Download or read book The Nature of Normativity written by Ralph Wedgwood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-19 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The semantics of normative thought and discourse -- Thinking about what ought to be -- Expressivism -- Causal theories and conceptual analyses -- Conceptual role semantics -- Context and the logic of 'ought' -- The metaphysics of normative facts -- The metaphysical issues -- The normativity of the intentional -- Irreducibility and causal efficacy -- Non-reductive naturalism -- The epistemology of normative belief -- The status of normative intuitions -- Disagreement and the a priori.

Download or read book The Normativity of Nature written by Hannah Ginsborg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why read Kant's Critique of Judgment? For most readers, the importance of the work lies in its contributions to aesthetics and, to a lesser extent, the philosophy of biology. Hannah Ginsborg, by contrast, sees the Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition generally. The fourteen essays collected here advance a common interpretive project: that of bringing out the philosophical significance of the notion of judgment which figures in the third Critique and showing its importance both to Kant's own theoretical philosophy and to contemporary views of human thought and cognition. For us to possess the capacity of judgment, on the interpretation defended here, is for our natural perceptual and imaginative responses to involve a claim to their own normativity with respect to the objects which cause them. It is in virtue of this capacity that we are able not merely to respond discriminatively to objects, as animals do, but to bring objects under concepts. The Critique of Judgment, on this reading, rejects the traditional dichotomy between the natural and the normative: our natural psychological responses to the spatio-temporal objects which affect our senses are both causally determined by those objects, and normatively appropriate to them. The essays in this book aim collectively to develop and illuminate this understanding of judgment in its own right, and to use it to address specific interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology; they are also concerned to bring out the relevance of this conception of judgment to contemporary debates regarding concept-acquisition, the content of perception, and skepticism about rules and meaning.

Download or read book The Normative and the Natural written by Michael P. Wolf and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-31 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a rich pragmatist tradition, this book offers an account of the different kinds of ‘oughts’, or varieties of normativity, that we are subject to contends that there is no conflict between normativity and the world as science describes it. The authors argue that normative claims aim to evaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state of affairs ought to be. These claims articulate forms of action-guidance that are different in kind from descriptive claims, with a wholly distinct practical and expressive character. This account suggests that there are no normative facts, and so nothing that needs any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world. This work explains that nevertheless, normative claims are constrained by the world, and answerable to reason and argumentation, in a way that makes them truth-apt and objective.

Download or read book Nature and Normativity written by Mark Okrent and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature and Normativity argues that the problem of the place of norms in nature has been essentially misunderstood when it has been articulated in terms of the relation of human language and thought, on the one hand, and the world described by physics on the other. Rather, if we concentrate on the facts that speaking and thinking are activities of organic agents, then the problem of the place of the normative in nature becomes refocused on three related questions. First, is there a sense in which biological processes and the behavior of organisms can be legitimately subject to normative evaluation? Second, is there some sense in which, in addition to having ordinary causal explanations, organic phenomena can also legitimately be seen to happen because they should happen in that way, in some naturalistically comprehensible sense of 'should', or that organic phenomena happen in order to achieve some result, because that result should occur? And third, is it possible to naturalistically understand how human thought and language can be legitimately seen as the normatively evaluable behavior of a particular species of organism, behavior that occurs in order to satisfy some class of norms? This book develops, articulates, and defends positive answers to each of these questions.

Download or read book From Normativity to Responsibility written by Joseph Raz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Nature of Normativity written by Ralph Wedgwood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of Normativity presents a complete theory about the nature of normative thought — that is, the sort of thought that is concerned with what ought to be the case, or what we ought to do or think. Ralph Wedgwood defends a kind of realism about the normative, according to which normative truths or facts are genuinely part of reality. Anti-realists often complain that realism gives rise to demands for explanation that it cannot adequately meet. What is the nature of these normative facts? How we could ever know them or even refer to them in language or thought? Wedgwood accepts that any adequate version of realism must answer these explanatory demands. However, he seeks to show that these demands can be met - in large part by relying on a version of the idea, which has been much discussed in recent work in the philosophy of mind, that the intentional is normative - that is, that there is no way of explaining the nature of the various sorts of mental states that have intentional or representational content (such as beliefs, judgments, desires, decisions, and so on), without stating normative facts. On the basis of this idea, Wedgwood provides a detailed systematic theory that deals with the following three areas: the meaning of statements about what ought to be; the nature of the facts stated by these statements; and what justifies us in holding beliefs about what ought to be.

Download or read book Understanding People written by Alan Millar and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2004-07-08 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Millar examines our understanding of why people think and act as they do. His key theme is that normative considerations form an indispensable part of the explanatory framework in terms of which we seek to understand each other. Millar defends a conception according to which normativity is linked to reasons. On this basis he examines the structure of certain normative commitments incurred by having propositional attitudes. Controversially, he argues that ascriptions of beliefs and intentions in and of themselves attribute normative commitments and that this has implications for the psychology of believing and intending. Indeed, all propositional attitudes of the sort we ascribe to people have a normative dimension, since possessing the concepts that the attitudes implicate is of its very nature commitment-incurring. The ramifications of these views for our understanding of people is explored. Millar offers illuminating discussions of reasons for belief and reasons for action; the explanation of beliefs and actions in terms of the subject's reasons; the idea that simulation has a key role in understanding people; and the limits of explanation in terms of propositional attitudes. He compares and contrasts the commitments incurred by propositional attitudes with those incurred by participating in practices, arguing that the former should not be assimilated to the latter. Understanding People will be of great interest to most philosophers of mind, as well as to those working on practical and theoretical reasoning.

