Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation.
Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.
Western moral tradition has it that we make ethical decisions rationally, by applying universal laws to concrete situations. Johnson (philosophy, U. of Southern Illinois) draws on recent work in the cognitive sciences to argue that imagination plays a major role in ethical deliberation. Not universal laws, he says, but shared metaphors, images, and narratives are the basis of western morality. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)