Normativity and Control

Normativity and Control PDF Author: David Owens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192547623
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? These two questions are connected: the kind of responsibility we have for our beliefs depends on the form of control that we have over them. For a number of years David Owens has investigated what form of control we must have over something in order to be held to the norms governing that thing, and has argued that belief, intention and action each require a different type of control. The forms of freedom appropriate to each of them vary, and so do the presuppositions of responsibility associated with each of them. Issues in the moral psychology of belief cast light on some of the traditional problems of epistemology and in particular on the problems of scepticism and testimony. In this series of ten essays Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief and the different forms of responsibility they generate. He brings into the picture notable recent work in epistemology: on assurance theories of testimony, on 'pragmatic encroachment', on the aim of belief and on the value of knowledge. He also considers topics in related fields such as the philosophy of mind (e.g. the problem of self-knowledge and theories of the first person) and the philosophy of action (e.g. the guise of the good and the role of the will in free agency). Finally, Owens suggests a non-standard reading of the sceptical tradition in early modern philosophy as we find it in Descartes and Hume. Seven of the essays collected here are previously published, one has been heavily revised, and two are previously unpublished. Owens provides a substantial introduction bringing together the themes of the essays.

Normativity and Control

Normativity and Control PDF Author: David Owens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192547623
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? These two questions are connected: the kind of responsibility we have for our beliefs depends on the form of control that we have over them. For a number of years David Owens has investigated what form of control we must have over something in order to be held to the norms governing that thing, and has argued that belief, intention and action each require a different type of control. The forms of freedom appropriate to each of them vary, and so do the presuppositions of responsibility associated with each of them. Issues in the moral psychology of belief cast light on some of the traditional problems of epistemology and in particular on the problems of scepticism and testimony. In this series of ten essays Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief and the different forms of responsibility they generate. He brings into the picture notable recent work in epistemology: on assurance theories of testimony, on 'pragmatic encroachment', on the aim of belief and on the value of knowledge. He also considers topics in related fields such as the philosophy of mind (e.g. the problem of self-knowledge and theories of the first person) and the philosophy of action (e.g. the guise of the good and the role of the will in free agency). Finally, Owens suggests a non-standard reading of the sceptical tradition in early modern philosophy as we find it in Descartes and Hume. Seven of the essays collected here are previously published, one has been heavily revised, and two are previously unpublished. Owens provides a substantial introduction bringing together the themes of the essays.

Normativity and Control

Normativity and Control PDF Author: David J. Owens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191781667
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? In a series of ten essays David Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief, and the different forms of responsibility these forms of control generate.

Shaping the Normative Landscape

Shaping the Normative Landscape PDF Author: David Owens
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0199691509
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shaping the Normative Landscape is an investigation of the value of obligations and of rights, of forgiveness, of consent and refusal, of promise and request. David Owens shows that these are all instruments by which we exercise control over our normative environment. Philosophers from Hume to Scanlon have supposed that when we make promises and give our consent, our real interest is in controlling (or being able to anticipate) what people will actually do and that our interest in rights and obligations is a by-product of this more fundamental interest. In fact, we value for its own sake the ability to decide who is obliged to do what, to determine when blame is appropriate, to settle whether an act wrongs us. Owens explores how we control the rights and obligations of ourselves and of those around us. We do so by making friends and thereby creating the rights and obligations of friendship. We do so by making promises and so binding ourselves to perform. We do so by consenting to medical treatment and thereby giving the doctor the right to go ahead. The normative character of our world matters to us on its own account. To make sense of promise, consent, friendship and other related phenomena we must acknowledge that normative interests are amongst our fundamental interests. We must also rethink the psychology of agency and the nature of social convention.

Reason Without Freedom

Reason Without Freedom PDF Author: David Owens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134593287
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
We call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this imply about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? Or does it imply that we are in control of our beliefs and that what we believe is up to us? Reason Without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. David Owens focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume - the founders of epistemology - and presents a critical discussion of the current trends in contemporary epistemology. He proposes that the problems we confront today - scepticism, the analysis of knowlege, and debates on epistemic justification - can be tackled only once we have understood the moral psychology of belief. This can be resolved when we realise that our responsibility for beliefs is profoundly different from our rationality and agency, and that memory and testimony can preserve justified belief without preserving the evidence which might be used to justify it. Reason Without Freedom should be of value to those interested in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, ethics, and the history of 17th and 18th century.

