Not one, but *two* juicy topics!

I've cadged these both from books I was musing over in Blackwells yesterday, both edited by the same person. One was called something like 'What's Your Dangerous Idea?' and was about notions people have that might fundamentally alter society, while t'other was called something like 'What Unproveable Thing Do You Believe In?" - title says it all.

I'm sure they're both things that have come up before elsewhere, but nevertheless...

From the first book, free will. This is a concept, the author argued, that must be radically adjusted in order to make sense in the context of what we now know. It is far too simplistic to say people are either responsible, or not responsible, for their actions. Advertising, for instance, plays on the fact that the flaws in our decision-making processes can be exploited to a desired end. In other words, we can be 'tricked' into doing things, without being directly lied to. If we continue to insist that all responsibility ultimately comes down to the individual, do we give people a license to manipulate us?

From the second book, the interesting notion that one develops a moral rationality in the same way one develops a mathematical rationality - as opposed to simply being 'fed' a system of values which are then adhered to, you develop a way of dealing with a whole dimension of thought, in which there are fundamental truths that have only to be discovered.

This is a powerful notion, because if you don't believe in it, then you admit your own code of ethics no jurisdiction outside the society you were brought up in, or similar societies. In a multicultural society, this has particular impact - again, if we don't believe in a moral rationality that pertains to a truth as steadfast as mathematics, how can we believe that our system of values is any better than that of our neighbours, who may have been brought up very differently?