Author: Maria Alvarez
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191613932
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Understanding human beings and their distinctive rational and volitional capacities is one of the central tasks of philosophy. The task requires a clear account of such things as reasons, desires, emotions and motives, and of how they combine to produce and explain human behaviour. In Kinds of Reasons, Maria Alvarez offers a fresh and incisive treatment of these issues, focusing in particular on reasons as they feature in contexts of agency. Her account builds on some important recent work in the area; but she takes her main inspiration from the tradition that receives its seminal contemporary expression in the writings of G.E.M. Anscombe, a tradition that runs counter to the broadly Humean orthodoxy that has dominated the theory of action for the past forty years. Alvarez's conclusions are therefore likely to be controversial; and her bold and painstaking arguments will be found provocative by participants on every side of the debates with which she engages. Clear and directly written, Kinds of Reasons aims to stake out a distinctive position within one of the most hotly contested areas of contemporary philosophy.
Author: John Skorupski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199587639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 558
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Book Description
This book is about normativity and reasons. But by the end the subject becomes the relation between self, thought and world. Skorupski argues that the key concepts of epistemology and moral theory are normative concepts, and that what makes them normative is that they depend on reasons. The concept of a reason is fundamental to all thought.
Author: T. M. Scanlon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199678480
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 143
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Book Description
Is what we have reason to do a matter of fact? If so, what kind of truth is involved, how can we know it, and how do reasons motivate and explain action? In this concise and lucid book T.M. Scanlon offers answers, with a qualified defence of normative cognitivism - the view that there are normative truths about reasons for action.
Author: Andrew Reisner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
Philosophers have long been concerned about what we know and how we know it. Increasingly, however, a related question has gained prominence in philosophical discussion: what should we believe and why? This volume brings together twelve new essays that address different aspects of this question. The essays examine foundational questions about reasons for belief, and use new research on reasons for belief to address traditional epistemological concerns such as knowledge, justification and perceptually acquired beliefs. This book will be of interest to philosophers working on epistemology, theoretical reason, rationality, perception and ethics. It will also be of interest to cognitive scientists and psychologists who wish to gain deeper insight into normative questions about belief and knowledge.
Author: Bradford Skow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198785844
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Reasons Why first argues that what philosophers are really after, or at least should be after, when they seek a theory of explanation, is a theory of answers to why-questions. It then advances a thesis about what form a theory of answers to why-questions should take: a theory of answers to why-questions should say what it takes for one fact to be a reason why another fact obtains. The book's main thesis, then, is a theory of reasons why. Every reason why some event happened is either a cause, or a ground, of that event. Challenging this thesis are many examples philosophers have thought they have found of non-causal explanations. Reasons Why uses two ideas to show that these examples are not counterexamples to the theory it defends. First is the idea that not every part of a good response to a why-question is part of an answer to that why-question. Second is the idea that not every reason why something is a reason why an event happened is itself a reason why that event happened. In the book's final chapter its theory of reasons why is extended to cover teleological answers to why-questions, and answers to why-questions that give an agent's reason for acting.
Author: David R. Morrow
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 162466623X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
Giving Reasons prepares students to think independently, evaluate information, and reason clearly across disciplines. Accessible to students and effective for instructors, it provides plain-English exercises, helpful appendices, and a variety of online supplements.
Author: Derek Parfit
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622443
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 560
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Book Description
This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.
Author: Harry G. Frankfurt
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826063
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 112
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Book Description
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Bullshit, a profound meditation on how and why we love In The Reasons of Love, leading moral philosopher and bestselling author Harry Frankfurt argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Through caring, we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns, and it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. Love is a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what we love—and self-love, as distinct from self-indulgence, is at heart of this concern. The most elementary form of self-love is no more than the desire to love, and self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.
Author: Maria Alvarez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019955000X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Understanding human beings and their distinctive rational and volitional capacities requires a clear account of such things as reasons, desires, emotions, and motives, and how they combine to produce and explain human behaviour. Maria Alvarez presents a fresh and incisive study of these concepts, centred on reasons and their role in human agency.
Author: A. Laitinen
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780230580640
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Are the reasons for which we act the causes of our actions? In the nine essays collected here (including a major historical overview by the editors), experts in the field re-evaluate the history and current state of the reasons/causes debate.