Download or read book Kant s Theory of Normativity written by Konstantin Pollok and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-02 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A milestone in Kant scholarship, this interpretation of his critical philosophy makes sense of his notorious 'synthetic judgments a priori'.

Download or read book Hegel s Theory of Normativity written by Kevin Thompson and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right offers an innovative and important account of normativity, yet the theory set forth there rests on philosophical foundations that have remained largely obscure. In Hegel’s Theory of Normativity, Kevin Thompson proposes an interpretation of the foundations that underlie Hegel’s theory: its method of justification, its concept of freedom, and its account of right. Thompson shows how the systematic character of Hegel’s project together with the metaphysical commitments that follow from its method are essential to secure this theory against the challenges of skepticism and to understand its distinctive contribution to questions regarding normative justification, practical agency, social ontology, and the nature of critique.

Download or read book Normativity written by Conor McHugh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should I do? What should I think? Traditionally, ethicists tackle the first question, while epistemologists tackle the second. This volume is innovative in drawing together issues from epistemology and ethics and in exploring neglected connections between epistemic and practical normativity.

Download or read book Dear Prudence written by Guy Fletcher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers have long theorized about what makes people's lives go well, and why, and the extent to which morality and self-interest can be reconciled. However, we have spent little time on meta-prudential questions, questions about prudential discourse--thought and talk about what is good and bad for us; what contributes to well-being; and what we have prudential reason, or prudentially ought, to do. This situation is surprising given that prudence is, prima facie, a normative form of discourse and cries out for further investigation of what it is like and whether it has problematic commitments. It also marks a stark contrast from moral discourse, about which there has been extensive theorizing, in meta-ethics. Dear Prudence: The Nature and Normativity of Prudential Discourse has three broad aims. Firstly, Guy Fletcher explores the nature of prudential discourse. Secondly, he argues that prudential discourse is normative and authoritative, like moral discourse. Thirdly, Fletcher aims to show that prudential discourse is worthy of further, explicit, attention both due to its intrinsic interest but also for the light it sheds on the meta-normative more broadly.

Download or read book The Sources of Normativity written by Christine M. Korsgaard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-06-28 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical concepts are, or purport to be, normative. They make claims on us: they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least when we invoke them, we make claims on one another; but where does their authority over us - or ours over one another - come from? Christine Korsgaard identifies four accounts of the source of normativity that have been advocated by modern moral philosophers: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. She traces their history, showing how each developed in response to the prior one and comparing their early versions with those on the contemporary philosophical scene. Kant's theory that normativity springs from our own autonomy emerges as a synthesis of the other three, and Korsgaard concludes with her own version of the Kantian account. Her discussion is followed by commentary from G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and a reply by Korsgaard.

Download or read book Naturalism and Normativity written by Mario De Caro and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is that there must be a transcendent realm of norms. Naturalism and Normativity engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of them yet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Download or read book Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger written by Steven Crowell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates how phenomenology constructively addresses problems in philosophy of mind, moral psychology and philosophy of action.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity written by Daniel Star and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 1105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity' contains 44 commissioned chapters on a wide range of topics, and will appeal to readers with an interest in ethics or epistemology. A diverse selection of substantive positions are defended by leading proponents of the views in question, and provide broad coverage of the study of reasons and normativity across multiple philosophical subfields. In addition to focusing on reasons as part of the study of ethics and as part of the study of epistemology (as well as focusing on reasons as part of the study of the philosophy of language and as part of the study of the philosophy of mind), the Handbook covers recent developments concerning the nature of normativity in general. A number of the contributions to the Handbook explicitly address such "metanormative" issues, bridging subfields as they do so. --

Download or read book Normativity and Naturalism in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences written by Mark Risjord and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Normativity and Naturalism in the Social Sciences engages with a central debate within the philosophy of social science: whether social scientific explanation necessitates an appeal to norms, and if so, whether appeals to normativity can be rendered "scientific." This collection brings together contributions from a diverse group of philosophers who explore a broad but thematically unified set of questions, many of which stem from an ongoing debate between Stephen Turner and Joseph Rouse (both contributors to this volume) on the role of naturalism in the philosophy of the social sciences. Informed by recent developments in both philosophy and the social sciences, this volume will set the benchmark for contemporary discussions about normativity and naturalism. This collection will be relevant to philosophers of social science, philosophers in interested in the rule following and metaphysics of normativity, and theoretically oriented social scientists.

Download or read book The Value of Rationality written by Ralph Wedgwood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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').