Download or read book Desire Practical Reason and the Good written by Sergio Tenenbaum and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "Guise of the Good" thesis - the view that desire, intention, or action) always aims at the good - has received renewed attention in the last twenty years. The book brings together work on various issues related to this thesis both from contemporary and historical perspectives.
Download or read book Desire written by G. F. Schueler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does action always arise out of desire? G.F. Schueler examines this hotly debated topic in philosophy of action and moral philosophy, arguing that once two senses of "desire" are distinguished -- roughly, genuine desires and pro attitudes -- apparently plausible explanations of action in terms of the agent's desires can be seen to be mistaken. Desire probes a fundamental issue in philosophy of mind, the nature of desires and how, if at all, they motivate and justify our actions. At least since Hume argued that reason "is and of right ought to be the slave of the passions," many philosophers have held that desires play an essential role both in practical reason and in the explanation of intentional action. G.F. Schueler looks at contemporary accounts of both roles in various belief-desire models of reasons and explanation and argues that the usual belief-desire accounts need to be replaced. Schueler contends that the plausibility of the standard belief-desire accounts rests largely on a failure to distinguish "desires proper," like a craving for sushi, from so-called "pro attitudes," which may take the form of beliefs and other cognitive states as well as desires proper. Schueler's "deliberative model" of practical reasoning suggests a different view of the place of desire in practical reason and the explanation of action. He holds that we can arrive at an intention to act by weighing the relevant considerations and that these may not include desires proper at all. A Bradford Book
Download or read book Appearances of the Good written by Sergio Tenenbaum and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-08 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'We desire all and only those things we conceive to be good; we avoid what we conceive to be bad.' This slogan was once the standard view of the relationship between desire or motivation and rational evaluation. Many critics have rejected this scholastic formula as either trivial or wrong. It appears to be trivial if we just define the good as 'what we want', and wrong if we consider apparent conflicts between what we seem to want and what we seem to think is good. In Appearances of the Good, Sergio Tenenbaum argues that the old slogan is both significant and right, even in cases of apparent conflict between our desires and our evaluative judgements. Maintaining that the good is the formal end of practical inquiry in much the same way as truth is the formal end of theoretical inquiry, he provides a fully unified account of motivation and evaluation.
Download or read book Desire written by George F. Schueler and published by Bradford Book. This book was released on 1994-12-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does action always arise out of desire? G.F. Schueler examines this hotly debated topic in philosophy of action and moral philosophy, arguing that once two senses of "desire" are distinguished -- roughly, genuine desires and pro attitudes -- apparently plausible explanations of action in terms of the agent's desires can be seen to be mistaken. Desire probes a fundamental issue in philosophy of mind, the nature of desires and how, if at all, they motivate and justify our actions. At least since Hume argued that reason "is and of right ought to be the slave of the passions," many philosophers have held that desires play an essential role both in practical reason and in the explanation of intentional action. G.F. Schueler looks at contemporary accounts of both roles in various belief-desire models of reasons and explanation and argues that the usual belief-desire accounts need to be replaced. Schueler contends that the plausibility of the standard belief-desire accounts rests largely on a failure to distinguish "desires proper," like a craving for sushi, from so-called "pro attitudes," which may take the form of beliefs and other cognitive states as well as desires proper. Schueler's "deliberative model" of practical reasoning suggests a different view of the place of desire in practical reason and the explanation of action. He holds that we can arrive at an intention to act by weighing the relevant considerations and that these may not include desires proper at all. A Bradford Book
Download or read book Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity written by Alasdair MacIntyre and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-14 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical, political and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims. In a wide-ranging discussion, he considers how normative and evaluative judgments are to be understood, how desire and practical reasoning are to be characterized, what it is to have adequate self-knowledge, and what part narrative plays in our understanding of human lives. He asks, further, what it would be to understand the modern condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic perspective, and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism, informed by Marx's insights, provides us with resources for constructing a contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and important book builds on and advances MacIntyre's thinking in ethics and moral philosophy, and will be of great interest to readers in both fields.
Download or read book In Praise of Desire written by Nomy Arpaly and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "'In Praise of Desire' aims to show that ordinary desires belong at the heart of moral psychology, basing its thesis on a doctrine called Spare Conativism. It gives a full defence of the central role intrinsic desires have in our moral lives".
Download or read book Critique of Practical Reason written by Immanuel Kant and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1788 work, based on belief in the immortality of the soul, established Kant as a vindicator of the truth of Christianity. It offers the most complete statement of his theory of free will.
Download or read book Aristotle on Practical Truth written by C. M. M. Olfert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle's theories of truth, practical reasoning, and action are some of the most influential theories in the history of philosophy. It is surprising, then, that so little attention has been given to his notion of practical truth. In Aristotle on Practical Truth, C.M.M. Olfert gives the first book-length treatment of this notion and the role of truth in our practical lives overall. She offers a novel account of practical truth: practical truth is the distinguishing function (ergon) of our capacity for practical reason, and it is a special kind of truth which shares a standard of correctness with our desires. According to this account, practical truth is the truth about what is good simpliciter (haplôs) for a particular person in her particular situation. As such, it conforms to Aristotle's technical theory of truth. Olfert argues that, understood in this way, Aristotle's notion of practical truth is an attractive idea that illuminates the core of his practical philosophy. But it is also an idea that challenges a common view, often attributed to Aristotle, that in practical reasoning, we aim at action or acting well as our primary goals, while in theoretical reasoning, we aim primarily at truth and knowledge. Olfert shows that in dialogues such as Charmides, Protagoras, and Republic, Plato describes practical reasoning as being concerned equally and inseparably with grasping the truth and with acting well. She then argues that Aristotle develops this Platonic picture with his notion of practical truth, and with a technical notion of rational action as fitting ourselves to the world. Using key texts from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, as well as De Anima, Metaphysics, De Interpretatione and Categories, among others, Olfert demonstrates that practical truth deserves to be taken seriously as a central and plausible Aristotelian idea.
