An ethical guidebook to the zombie apocalypse : how to keep your brain without losing your heart / Bryan Hall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hall, Bryan, 1977- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics.

Ethics--Case studies.

Zombies.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

xii, 224 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Summary:

When your base camp is overrun by zombies, whom do you save if you cannot save everyone? Is it permissible to sacrifice one survivor to an undead horde in order to save a greater number of the living? Do you have obligations to loved ones who have turned? These are some of the troubling ethical questions you might face in a zombie apocalypse. Bryan Hall uses situations like these to creatively introduce the foundational theories of moral philosophy. Covering major thinkers such as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, this is an introduction to Ethics like no other: a practical guidebook for surviving a zombie outbreak with your humanity intact. It shows you why moral reasoning matters as long as you still walk among the living.

Contents:

1 Coping with Chaos through Relativism p. 7

1 Field exercise: The fall p. 8

2 Cultural relativism p. 13

3 Field exercise: Congregation of the Living Dead p. 19

4 Divine command theory p. 22

2 How to Find Moral Value in the Apocalypse p. 29

1 Field exercise: The hunter p. 29

2 From subjectivism to egoism p. 33

3 Field exercise: Safe zone p. 39

4 Moral naturalism and intuitionism p. 42

3 Creating an Escape from the State of Zombies p. 49

1 Field exercise: Prisoner's dilemma p. 50

2 The state of zombies is a state of war p. 55

3 Cooperation and community p. 55

4 Objections to contractarianism p. 58

4 Understanding Your Rights and Duties during the Pandemic p. 65

1 Field exercise: Infected liar p. 66

2 Kant's ethical theory p. 69

3 Universal law formula p. 70

4 People and things p. 71

5 Humanity formula p. 75

6 Duties, rights, and moral worth p. 76

5 Do the Infected have a Right to Suicide from Altruistic Motives? p. 81

1 Field exercise: The choice p. 81

2 Perfect duties, imperfect duties, and Kant's view on suicide p. 86

3 Moral value and the distinction between doing and allowing harm p. 88

4 Suicide from altruistic motives p. 90

5 The problem of conflicting duties p. 91

6 W.D. Ross's solution to conflicting duties p. 92

6 When to Sacrifice Survivors to Hungry Hordes p. 97

1 Horde p. 98

2 Fleshy Friend p. 99

3 Spur p. 105

4 Loop p. 109

5 Second Horde p. 111

7 How to Maximize Pleasure in a World of Flesh-Consuming Anguish p. 117

1 Field exercise: The horde p. 118

2 Three tenets of utilitarianism p. 122

3 Bentham's act utilitarianism p. 126

4 Mill's rule utilitarianism p. 128

8 Are All Zombies Equal? p. 135

1 Field exercise: Trapped p. 136

2 The human criterion p. 140

3 Kantian personhood and rights p. 143

4 Conscious life criterion p. 148

5 Utilitarianism and zombie euthanasia p. 150

9 The Responsibilities of Strongholds to the Unprotected Living p. 159

1 Field exercise: Drowning in the dead p. 160

2 The case against helping unfortunate survivors p. 164

3 Utilitarian Greater Moral Evil Principle p. 165

4 Kantian stronghold ethics p. 168

10 What are Your Obligations to Undead Loved Ones? p. 175

1 Field exercise: The children p. 176

2 Personal identity p. 178

3 Are the undead morally responsible? p. 183

4 Care ethics p. 187

11 How to Cultivate Virtue among the Vicious p. 197

1 Field exercise: Ambush p. 197

2 Aristotle's virtue ethics p. 201

3 Hitting the mean p. 204

4 Objections to virtue ethics p. 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Electronic version: Hall, Bryan, 1977- Ethical guidebook to the zombie apocalypse.

ISBN:

9781350083615

1350083615

9781350083622

1350083623

OCLC:

1122867474