Death and Character

Death and Character PDF Author: Annette Baier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674030909
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Annette Baier goes beyond her earlier work on David Hume to reflect on a topic that links his philosophy to questions of immediate relevance—in particular, questions about what character is and how it shapes our lives. Her reading radically revises the received interpretation of Hume's epistemology and, in particular, philosophy of mind.

Death and Character

Death and Character PDF Author: Annette Baier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674030909
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Annette Baier goes beyond her earlier work on David Hume to reflect on a topic that links his philosophy to questions of immediate relevance—in particular, questions about what character is and how it shapes our lives. Her reading radically revises the received interpretation of Hume's epistemology and, in particular, philosophy of mind.

A Companion to the Philosophy of Action

A Companion to the Philosophy of Action PDF Author: Timothy O'Connor
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444390457
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 674

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Book Description
A Companion to the Philosophy of Action offers a comprehensive overview of the issues and problems central to the philosophy of action. The first volume to survey the entire field of philosophy of action (the central issues and processes relating to human actions) Brings together specially commissioned chapters from international experts Discusses a range of ideas and doctrines, including rationality, free will and determinism, virtuous action, criminal responsibility, Attribution Theory, and rational agency in evolutionary perspective Individual chapters also cover prominent historic figures from Plato to Ricoeur Can be approached as a complete narrative, but also serves as a work of reference Offers rich insights into an area of philosophical thought that has attracted thinkers since the time of the ancient Greeks

Causation

Causation PDF Author: Douglas Kutach
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745685846
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
In most academic and non-academic circles throughout history, the world and its operation have been viewed in terms of cause and effect. The principles of causation have been applied, fruitfully, across the sciences, law, medicine, and in everyday life, despite the lack of any agreed-upon framework for understanding what causation ultimately amounts to. In this engaging and accessible introduction to the topic, Douglas Kutach explains and analyses the most prominent theories and examples in the philosophy of causation. The book is organized so as to respect the various cross-cutting and interdisciplinary concerns about causation, such as the reducibility of causation, its application to scientific modeling, its connection to influence and laws of nature, and its role in causal explanation. Kutach begins by presenting the four recurring distinctions in the literature on causation, proceeding through an exploration of various accounts of causation including determination, difference making and probability-raising. He concludes by carefully considering their application to the mind-body problem. Causation provides a straightforward and compact survey of contemporary approaches to causation and serves as a friendly and clear guide for anyone interested in exploring the complex jungle of ideas that surround this fundamental philosophical topic.

Causal Inference

Causal Inference PDF Author: Scott Cunningham
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300255888
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
An accessible, contemporary introduction to the methods for determining cause and effect in the Social Sciences “Causation versus correlation has been the basis of arguments—economic and otherwise—since the beginning of time. Causal Inference: The Mixtape uses legit real-world examples that I found genuinely thought-provoking. It’s rare that a book prompts readers to expand their outlook; this one did for me.”—Marvin Young (Young MC) Causal inference encompasses the tools that allow social scientists to determine what causes what. In a messy world, causal inference is what helps establish the causes and effects of the actions being studied—for example, the impact (or lack thereof) of increases in the minimum wage on employment, the effects of early childhood education on incarceration later in life, or the influence on economic growth of introducing malaria nets in developing regions. Scott Cunningham introduces students and practitioners to the methods necessary to arrive at meaningful answers to the questions of causation, using a range of modeling techniques and coding instructions for both the R and the Stata programming languages.

The Neural Basis of Free Will

The Neural Basis of Free Will PDF Author: Peter Tse
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262019108
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.

Hume and the Problem of Causation

Hume and the Problem of Causation PDF Author: Tom L. Beauchamp
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The authors demonstrate that Hume's views can stand up to contemporary criticism and are relevant to current debates on causality.

Causation in European Tort Law

Causation in European Tort Law PDF Author: Marta Infantino
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108418368
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 785

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Book Description
This book takes an original and comparative approach to issues of causation in tort law across many European legal systems.

Hume, Passion, and Action

Hume, Passion, and Action PDF Author: Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199573298
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
David Hume's theory of action is well known for several provocative theses, including that passion and reason cannot be opposed over the direction of action. Elizabeth S. Radcliffe defends an original interpretation of Hume's views on passion, reason, and motivation which is consistent with other theses in Hume's philosophy, loyal to his texts, and historically situated. She challenges the now orthodox interpretation of Hume on motivation, presenting an alternative that situates Hume closer to "Humeans" than many recent interpreters have. Part of the strategy is to examine the thinking of the early modern intellectuals to whom Hume responds. Most of these thinkers insisted that passions lead us to pursue harmful objects unless regulated by reason; and most regarded passions as representations of good and evil, which can be false. Understanding Hume's response to these claims requires appreciating his respective characterizations of reason and passion. The author argues that Hume's thesis that reason is practically impotent apart from passion is about beliefs generated by reason, rather than about the capacity of reason. Furthermore, the argument makes sense of Hume's sometimes-ridiculed description of passions as "original existences" having no reference to objects. The author also shows how Hume understood morality as intrinsically motivating, while holding that moral beliefs are not themselves motives, and why he thought of passions as self-regulating, contrary to the admonitions of the rationalists.

Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality

Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality PDF Author: Eric Watkins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521543613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
A book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context.

Knowledge, Reason, and Taste

Knowledge, Reason, and Taste PDF Author: Paul Guyer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691151172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Immanuel Kant famously said that he was awoken from his "dogmatic slumbers," and led to question the possibility of metaphysics, by David Hume's doubts about causation. Because of this, many philosophers have viewed Hume's influence on Kant as limited to metaphysics. More recently, some philosophers have questioned whether even Kant's metaphysics was really motivated by Hume. In Knowledge, Reason, and Taste, renowned Kant scholar Paul Guyer challenges both of these views. He argues that Kant's entire philosophy--including his moral philosophy, aesthetics, and teleology, as well as his metaphysics--can fruitfully be read as an engagement with Hume. In this book, the first to describe and assess Hume's influence throughout Kant's philosophy, Guyer shows where Kant agrees or disagrees with Hume, and where Kant does or doesn't appear to resolve Hume's doubts. In doing so, Guyer examines the progress both Kant and Hume made on enduring questions about causes, objects, selves, taste, moral principles and motivations, and purpose and design in nature. Finally, Guyer looks at questions Kant and Hume left open to their successors.