Recent Posts Tagged With 'trust and social fabric'

• Are we born to be good?

  Posted on Monday April 27th, 2009 at 21:09 in trust and social fabric, ethics and moral instincts

  In arguing that we are born to be good, psychologist Dacher Keltner has in mind a particular definition of what it means to be good. In his book “Born to be Good” he views goodness as synonymous with the Confucian concept of jen: a person of jen...

• Does tit-for-tat prioritize the gains of others over those of the self?

  Posted on Friday April 24th, 2009 at 20:58 in trust and social fabric, ethics and moral instincts

  The essential feature of a tit-for-tat strategy is reciprocity – rewarding cooperation and punishing defection. In his book, “Born to be Good”, Dacher Keltner claims that “tit-for-tat instantiates the principle of cost-benefit reversal”. He...

• How high was Adam Smith's jen ratio?

  Posted on Tuesday April 14th, 2009 at 21:00 in trust and social fabric, ethics and moral instincts

  Jen is apparently the central idea in the teachings of Confucius. In his book, “Born to be Good”, Dacher Keltner tells us that the numerator in the jen ratio is actions that bring the good in others to completion and the denominator is actions th...

• Liberal sobriety plus contextualism equals classical liberalism?

  Posted on Thursday February 12th, 2009 at 21:50 in well-being and utility, trust and social fabric, rationality of behaviour

  I have now finished reading “The Pursuit of Unhappiness” by Dan Haybron and haven’t modified my view that it usually does people good to take responsibility for running their own lives. (See earlier posts relating to this book: here and here.)W...