Rationality and the Good

Rationality and the Good PDF Author: Mark Timmons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198042639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
For over thirty years, Robert Audi has produced important work in ethics, epistemology, and the theory of action. This volume features thirteen new critical essays on Audi by a distinguished group of authors: Fred Adams, William Alston, Laurence BonJour, Roger Crisp, Elizabeth Fricker, Bernard Gert, Thomas Hurka, Hugh McCann, Al Mele, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Raimo Tuomela, Candace Vogler, and Timothy Williamson. Audi's introductory essay provides a thematic overview interconnecting his views in ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of action. The volume concludes with his comprehensive response essay that yields an illuminating dialog with all his critics and often extends his previous work.

Rationality and the Good

Rationality and the Good PDF Author: Mark Timmons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198042639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
For over thirty years, Robert Audi has produced important work in ethics, epistemology, and the theory of action. This volume features thirteen new critical essays on Audi by a distinguished group of authors: Fred Adams, William Alston, Laurence BonJour, Roger Crisp, Elizabeth Fricker, Bernard Gert, Thomas Hurka, Hugh McCann, Al Mele, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Raimo Tuomela, Candace Vogler, and Timothy Williamson. Audi's introductory essay provides a thematic overview interconnecting his views in ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of action. The volume concludes with his comprehensive response essay that yields an illuminating dialog with all his critics and often extends his previous work.

Without Good Reason

Without Good Reason PDF Author: Edward Stein
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 019158472X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational—we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy and cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality—the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on—and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowledge—in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized.

Rationality and Religious Commitment

Rationality and Religious Commitment PDF Author: Robert Audi
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191619523
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Rationality and Religious Commitment shows how religious commitment can be rational and describes the place of faith in the postmodern world. It portrays religious commitment as far more than accepting doctrines--it is viewed as a kind of life, not just as an embrace of tenets. Faith is conceived as a unique attitude. It is irreducible to belief but closely connected with both belief and conduct, and intimately related to life's moral, political, and aesthetic dimensions. Part One presents an account of rationality as a status attainable by mature religious people--even those with a strongly scientific habit of mind. Part Two describes what it means to have faith, how faith is connected with attitudes, emotions, and conduct, and how religious experience may support it. Part Three turns to religious commitment and moral obligation and to the relation between religion and politics. It shows how ethics and religion can be mutually supportive even though ethics provides standards of conduct independently of theology. It also depicts the integrated life possible for the religiously committed--a life with rewarding interactions between faith and reason, religion and science, and the aesthetic and the spiritual. The book concludes with two major accounts. One explains how moral wrongs and natural disasters are possible under God conceived as having the knowledge, power, and goodness that make such evils so difficult to understand. The other account explores the nature of persons, human and divine, and yields a conception that can sustain a rational theistic worldview even in the contemporary scientific age.

The Value of Rationality

The Value of Rationality PDF Author: Ralph Wedgwood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198802692
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Ralph Wedgwood gives a general account of the concept of rationality. The Value of Rationality is designed as the first instalment of a trilogy - to be followed by accounts of the requirements of rationality that apply specifically to beliefs and choices. The central claim of the book is that rationality is a normative concept. This claim is defended against some recent objections. Normative concepts are to be explained in terms of values (not in terms of 'ought' or reasons). Rationality is itself a value: rational thinking is in a certain way better than irrational thinking. Specifically, rationality is an internalist concept: what it is rational for you to think now depends solely on what is now present in your mind. Nonetheless, rationality has an external goal - the goal of thinking correctly, or getting things right in one's thinking. The connection between thinking rationally and thinking correctly is probabilistic: if your thinking is irrational, that is in effect bad news about your thinking's degree of correctness. This account of rationality explains how we should set about giving a theory of what it is for beliefs and choices to be rational. Wedgwood thus unifies practical and theoretical rationality, and reveals the connections between formal accounts of rationality (such as those of formal epistemologists and decision theorists) and the more metaethics-inspired recent discussions of the normativity of rationality. He does so partly by drawing on recent work in the semantics of normative and modal terms (including deontic modals like 'ought').

The Rational Good

The Rational Good PDF Author: Leonard T. Hobhouse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317399641
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
First published in 1921, this book explores the function of Reason in practical life. It considers whether there is a Rational, demonstrable, standard of values to which the actions of man and the institutions of society may be referred for judgement, and to what authority and power does it possess to influence the actual conduct of men and society.

The Normativity of Rationality

The Normativity of Rationality PDF Author: Benjamin Kiesewetter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198754280
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Benjamin Kiesewetter defends the normativity of rationality by presenting a new solution to the problems that arise from the common assumption that we ought to be rational. Drawing on an extensive and careful assessment of the problems discussed in the literature, Kiesewetter provides a detailed defence of a reason-response conception of rationality, a novel, evidence-relative account of reasons, and an explanation of structural irrationality in terms of theseaccounts.

Natural Law and Practical Rationality

Natural Law and Practical Rationality PDF Author: Mark C. Murphy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521802291
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A defense of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality.

Risk and Rationality

Risk and Rationality PDF Author: Lara Buchak
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199672164
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Lara Buchak sets out a new account of rational decision-making in the face of risk. She argues that the orthodox view (expected utility theory) is too narrow, and suggests an alternative, more permissive theory: one that allows individuals to pay attention to the worst-case or best-case scenario, and vindicates the ordinary decision-maker.

Rationality

Rationality PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241380308
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 'Punchy, funny and invigorating ... Pinker is the high priest of rationalism' Sunday Times 'If you've ever considered taking drugs to make yourself smarter, read Rationality instead. It's cheaper, more entertaining, and more effective' Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing? In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now. Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower. 'A terrific book, much-needed for our time' Peter Singer

Reason and Rationality

Reason and Rationality PDF Author: Maria Cristina Amoretti
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110325861
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Reason and rationality represent crucial elements of the self-image of human beings and have unquestionably been among the most debated issues in Western philosophy, dating from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, and to the present day. Many words and thoughts have already been spent trying to define the nature and standards of reason and rationality, what they could or ought to be, and under what conditions something can be said to be rational. This volume focuses instead on the relationships of reason and rationality to some relevant specific topics, i.e., science, knowledge, gender, politics, ethics, religion, aesthetics, language, logic, and metaphysics, trying to uncover and clarify both the connections and differences in their various characterisations and uses.