The Data of Ethics

by Herbert Spencer

Overview

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781023235242
Publisher:	Anson Street Press
Publication date:	03/28/2025
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

English polymath Herbert Spencer worked as a sociologist, anthropological, biologist, psychologist, and philosopher. The phrase "survival of the fittest" was first used by Spencer in Principles of Biology (1864), following his reading of Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. Although the name primarily denotes natural selection, Spencer also embraced Lamarckism since he believed that evolution extends into the fields of sociology and ethics. Spencer created a comprehensive theory of evolution that included the progressive development of biological systems, the physical environment, human thought, culture, and society. He made contributions to many different fields as a polymath, such as politics, economics, anthropology, ethics, literature, astronomy, biology, sociology, and psychology. He attained great power throughout his lifetime, mostly in academic English-speaking circles. Although Spencer was "the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century," his impact began to wane after 1900. Talcott Parsons questioned, "Who now reads Spencer?" in 1937. Spencer, the son of William George Spencer (often referred to as George), was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER VII. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. § 40. The last chapter, in so far as it dealt with feelings in their relations to conduct, recognized only their physiological aspects : their psychological aspects were passed over. In this chapter, conversely, we are not concerned with the constitutional connexions between feelings, as incentives or deterrents, and physical benefits to be gained or mischiefs to be avoided; nor with the reactive effects of feelings on the state of the organism, as fitting or unfitting it for future action. Here we have to consider represented pleasures and pains, sensational and emotional, as constituting deliberate motives—as forming factors in the conscious adjustments of acts to ends. § 41. The rudimentary psychical act, not yet differentiated from a physical act, implies an excitation and a motion. In a creature of low type the touch of food excites prehension. In a somewhat higher creature the odour from nutritive matter sets up motion of the body towards the matter. And where rudimentary vision exists, sudden obscuration of light, implying the passage of something large, causes convulsive muscular movements which mostly carry the body away from the source of danger. In each of these cases we may distinguish four factors. There is (a), that property of the external object which primarily affects the organism—the taste, smell, or opacity; and, connected with such property, there is in the external object that character (b), which renders seizure of it, or escape from it, beneficial. Within the organism there is (c), the impression or sensation which the property (a), produces, serving as stimulus ; and there is, connected with it,the motor change (d), by which seizure or escape is effected. Now Psychology ia chiefly concerned with the connexion ...

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Conduct in general; 2. The evolution of conduct; 3. Good and bad conduct; 4. Ways of judging conduct; 5. The physical view; 6. The biological view; 7. The psychological view; 8. The sociological view; 9. Criticisms and explanations; 10. The relativity of pains and pleasures; 11. Egoism versus altruism; 12. Altruism versus egoism; 13. Trial and compromise; 14. Conciliation; 15. Absolute ethics and relative ethics; 16. The scope of ethics.