Those who study value conflicts have resisted rational choice approaches in the social sciences, contending that political conflict over cultural values is best explained by group loyalties, symbolic motives, and other "nonrational" factors. However, Chong shows that a single model can explain how people make decisions across both social and economic realms. He argues that our preferences result from a combination of psychological dispositions, which are shaped by social influences and developed over the life span. Chong's book yields insights about the circumstances under which preferences, beliefs, values, norms and group identifications are formed. It offers a provocative explanation of how ingrained social norms and values can change over time despite the forces maintaining the status quo. "Going beyond the tired polemics on both sides, [Chong] constructs a new interpretation of human behavior in which culture and individual rationality both matter. The synthesis is a more comprehensive and powerful explanatory framework than either side could have produced, and Chong's creativity should influence subsequent interpretations of our social life in fundamental ways."—Christopher H. Achen, University of Michigan

TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1 How Far Can You Go with Self-Analysis? 2 You Feel As You Think. 3 Feeling Well by Thinking Straight. 4 What Your Feelings Really Are. 5 Thinking Yourself Out of Emotional Disturbances. 6 Recognizing and Attacking Neurotic Behavior. 7 Overcoming the Influences of the Past. 8 How Reasonable is Reason? 9 The Art of Never Being Desperately Unhappy. 10 Tackling Dire needs for Approval. 11 Eradicating Dire Fears of Failure. 12 How to Stop Blaming and Start Living. 13 How to Be Happy Though Frustrated. 14 Controlling Your Own Destiny. 15 Counquering Anxiety. 16 Acquiring Self-Discipline. 17 Rewriting Your Personal History. 18 Accepting Reality. 19 Overcoming Inertia and Becoming Creatively Absorbed. 20 Living Rationally in an Irrational World.

In contrast to this view, Dennis Chong shows that a single model that combines economic and sociological mechanisms can explain how people make decisions across both cultural and economic realms. He argues that the investments we make in the norms and values of our communities reflect the influence of our psychological dispositions, as well as the social and material costs and benefits of the options we face."--BOOK JACKET.

This book provides a comprehensive view of rational suicide in the elderly, a group that has nearly twice the rate of suicide when chronically ill than any other demographic. Its frame of reference does not endorse a single point-of-view about the legitimacy of rational suicide, which is evolving across societies with little guidance for geriatric mental health professionals. Instead, it serves as a resource for both those clinicians who agree that older people may rationally commit suicide and those who believe that this wish may require further assessment and treatment. The first chapters of the book provides an overview of rational suicide in the elderly, examining it through history and across cultures also addressing the special case of baby boomers. This book takes an ethical and philosophical look at whether suicide can truly be rational and whether the nearness of death in late-life adults means that suicide should be considered differently than in younger adults. Clinical criteria for rational suicide in the elderly are proposed in this book for the first time, as well as a guidelines for the psychosocial profile of an older adult who wants to commit rational suicide. Unlike any other book, this text examines the existential, psychological, and psychodynamic perspectives. A chapter on terminal mental illness and a consideration of suicide in that context and proposed interventions even without a diagnosable mental illness also plays a vital role in this book as these are key issues in within the question of suicide among the elderly. This book is the first to consider all preventative measures, including the spiritual as well as the psychotherapeutic, and pharmacologic. A commentary on modern society, aging, and rational suicide that ties all of these elements together, making this the ultimate guide for addressing suicide among the elderly. Rational Suicide in the Elderly is an excellent resource for all medical professionals with potentially suicidal patients, including geriatricians, geriatric and general psychiatrists, geriatric nurses, social workers, and public health officials.

A radical approach to the philosophy of mind, in which states of mind are identified with dispositions to behave in certain ways.The approach taken by Rowland Stout is a thoroughly up-to-date version of behaviourism, although not a form of behaviourism that denies the existence of consciousness, free will, rationality, etc., nor aims to reduce these to other sorts of things. Properly understood, the idea of being disposed to behave in a certain way is seen to be exactly as rich and interesting as the idea of being in a certain state of mind. The fact that our ways of behaving are sensitive to practical rationality is taken to be an essential aspect of our nature as conscious agents. And in describing such a version of practical rationality Stout claims we are describing the mental state of someone whose behaviour is sensitive to it.His account of behaviourism rests on two central notions - that of a causal disposition to behave and that of sensitivity to practical rationality. He explains and develops these notions in some detail, and then uses them to construct powerful and original accounts of belief, intention, knowledge, perception and consciousness.Key Features* A systematic and completely original theoretical approach to the philosophy of mind* A re-evaluation of the history of the philosophy of mind based on a rejection of the generally accepted arguments in the 1960s and 1970s used by functionalists against behaviourists* A serious engagement with the intuitively compelling issues concerning behaviourism.

‘Islam: A Rational Approach to Human Life’, is an exposition of how and what man is assigned to do in his life. He is allowed to do everything that is reasonably good and just for his sustenance. What is impermissible is injustice for it breeds corruption. The ultimate goal for mankind is to explore the environment around him and make it habitable. Not only this planet but the whole Cosmos is made subservient to him. His ultimate abode is the paradise of his dream which he has to find on his own. That is the place where his command would be his wish. This is what Islam aims mankind to achieve which is possible only through knowledge and wisdom.