The Ethics of Belief and Beyond

The Ethics of Belief and Beyond PDF Author: Sebastian Schmidt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000062007
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief, the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity, responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and rationality of other mental states—especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies, decisions, and emotions. These essays illustrate how we might approach an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also more generally on debates about responsibility and rationality, as well as on normative questions concerning other mental states or attitudes. The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology.

To the Best of Our Knowledge

To the Best of Our Knowledge PDF Author: Sanford Goldberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198793677
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sandford C. Goldberg puts forward a theory of epistemic normativity that is grounded in the things we properly expect of one another as epistemic subjects. This theory has far-reaching implications not only for the theory of epistemic normativity, but also for the nature of epistemic assessment itself.

The New Social Control

The New Social Control PDF Author: Michalis Lianos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781926958170
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book Here

Book Description
Freedom and control are usually understood as opposites but what if they merged? Consumption, management and administration are everywhere. We are no longer supposed to depend on one other. Instead, institutions and organizations form a dense web that radically transform our past relations into ready-made, fragmented norms. Thus, we are increasingly controlled not by coercion but by competition and efficiency, aspiration and fear, to the point where a new era in human sociality is starting. Moving beyond existing critiques, Lianos argues that capitalism does not show itself as a conspiracy of the powerful but rather manifests as the lowest common denominator of our collective weaknesses. Control, therefore, lies in practice and freedom lies in consciousness. "This book transforms our view of social control. It is undoubtedly the first work to expose a decisive social mutation and reveal to us the logic and the disturbing power of a post-disciplinary, new social control, just as Foucault masterfully revealed to us the logic of disciplinary control." - Robert Castel, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales.

Bound by Convention

Bound by Convention PDF Author: David Owens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192649485
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book Here

Book Description
How should we assess the social structures that govern human conduct and settle whether we are bound by their rules? One approach is to ask whether those social arrangements (e.g. our family structures) reflect pre-conventional facts about our nature. If they do, compliance will serve our interests because these rules are not just conventions. Another approach is to ask whether following a convention has desirable consequences. For example, the rule which makes the dollar bill legal tender is a convention and the great usefulness of having a medium of exchange ensures that we should follow that convention by accepting paper money in return for things of real value. This work argues that being bound by a convention can also be valuable for its own sake. People need meaning in their lives and conventions infuse acts and attitudes with normative significance, rendering them right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, required or forbidden. Such rules bind us not just in virtue of their usefulness but also because their absence would impoverish our social world. Appreciating this point is essential to a proper understanding of our cultures of neighbourliness and hospitality, family structures, systems of property rights, conventions around speech, the norms governing how we deport ourselves in public, and even the rules of a game.

Epistemic Rationality and Epistemic Normativity

Epistemic Rationality and Epistemic Normativity PDF Author: Patrick Bondy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315412519
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
The aim of this book is to answer two important questions about the issue of normativity in epistemology: Why are epistemic reasons evidential and what makes epistemic reasons and rationality normative? Bondy's argument proceeds on the assumption that epistemic rationality goes hand in hand with basing beliefs on good evidence. The opening chapters defend a mental-state ontology of reasons, a deflationary account of how kinds of reasons are distinguished, and a deliberative guidance constraint on normative reasons. They also argue in favor of doxastic voluntarism—the view that beliefs are subject to our direct voluntary control—and embrace the controversial view that voluntarism bears directly on the question of what kinds of things count as reasons for believing. The final three chapters of the book feature a noteworthy critique of the instrumental conception of the nature of epistemic rationality, as well as a defense of the instrumental normativity of epistemic rationality. The final chapter defends the view that epistemic reasons and rationality are normative for us when we have normative reason to get to the truth with respect to some proposition, and it provides a response to the swamping problem for monistic accounts of value.

From Normativity to Responsibility

From Normativity to Responsibility PDF Author: Joseph Raz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199693811
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
What are our duties or rights? How should we act? What are we responsible for? Joseph Raz examines the philosophical issues underlying these everyday questions. He explores the nature of normativity--the reasoning behind certain beliefs and emotions about how we should behave--and offers a novel account of responsibility.