Foundations of Civic Engagement is a comprehensive survey and reassessment of the entire field of social and political philosophy. Suitable for use as a primary text for courses on political thought, this book explores the basic arguments of the most important historical and contemporary figures and offers a thematic critique and integration of these philosophies. This dynamic book includes in-depth discussions of Ancient Greek, modern and contemporary theories of communitarianism, social contract, feminism, classical liberal rights-based approaches, African American philosophy, postmodernism, Marxism, critical theory, and theories of communicative actions (e.g. Habermas). Throughout philosophical history, there is a tension between social development of the political person? as in personalist, communitarian, feminist, postmodern, and Continental thought? and the abstract contractual principles needed for impartial justice and freedom of conscience. This chasm can be bridged to some extent by combining ideal contractualism with the tools of feminist theory, discourse ethics, and critical theory. Foundations of Civic Engagement evaluates these tensions, as well as the criticisms and response to criticism for each theory, in order to promote open dialogue, analysis, and a realistic assessment of each philosophy.

Foundations of Civic Engagement: Rethinking Social and Political Philosophy

Politics & Social Sciences

Ellis, Ralph D.

Fischer II, Norman J.

Sauer, James B.

Philosophy

University Press of America

Informing and stimulating the philosophical thinking of policy analysts, the book develops a concretely applicable way of reasoning about the conflict between considerations of justice (which traditionally have been framed in qualitative terms) and considerations of aggregate utility (which have been framed in quantitative terms). A central argument is that without value assumptions, no public policy would be possible. Paper edition (unseen), $21.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis

Georgetown Univ Pr

In Just Results, Ralph E. Ellis provides an authoritative solution to one of the major problems in the field of public policy. Until now, analysts and planners have had no practical or accurate means of incorporating qualitative social concerns into the traditional quantitative formulas used in policymaking. By introducing a justice factor―a quantitative measure for social values―Ellis opens the door for more balanced policy decisions. Using concrete, real-world examples, Ellis shows how policy analysts can better account for the use value―or practical measurable utility―of universally agreed-upon social benefits such as life, health, safety, and environmental preservation when making cost-benefit analyses. In this way, policymakers, and by extension, society as a whole, can avoid making unjust tradeoffs between important social values and comparatively frivolous economic benefits. Drawing on philosophical works on justice from Kant through John Rawls, this book is informed by a theoretical defense of distributive justice that emphasizes diminishing marginal utility, thus favoring the poor. Just Results is a stimulating and highly applicable book that will be of great interest to philosophers, political scientists, policy analysts and planners.

Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis (Not In A Series)

Georgetown University Press

The Craft of Thinking: Logic, Scientific Method and the Pursuit of Truth

Bueno, Aníbal

Clark Atlanta Univ Pr

The Moral Psychology of Internal Conflict: Value, Meaning, and the Enactive Mind

Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines 'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of knowledge.

Science & Math

Behavioral Sciences

Cambridge University Press

Action, Embodied Mind, and Life World combines embodied consciousness research, existential phenomenology, Gendlin's "focusing" concept, and recent self-organizational work on basic emotions (e.g., Panksepp, Frijda), to explore the way patterns of motivated action shape our interpretations of reality--personally, biologically, and within a sociopolitical community. Like a bat projecting sonar, we understand our world by sensing patterns of resistance against our own self-initiated actions. If hammering is the action, we find "nails" and "non-nails." Actions in turn express a self-organizing process rooted in motivational structures that presuppose values. These patterns of motivation therefore prefigure the shape of what we think or perceive. But the emotions, feelings, "sensings" through which we discern motivation are never just about what they seem, especially given ample incentives to distortion and self-deception. The "trigger" is the tip of an iceberg. This book works toward a coherent method for getting at the basement level of the action trajectories that motivate exploration, selective attention, and thus interpretations of reality--a crucial question in an age of motivated disinformation.

Action, Embodied Mind, and Life World: Focusing at the Existential Level (American Philosophy and Cultural Thought)

State Univ of New York Pr

Questioning Consciousness brings together neuroscientific, psychological and phenomenological research, combining in a readable format recent developments in image research and neurology. It reassesses the mind-body relation and research on 'mental models', abstract concept formation, and acquisition of logical and apparently 'imageless' inference skills. It is argued that to be conscious of an object is essentially to imagine in a habituated way what would happen if we were to perform certain actions in relation to the object; and that mental images fit together to build up abstract concepts. This analysis shows why conscious information processing is so structurally different from ― yet interrelated with ― non-conscious processing, and how mind and body interrelate as a process to its substratum in the way that a sound wave relates to the medium through which it passes. (Series A)

Questioning Consciousness: The interplay of imagery, cognition, and emotion in the human brain (Advances in Consciousness Research)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Emotion drives all cognitive processes, largely determining their qualitative feel, their structure, and in part even their content. Action-initiating centers deep in the emotional brain ground our understanding of the world by enabling us to imagine how we could act relative to it, based on endogenous motivations to engage certain levels of energy and complexity. Thus understanding personality, cognition, consciousness and action requires examining the workings of dynamical systems applied to emotional processes in living organisms. If an object's meaning depends on its action affordances, then understanding intentionality in emotion or cognition requires exploring why emotion is the bridge between action and representational processes such as thought or imagery; and this requires integrating phenomenology with neurophysiology. The resulting viewpoint, "enactivism," entails specific new predictions, and suggests that emotions are about the self-initiated actions of dynamical systems, not reactive "responses" to external events; consciousness is more about motivated anticipation than reaction to inputs. (Series A)

Curious Emotions: Roots of consciousness and personality in motivated action (Advances in Consciousness Research)

Mental Health

.*** This book has been superceeded by the book "Solomon, Pharaoh of Egypt" ***...Ralph Ellis has discovered indisputable links and comparisons between the Egyptian and Judaic royal lines, that demonstrate that King David and King Solomon were actually pharaohs of Egypt. This is why there is no evidence for these monarchs in the archaeology of modern Israel; for the evidence, including the tombs, sarcophagi and death-masks of these famous monarchs, are actually located in the north eastern Nile Delta. The Queen of Sheba was also related to this royal line and, as befitting the great 'Queen of the South', her sarcophagus was discovered at Deir el Bahri in Luxor. The book also shows the location of King Solomon's Mines and the true historical identity of Hiram Abif, the hero of the Masonic 3rd degree.

Solomon, Falcon of Sheba: The Tombs of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba Discovered in Egypt

Religion & Spirituality

Adventures Unlimited Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ellis, Ralph D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ellis, Ralph D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ellis, Ralph D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Foundations of Civic Engagement: Rethinking Social and Political Philosophy

Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis

Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis (Not In A Series)

The Craft of Thinking: Logic, Scientific Method and the Pursuit of Truth

The Moral Psychology of Internal Conflict: Value, Meaning, and the Enactive Mind

The Moral Psychology of Internal Conflict: Value, Meaning, and the Enactive Mind

Action, Embodied Mind, and Life World: Focusing at the Existential Level (American Philosophy and Cultural Thought)

Questioning Consciousness: The interplay of imagery, cognition, and emotion in the human brain (Advances in Consciousness Research)

Curious Emotions: Roots of consciousness and personality in motivated action (Advances in Consciousness Research)

Solomon, Falcon of Sheba: The Tombs of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba Discovered in Egypt