Download or read book Causalism written by Carolina Sartorio and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Carolina Sartorio makes the case for big-picture causalism: a naturalistic conception of agency and free agency that unifies the two phenomena under a common thesis. This is the thesis that actions/free actions are behaviors that have the right kinds of causes or explanations. The book discusses how a causalist view of action and free action fit together—the latter as a natural extension of the former—and how they are motivated by similar considerations having to do with causal control. The result is a compelling "package deal" view of our practical agency, one that is put forth as the default view (the view that deserves to be regarded as the starting point of our theorizing). Sartorio examines both the skeleton of the causalist view as well as potential enrichments that result from exploiting the grounds of the relevant causal facts. The discussion is enriched by an account of the role played in causalism by key metaphysical notions such as causation, grounding, absences, and powers.
Download or read book Reasons and Causes written by A. Laitinen and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-07-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are the reasons for which we act the causes of our actions? In the nine essays collected here (including a major historical overview by the editors), experts in the field re-evaluate the history and current state of the reasons/causes debate.
Download or read book Reality written by Peter Loptson and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reality: Fundamental Topics in Metaphysics, Peter Loptson argues for a conception of metaphysics as the most general or comprehensive method of inquiry. Working from a broadly analytic and naturalist perspective, he confronts positions that claim metaphysics to be impossible, as advanced in ancient, Kantian, post-Kantian, and contemporary philosophy, showing them to be unsuccessful. He draws the topics of his selective investigation of metaphysics partly from the work of Kant, whom he conceives as a primary guide to what metaphysical enquiry seeks to know. Loptson provides accounts of basic categories of what is real and outlines major historical metaphysical systems. He then goes on to explore aspects of existence, essence, substance, universals, space, time, causality, mind, freedom, and other topics. This important contribution to metaphysics offers both sustained arguments on all aspects of the subject and important insights into the major metaphysical systems from the history of philosophy.
Download or read book Realism Regained written by Robert C. Koons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging philosophical work, Koons takes on two powerful dogmas--anti-realism and materialism. In doing so, Koons develops an elegant metaphysical system that accounts for such phenomena as information, mental representation, our knowledge of logic, mathematics and science, the structure of spacetime, the identity of physical objects, and the objectivity of values and moral norms.
Download or read book Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography written by Gunnar Schumann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-29 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the appropriate form of human action explanation causal or rather teleological? While this is a central question in analytic philosophy of action, it also has implications for questions about the differences between methods of explanation in the sciences on the one hand and in the humanities and the social sciences on the other. Additionally, this question bears on the problem of the appropriate form of explanations of past human actions, and therefore it is prominently discussed by analytic philosophers of historiography. This volume brings together causalists and anti-causalists to address enduring philosophical questions at the heart of this debate, as well as their implications for the practice of historiography. Part I considers the quarrel between causalism and anti-causalism in recent developments in the philosophy of action. Part II presents papers by causalists and anti-causalists that are more narrowly focused on the philosophy of historiography.
Download or read book Historical Explanation written by Gunnar Schumann and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the appropriate form of explanations in historiography and the social sciences. It combines action theory and philosophy of historiography and develops a theory of teleological explanations of human actions based on late-Wittgensteinian and Ordinary Language Philosophy insights. In philosophy of action, many philosophers favor causal theories of human action. Additionally, in current philosophy of historiography the majority view is that historians should explain historical phenomena by their causes. This book pushes back against these mainstream views by reviving an anti-causal view of explanation of current and past human actions. The author argues that disciplines that deal with human actions require a certain form of explanation, namely a teleological or intentional explanation. This means that past human actions and their results will have to be explained by reasons of agents, not by causes. Therefore, historiography employs a method of explanation which is in stark contrast to the sciences. The author thus proposes a Verstehen (understanding) approach in historiography and the social sciences. Historical Explanation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of action, philosophy of history, and philosophy of the social sciences.
