Reasons from Within

Reasons from Within PDF Author: Alan H. Goldman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199576904
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Reasons from Within defends the view that all our reasons for acting derive from our desires, and ultimately from our deepest concerns. There are no objective values in the world that could require our concerns to be other than they are. It will be of interest to anyone interested in the nature of values and reasons.

Reasons from Within

Reasons from Within PDF Author: Alan H. Goldman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199576904
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reasons from Within defends the view that all our reasons for acting derive from our desires, and ultimately from our deepest concerns. There are no objective values in the world that could require our concerns to be other than they are. It will be of interest to anyone interested in the nature of values and reasons.

Reasons from Within

Reasons from Within PDF Author: Alan H. Goldman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191610364
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Do the reasons we have for acting as we do derive from our concerns and desires, or are there objective values in the world that we are rationally required to pursue and protect? Alan H. Goldman argues for the internalist or subjectivist view of practical reasons on the grounds that it is simpler, more unified, and more comprehensible than the rival objectivist position. He provides a naturalistic account of practical rationality in terms of coherence within sets of desires or motivational states, and between motivations, intentions, and actions. Coherence is defined as the avoidance of self-defeat, the defeat of one's own deepest concerns. The demand for coherence underlies both practical and theoretical reason and derives from the natural aims of belief and action. In clarifying which desires create reasons, drawing on the literature of cognitive psychology, Goldman offers conceptual analyses of desires, emotions, and attitudes. Reasons are seen to derive ultimately from our deepest occurrent concerns. These concerns require no reasons themselves but provide reasons for many more superficial desires. In defense of this theory, Goldman argues that rational agents need not be morally motivated or concerned for their narrow self-interest. Objective values would demand such concern. They would be independent of our desires but would provide reasons for us to pursue and protect them. They would require rational agents to be motivated by them. But, Goldman argues, we are not motivated in that way, and it makes no sense to demand that our informed and coherent desires be generally other than they are. We need not appeal to such objective values in order to explain how our lives can be good and meaningful. Reasons from Within will appeal to anyone interested in the nature of values and reasons, particularly students of philosophy, psychology, and decision theory.

Reasons from Within

Reasons from Within PDF Author: Alan H. Goldman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191722288
Category : Act
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
'Reasons from Within' defends the view that all our reasons for acting derive from our desires, and ultimately from our deepest concerns. There are no objective values in the world that could require our concerns to be other than they are. It will be of interest to anyone interested in the nature of values and reasons.

Reasons and Persons

Reasons and Persons PDF Author: Derek Parfit
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622443
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 880

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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.

Reasons

Reasons PDF Author: Eric Wiland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441166386
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
When we say we 'act for a reason', what do we mean? And what do reasons have to do with being good or bad? Introducing readers to a foundational topic in ethics, Eric Wiland considers the reasons for which we act. You do things for reasons, and reasons in some sense justify what you do. Further, your reasons belong to you, and you know the reasons for which you act in a distinctively first-personal way. Wiland lays out and critically reviews some of the most popular contemporary accounts of how reasons can function in all these ways, accounts such as psychologism, factualism, hybrid theories, constitutivist theories, and finally Anscombean views of reasons. Reasons also includes a brief guide to further reading to help readers master this important topic in contemporary writing in ethics and the philosophy of action.

Reasons as Defaults

Reasons as Defaults PDF Author: John F. Horty
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199744076
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In this volume, John Horty brings to bear his work in logic to present a framework that allows for answers to key questions about reasons and reasoning, namely: What are reasons, and how do they support actions or conclusions?

Reasons Without Rationalism

Reasons Without Rationalism PDF Author: Kieran Setiya
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691146527
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Modern philosophy has been vexed by the question "Why should I be moral?" and by doubts about the rational authority of moral virtue. In Reasons without Rationalism, Kieran Setiya shows that these doubts rest on a mistake. The "should" of practical reason cannot be understood apart from the virtues of character, including such moral virtues as justice and benevolence, and the considerations to which the virtues make one sensitive thereby count as reasons to act. Proposing a new framework for debates about practical reason, Setiya argues that the only alternative to this "virtue theory" is a form of ethical rationalism in which reasons derive from the nature of intentional action. Despite its recent popularity, however, ethical rationalism is false. It wrongly assumes that we act "under the guise of the good," or it relies on dubious views about intention and motivation. It follows from the failure of rationalism that the virtue theory is true: we cannot be fully good without the perfection of practical reason, or have that perfection without being good. Addressing such topics as the psychology of virtue and the explanation of action, Reasons without Rationalism is essential reading for philosophers interested in ethics, rationality, or the philosophy of mind.

Reasons First

Reasons First PDF Author: Mark Schroeder
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198868227
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
"The last fifty years or more of ethical theory have been preoccupied by a turn to reasons. The vocabulary of reasons has become a common currency not only in ethics, but in epistemology, action theory, and many related areas. It is now common, for example, to see central theses such as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy formulated in terms of reasons. And some have even claimed that the vocabulary of reasons is so useful precisely because reasons have analytical and explanatory priority over other normative concepts - that reasons in that sense come first. Reasons First systematically explores both the benefits and burdens of the hypothesis that reasons do indeed come first in normative theory, against the conjecture that theorizing in both ethics and epistemology can only be hampered by neglect of the other. Bringing two decades of work on reasons in both ethics and epistemology to bear, Mark Schroeder argues that some of the most important challenges to the idea that reasons could come first are themselves the source of some of the most obstinate puzzles in epistemology - about how perceptual experience could provide evidence about the world, and about what can make evidence sufficient to justify belief. And he shows that along with moral worth, one of the very best cases for the fundamental explanatory power of reasons in normative theory actually comes from knowledge"--

Reasons for Hope

Reasons for Hope PDF Author: Anirudh Krishna
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
* Eighteen inspirational rural development success stories * Covers Africa, Asia, and Latin America In the personal words of international development initiators, Reasons for Hope tells true stories of what can be done to improve the lives of those in rural communities. Read individually for specific guidance, or collectively for cumulative advice on how to promote the most desirable forms of rural development, these stories offer a timely and crucial message concerning the plight of the rural poor.

Reasons and the Good

Reasons and the Good PDF Author: Roger Crisp
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191537357
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In Reasons and the Good Roger Crisp answers some of the oldest questions in moral philosophy. Claiming that a fundamental issue in normative ethics is what ultimate reasons for action we might have, he argues that the best statements of such reasons will not employ moral concepts. He investigates and explains the nature of reasons themselves; his account of how we come to know them combines an intuitionist epistemology with elements of Pyrrhonist scepticism. He defends a hedonistic theory of well-being and an account of practical reason according to which we can give some, though not overriding, priority to our own good over that of others. The book develops original lines of argument within a framework of some traditional but currently less popular views.