Author: John Skorupski
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019165163X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 558
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Book Description
This book is about normativity and reasons. By the end, however, the subject becomes the relation between self, thought, and world. If we understand normativity, we are on the road to understanding this relation. John Skorupski argues that all normative properties are reducible to reason relations, so that the sole normative ingredient in any normative concept is the concept of a reason. This is a concept fundamental to all thought. It is pervasive (actions, beliefs, and sentiments all fall within its range), primitive (all other normative concepts are reducible to it), and constitutive of the idea of thought itself. Thinking is sensitivity to reasons. Thought in the full sense of autonomous cognition is possible only for a being sensitive to reasons and capable of deliberating about them. In Part II of the book Skorupski examines epistemic reasons, and shows that aprioricity, necessity, evidence, and probability, which may not seem to be normative at all, are in fact normative concepts analysable in terms of the concept of a reason. In Part III he shows the same for the concept of a person's good, and for moral concepts including the concept of a right. Part IV moves to the epistemology and metaphysics of reasons. When we make claims about reasons to believe, reasons to feel, or reasons to act we are asserting genuine propositions: judgeable, truth-apt contents. But these normative propositions must be distinguished from factual propositions, for they do not represent states of affairs. So Skorupski's ambitious theory of normativity has broad and deep implications for philosophy. It shows how reflection on the logic, epistemology, and ontology of reasons finally leads us to an account of the interplay of self, thought, and world.
Author: Daniel Whiting
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192893955
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
"Abstract for the book: This book contributes to two debates and it does so by bringing them together. The first is a debate in metaethics concerning normative reasons, the considerations that serve to justify a person's actions and attitudes. The second is a debate in epistemology concerning the norms for belief, the standards that govern a person's beliefs and by reference to which they are assessed. The book starts by developing and defending a new theory of reasons for action, that is, of practical reasons. The theory belongs to a family that analyses reasons by appeal to the normative notion of rightness (fittingness, correctness); it is distinctive in making central appeal to modal notions, specifically, that of a nearby possible world. The result is a comprehensive framework that captures what is common to and distinctive of reasons of various kinds: justifying and demanding; for and against, possessed and unpossessed; objective and subjective. The framework is then generalized to reasons for belief, that is, to epistemic reasons, and combined with a substantive, first-order commitment, namely, that truth is the sole right-maker for belief. The upshot is an account of the various norms governing belief, including knowledge and rationality, and the relations among them. According to it, the standards to which belief is subject are various, but they are unified by an underlying principle. Keywords: practical reasons; epistemic reasons; rightness; possible worlds; norms of belief; rationality; truth; knowledge; possessed reasons; normativity"--
Author: T. M. Scanlon
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191003158
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
T. M. Scanlon offers a qualified defense of normative cognitivism—the view that there are irreducibly normative truths about reasons for action. He responds to three familiar objections: that such truths would have troubling metaphysical implications; that we would have no way of knowing what they are; and that the role of reasons in motivating and explaining action could not be explained if accepting a conclusion about reasons for action were a kind of belief. Scanlon answers the first of these objections within a general account of ontological commitment, applying to mathematics as well as normative judgments. He argues that the method of reflective equilibrium, properly understood, provides an adequate account of how we come to know both normative truths and mathematical truths, and that the idea of a rational agent explains the link between an agent's normative beliefs and his or her actions. Whether every statement about reasons for action has a determinate truth value is a question to be answered by an overall account of reasons for action, in normative terms. Since it seems unlikely that there is such an account, the defense of normative cognitivism offered here is qualified: statements about reasons for action can have determinate truth values, but it is not clear that all of them do. Along the way, Scanlon offers an interpretation of the distinction between normative and non-normative claims, a new account of the supervenience of the normative on the non-normative, an interpretation of the idea of the relative strength of reasons, and a defense of the method of reflective equilibrium.
Author: John Webster
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0567212947
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
The book brings together a set of related studies on the nature of Scripture and of Christian theology by one of the most prominent representatives of Protestant theology of our time. After a brief introduction on the setting of the book and its major themes, the first part of the volume examines topics on the nature and interpretation of Scripture. A comprehensive proposal about Scripture and its interpretation is followed by a study of Scripture as the embassy of the risen Christ, and by three related chapters analyzing the ways in which widely different major modern theologians (Barth, T.F. Torrance and Rowan Williams) have understood the nature and interpretation of the Bible. The second part of the volume makes a cumulative proposal about the nature and tasks of Christian theology, examining the fundamental principles of systematic theology, the distinctive role and scope of reason in Christian theology, the relation of theology to the humanities, and the vocation of theology to promote the peace of the church.
Author: Michael Rabinder James
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
In this pathbreaking work, the author integrates questions of justice and stability through a model of deliberative democracy in the plural polity. "Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity" provides a realistic but critical reform agenda that can animate struggles for justice in an enormously diverse world.
Author: Judy George
Publisher: Clarkson Potter Publishers
ISBN: 9780517707630
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Domain, one of the country's fastest growing furniture chains, presents the first interactive home-decorating book to marry the culture of home with the psychology of style. 200 color photos.
Author: Michael S. Brady
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230294898
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
Metaethics occupies a central place in analytical philosophy, and the last forty years has seen an upsurge of interest in questions about the nature and practice of morality. This collection presents original and ground-breaking research on metaethical issues from some of the very best of a new generation of philosophers working in this field.
Author: Kent Greenawalt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190606940
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Kent Greenawalt's From the Bottom Up constitutes a collection of articles and essays written over the last five decades of his career. They cover a wide range of topics, many of which address ties between political and moral philosophy and what the law does and should provide. A broad general theme is that in all these domains, what really is the wisest approach to difficult circumstances often depends on the particular issues involved and their context. Both judges and scholars too often rely on abstract general formulations to provide answers. A notable example in political philosophy was the suggestion of the great and careful scholar, John Rawls, that laws should be based exclusively on public reason. The essays explain that given uncertainty of what people perceive as the line between public reason and their religion convictions, the inability of public reason to resolve some difficulty questions, such as what we owe to higher animals, and the feeling of many that their religious understanding should count, urging exclusive reliance on public reason is not a viable approach. Other essays show similar problems with asserted bases for legal interpretations and the content of provisions such as the First Amendment.
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on Public Lands
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grazing
Languages : en
Pages : 1210
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Book Description
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.