Download or read book The Brute Within written by Hendrik Lorenz and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-04-06 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hendrik Lorenz presents a comprehensive study of Plato's and Aristotle's conceptions of non-rational desire. They see this as something that humans share with animals, and which aims primarily at the pleasures of food, drink, and sex. Lorenz explores the cognitive resources that both philosophers make available for the explanation of such desires, and what they take rationality to add to the motivational structure of human beings. In doing so, he exposes a remarkable degree of continuity between Plato's and Aristotle's thought in this area. He also sheds fresh light, not only on both philosophers' theories of motivation, but also on how they conceive of the mind, both in itself and in relation to the body.
Download or read book Reason and Value written by Joseph Raz and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reason and Value collects fifteen brand-new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics - including especially his explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value - make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. The volume honours Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and will contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his work for the subject.
Download or read book Aristotle on Prescription written by Francesca Alesse and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle on Prescription explores Aristotle’s deep reflections on rule-making as a process that is both distinct from that of particular deliberation and decision-making and fundamental to it, operating at the level both of the individual and of society as a whole.
Download or read book Humean Nature written by Neil Sinhababu and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil Sinhababu defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. Desire motivates us to pursue its object, makes thoughts of its object pleasant or unpleasant, focuses attention on its object, and is amplified by vivid representations of its object. These aspects of desire explain a vast range of psychological phenomena - why motivation often accompanies moral belief, how intentions shape our planning, how we exercise willpower, what it is to be a human self, how we express our emotions in action, why we procrastinate, and what we daydream about. Some philosophers regard such phenomena as troublesome for the Humean Theory, but the properties of desire help Humeans provide simpler and better explanations of these phenomena than their opponents can. The success of the Humean Theory in explaining a wide range of folk-psychological and experimental data, including those that its opponents cite in counterexamples, suggest that it is true. And the Humean Theory has revolutionary consequences for ethics, suggesting that moral judgments are beliefs about what feelings like guilt, admiration, and hope accurately represent in objective reality.
Download or read book Rational Powers in Action written by Sergio Tenenbaum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human actions unfold over time, in pursuit of ends that are not fully specified in advance. Rational Powers in Action locates these features of the human condition at the heart of a new theory of instrumental rationality. Where many theories of rational agency focus on instantaneous choices between sharply defined outcomes, treating the temporally extended and partially open-ended character of action as an afterthought, this book argues that the deep structure of instrumental rationality can only be understood if we see how it governs the pursuit of long-term, indeterminate ends. These are ends that cannot be realized through a single momentary action, and whose content leaves partly open what counts as realizing the end. Sergio Tenenbaum argues that we need to focus on temporal duration and the indeterminacy of ends in intentional action, even to explain the rational governance of relatively simple actions. Theories of moment-by-moment preference maximization, or indeed any understanding of instrumental rationality on the basis of momentary mental items, cannot capture the fundamental structure of our instrumentally rational capacities. Tenenbaum provides a new theory of instrumental rationality as rationality in action.
Download or read book The Point of View of the Universe written by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tests the views and metaphor of 19th-century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick against a variety of contemporary views on ethics, determining that they are defensible and thus providing a defense of objectivism in ethics and of hedonistic utilitarianism.
Download or read book Rethinking the Good written by Larry S. Temkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In choosing between moral alternatives -- choosing between various forms of ethical action -- we typically make calculations of the following kind: A is better than B; B is better than C; therefore A is better than C. These inferences use the principle of transitivity and are fundamental to many forms of practical and theoretical theorizing, not just in moral and ethical theory but in economics. Indeed they are so common as to be almost invisible. What Larry Temkin's book shows is that, shockingly, if we want to continue making plausible judgments, we cannot continue to make these assumptions. Temkin shows that we are committed to various moral ideals that are, surprisingly, fundamentally incompatible with the idea that "better than" can be transitive. His book develops many examples where value judgments that we accept and find attractive, are incompatible with transitivity. While this might seem to leave two options -- reject transitivity, or reject some of our normative commitments in order to keep it -- Temkin is neutral on which path to follow, only making the case that a choice is necessary, and that the cost either way will be high. Temkin's book is a very original and deeply unsettling work of skeptical philosophy that mounts an important new challenge to contemporary ethics.
Download or read book Practical Reasoning about Final Ends written by Henry S. Richardson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-02-28 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues against philosophical opponents, that we can determine our ends or goals rationally.
Download or read book The Therapy of Desire written by Martha C. Nussbaum and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance. In this classic work, Martha Nussbaum maintains that these Hellenistic schools have been unjustly neglected in recent philosophic accounts of what the classical "tradition" has to offer. By examining texts of philosophers such as Epicurus, Lucretius, and Seneca, she recovers a valuable source for current moral and political thought and encourages us to reconsider philosophical argument as a technique through which to improve lives. Written for general readers and specialists, The Therapy of Desire addresses compelling issues ranging from the psychology of human passion through rhetoric to the role of philosophy in public and private life.
