Routledge Science, Ethics, and Politics: Conversations and Investigations

The relationship between science and ethics has been subject to much debate. This volume demonstrates the mutually beneficial relationship that can take place between ethics and science. It presents work that utilises the tools of science - broadly conceptualised - to elucidate ethical issues, showing that careful scientific analysis of ethical issues can reveal new insights. This is supplemented by conversations with the authors - some of them pre-eminent scientists addressing issues of ethics, including two Nobel laureates - to learn how they came to the study of ethics and ask how they conceptualise and think about ethical issues. Science, Ethics and Politics provides substantive insight into particular ethical issues, ranging from issues of torture during war to parents' obligations to children. This book is designed as a complement to traditional texts on ethics and should appeal to students of ethics as well as to the general public. Review “This work is presented with the intention of demonstrating the contributions that scientific thought can make to the study of ethics. Monroe (director of the Ethics Center at the U of California at Irvine) presents nine papers, each of which is paired with a conversation/interview with one of the paper’s authors addressing the broader scientific-ethical issues raised by the paper in question. Topics include the roots of morality in evolutionary biology, the psychology of virtue, the ‘morla conundrum of blurred racial boundaries,’ the economic responsibility of parents to children, economics and climate change, ethical and scientific considerations of traumatic stress in the international context, ethics and the policy of extraordinary rendition, and gender equality in academia.” –-Eithne O’Leyne, August 2011 Reference and Research Book News "This is a fascinating interdisciplinary conversation between distinguished scholars. If you are interested in the relation between science and ethics, this book will provide rich food for thought." -Brian Skyrms, University of California―Irvine and Stanford University About the Author Kristen Renwick Monroe is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at University of California–Irvine. She is the author of Heart of Altruism and The Hand of Compassion (2004).