The Heart of Judgment explores the nature, historical significance, and contemporary relevance of practical wisdom. Primarily a work in moral and political thought, it also relies extensively on the latest research in cognitive neuroscience to confirm and extend our understanding of the faculty of judgment. Ever since the ancient Greeks first discussed practical wisdom, the faculty of judgment has been an important topic for philosophers and political theorists. It remains one of the virtues most demanded of our public officials. The greater the liberties and responsibilities accorded to citizens in democratic regimes, the more the health and welfare of society rest upon their exercise of good judgment. While giving full credit to the roles played by reason and deliberation in good judgment, the book underlines the central importance of intuition, emotion, and worldly experience.
Author(s): Leslie Paul Thiele
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 335
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
List of Figures......Page 8
Preface......Page 9
Introduction......Page 15
Judgment, Rules, and Law......Page 19
Judgment and Rationality......Page 21
The Nature of Moral and Political Judgment......Page 23
What Lies Ahead......Page 27
1 An Intellectual History of Judgment......Page 31
Plato (c. 427–347 b.c.)......Page 32
Aristotle (384–322 b.c.)......Page 33
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 b.c.)......Page 40
Niccolo Machiavielli (1469–1527)......Page 41
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)......Page 44
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)......Page 47
John Dewey (1859–1952)......Page 50
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)......Page 53
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002)......Page 56
Hannah Arendt (1906–75)......Page 59
Judgment in Post-Modernity......Page 66
Contemporary Decision Theory......Page 73
2 The Indispensability of Experience......Page 84
Ancestral Experience......Page 87
Ancestral Experience and the Brain......Page 91
Making Good Use of Ancestral Experience......Page 94
Personal Experience and the Brain......Page 99
The Worth of Worldly Experience......Page 103
Common Sense......Page 109
Learning Good Judgment......Page 118
The Benefits of Bad Experience......Page 121
Bootstrapping and the Brain......Page 128
3 The Power of the Unconscious......Page 130
Perceptual Skills and Implicit Memory......Page 134
The Modularity of the Brain......Page 139
Tacit Knowledge and Intuition......Page 144
Post Hoc Reasoning......Page 157
The Case for Integration: Cultivating Good Judgment......Page 164
Embodied Learning......Page 166
Whole-Brain Judgment......Page 172
4 The Imperative of Affect......Page 177
Affect Over Reason......Page 180
The Reasonableness of Emotion......Page 189
The Benefits of “Positive” and “Negative” Emotions......Page 193
Judgment and Empathy......Page 197
Self-Knowledge, Good Judgment, and the Role of Emotion......Page 207
5 The Riches of Narrative......Page 215
The Neurological Construction of the Self......Page 217
The Importance of Words......Page 231
Narrative and Moral Life......Page 238
Provincial Stories......Page 243
Novel Judgments......Page 252
Narrative as Ersatz Experience......Page 259
The Tacit Register......Page 266
Finding a Balance......Page 271
Nested Narratives and the Pursuit of Meaning......Page 277
Narrative, Multi-Dimensionality, and Moral Principle......Page 283
Conclusion......Page 291
Grappling with Multi-Dimensionality......Page 293
Reading Embodied Minds......Page 296
Practical Wisdom, Neuroscience and Narrative......Page 300
Bibliography......Page 307
Index......Page 329
