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Author: Donald Davidson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199246274
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays. In this seminal investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons; these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations. Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson's views have developed.
Author: Donald Davidson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199246274
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Get Book Here
Book Description
Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays. In this seminal investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons; these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations. Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson's views have developed.
Author: Anton Ford
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
G. E. M. Anscombe's Intention, firmly established the philosophy of action as a distinctive field of inquiry. Donald Davidson called this 94-page book "the most important treatment of action since Aristotle." But until quite recently, few scholars recognized the magnitude of Anscombe's philosophical achievement. This collection of ten essays elucidates some of the more challenging aspects of Anscombe's work and affirms her reputation as one of our most original philosophers. Born in 1919, Anscombe studied at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, where she later held a research fellowship. In 1941 she married philosopher Peter Geach, with whom she had seven children. A close friend of Wittgenstein, in 1946 she joined Oxford's Somerville College and spent the next twenty-four years there before being appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at Cambridge that Wittgenstein had held. She died in 2001 after her long career as a highly regarded analytic philosopher. This volume brings together fresh interpretations of Intention written by some of today's leading philosophers of action. It will enlighten Anscombe's readers who struggle with concepts they find puzzling or obscure, while providing a bracing corrective to doubts about Intention's significance and the gravity of what is at stake.
Author: Michael Thompson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674016705
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Any sound practical philosophy must be clear on practical concepts—concepts, in particular, of life, action, and practice. This clarity is Michael Thompson’s aim in his ambitious work. In Thompson’s view, failure to comprehend the structures of thought and judgment expressed in these concepts has disfigured modern moral philosophy, rendering it incapable of addressing the larger questions that should be its focus. In three investigations, Thompson considers life, action, and practice successively, attempting to exhibit these interrelated concepts as pure categories of thought, and to show how a proper exposition of them must be Aristotelian in character. He contends that the pure character of these categories, and the Aristotelian forms of reflection necessary to grasp them, are systematically obscured by modern theoretical philosophy, which thus blocks the way to the renewal of practical philosophy. His work recovers the possibility, within the tradition of analytic philosophy, of hazarding powerful generalities, and of focusing on the larger issues—like “life”—that have the power to revive philosophy. As an attempt to relocate crucial concepts from moral philosophy and the theory of action into what might be called the metaphysics of life, this original work promises to reconfigure a whole sector of philosophy. It is a work that any student of contemporary philosophy must grapple with.
Author: John Shand
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773530177
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Author: Shaun Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199291845
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
Shaun Nichols offers a naturalistic, psychological account of the origins of the problem of free will. He argues that our belief in indeterminist choice is grounded in faulty inference and therefore unjustified, goes on to suggest that there is no single answer to whether free will exists, and promotes a pragmatic approach to prescriptive issues.
Author: C.G. Jung
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135552282
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 127
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Book Description
Was the leading psychologist of his time a Nazi sympathiser? This was the question asked by many after the Second World War, as they sought to explain Jung's actions and publications during Nazi rule. So great was the controversy that his reputation risked being permanently damaged. Essays on Contemporary Events was the first broadside in his vigorous defence of his beleaguered reputation. This remarkable work is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Jung. It will enable the reader to decide: was Jung wholly innocent of the accusations or had he, like so many others, fallen under the Nazi spell and was now trying to make amends.
Author: Hubert L. Dreyfus
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199654700
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
For fifty years Hubert Dreyfus has done pioneering work which brings phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. This is a selection of his most influential essays, developing his critique of the representational model of the mind in analytical philosophy of mind and mainstream cognitive science.
Author: William Kessen
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134763212
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
For the past forty years, the ideas and findings of George Mandler -- and George Mandler himself -- have been highly influential throughout the field of experimental psychology. Not only has he helped to advance the study of cognition and emotion in many ways, but he also offered assistance and encouragement to numerous young researchers who may expand on the knowledge acquired thus far. The editors of this festschrift feel that one of the greatest strengths of Mandler's work is the blend of European theorizing and American empiricism. This volume contains contributions from friends and colleagues who have been influenced in one way or another by this accomplished psychologist.
Author: John W. Yolton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521073499
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
The essays reflect Locke's position as a polymath and recontextualise his ideas through the juxtaposition of various academic approaches.
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Renard Press Ltd
ISBN: 1913724263
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 15
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Book Description
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
