engineering

Author: Joachim Schummer
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811233551
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 568

Book Description
'Overall, this collection of case studies provides an outstanding starting point for understanding the ethics of chemistry. It is an extremely important contribution to the study of chemical ethics … Ethics of Chemistry is a key resource for educators interested in integrating ethics instruction into their chemistry curricula … an important foundation for equipping students with the moral judgement and analytical skills necessary to contend with the ethical issues they are likely to face in their professional lives.'Nature Chemistry'… the book offers a general introduction to many relevant topics concerning the values, responsibilities, and judgements in (and of) chemistry. The volume could be helpful for university students and teachers or even general readers interested in the ethics of chemistry.' [Read Full Review]José Ramón Bertomeu-SánchezAmbixAlthough chemistry has been the target of numerous public moral debates for over a century, there is still no academic field of ethics of chemistry to develop an ethically balanced view of the discipline. And while ethics courses are increasingly demanded for science and engineering students in many countries, chemistry is still lagging behind because of a lack of appropriate teaching material. This volume fills both gaps by establishing the scope of ethics of chemistry and providing a cased-based approach to teaching, thereby also narrating a cultural history of chemistry.From poison gas in WWI to climate engineering of the future, this volume covers the most important historical cases of chemistry. It draws lesson from major disasters of the past, such as in Bhopal and Love Canal, or from thalidomide, Agent Orange, and DDT. It further introduces to ethical arguments pro and con by discussing issues about bisphenol-A, polyvinyl chloride, and rare earth elements; as well as of contested chemical projects such as human enhancement, the creation of artificial life, and patents on human DNA. Moreover, it illustrates chemical engagements in preventing hazards, from the prediction of ozone depletion, to Green Chemistry, and research in recycling, industrial substance substitution, and clean-up. Students also learn about codes of conduct and chemical regulations.An international team of experts narrate the historical cases and analyse their ethical dimensions. All cases are suitable for undergraduate teaching, either in classes of ethics, history of chemistry, or in chemistry classes proper.

The Myth of Morality

Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139430939
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
In The Myth of Morality, Richard Joyce argues that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgements is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. Joyce argues that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. Should we therefore do away with morality, as we did away with other faulty notions such as witches? Possibly not. We may be able to carry on with morality as a 'useful fiction' - allowing it to have a regulative influence on our lives and decisions, perhaps even playing a central role - while not committing ourselves to believing or asserting falsehoods, and thus not being subject to accusations of 'error'.