Download or read book Actual Consciousness written by Ted Honderich 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: What is it for you to be conscious? There is no consensus in philosophy or science: it has remained a mystery. Ted Honderich develops a brand new theory of consciousness, according to which perceptual consciousness is external to the perceiver. It exists in a subjective physical world dependent on both you and the objective physical world.
Download or read book Time Matters written by Andrew Abbott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-07-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do variables really tell us? When exactly do inventions occur? Why do we always miss turning points as they transpire? When does what doesn't happen mean as much, if not more, than what does? Andrew Abbott considers these fascinating questions in Time Matters, a diverse series of essays that constitutes the most extensive analysis of temporality in social science today. Ranging from abstract theoretical reflection to pointed methodological critique, Abbott demonstrates the inevitably theoretical character of any methodology. Time Matters focuses particularly on questions of time, events, and causality. Abbott grounds each essay in straightforward examinations of actual social scientific analyses. Throughout, he demonstrates the crucial assumptions we make about causes and events, about actors and interaction and about time and meaning every time we employ methods of social analysis, whether in academic disciplines, market research, public opinion polling, or even evaluation research. Turning current assumptions on their heads, Abbott not only outlines the theoretical orthodoxies of empirical social science, he sketches new alternatives, laying down foundations for a new body of social theory.
Download or read book A Theory of Determinism written by Ted Honderich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines the exact nature of the relation between mental and neural events; how both sorts of events come about; and their relation to actions. The answers that Honderich provides in Volume I constitute a new determinist philosophy of mind.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy written by Michael Beaney and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 1182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main stream of academic philosophy, in Anglophone countries and increasingly worldwide, is identified by the name 'analytic'. The study of its history, from the 19th century to the late 20th, has boomed in recent years. These specially commissioned essays by forty leading scholars constitute the most comprehensive book on the subject.
Download or read book The Shape of Agency written by Joshua Shepherd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an account of agency which explains the control agents have over their behaviour, the nature of intentional action, the nature of skill, and the role that knowledge plays in extending the reach of an agent's action and skill.
Download or read book Contemporary Action Theory Volume 1 Individual Action written by Ghita Holmström-Hintikka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Action Theory, Volume I (Individual Action) is concerned with topics in philosophical action theory such as reasons and causes of action, intentions, freedom of will and of action, omissions and norms in legal and ethical contexts, as well as activity, passivity and competence from medical points of view. Cognitive trying, freedom of the will and agent causation are challenges in the discussion on computers in action. The Volume consists of contributions by leading experts in the field written specifically for this volume. No comparable volume currently exists.
Download or read book Action and Responsibility written by Andrew Sneddon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of what it takes for an event to count as an action. I first became interested in this topic nearly a decade ago while working on a different topic. I kept coming across philosophers making claims about the nature of action that seemed false or at least dubious to me. As a consequence I turned to the philosophy of action directly, to get to the heart of the matter. I have wrestled with this territory ever since. I hope that, with this book, I have finally earned the intuitions that put me at odds with the philosophers I was originally reading. This book develops ideas in Part Two of my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. I loved being at Queen’s, for both professional and personal reasons. My thanks go to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support as a doctoral candidate. Steve Leighton and Ronald de Sousa were readers for my dissertation. They provided some early and invaluable challenges to the ideas developed here. My deepest debt of gratitude is owed to David Bakhurst, my supervisor. I learned a lot from David; this book would not be the same without his help.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy written by Frank Jackson and published by OUP UK. This book was released on 2007-11-29 with total page 918 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to today's most exciting research in academic philosophy with more than 30 distinguished scholars to contribute incisive and up-to-date critical surveys of the principal areas of research.
Download or read book Mindlessness written by Ezio Di Nucci and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking is overrated: golfers perform best when distracted and under pressure; firefighters make the right calls without a clue as to why; and you are yourself ill advised to look at your steps as you go down the stairs, or to try and remember your pin number before typing it in. Just do it, mindlessly. Both empirical psychologists and the common man have long worked out that thinking is often a bad idea, but philosophers still hang on to an intellectualist picture of human action. This book challenges that picture and calls on philosophers to wake up to the power of mindlessness: it is our habits, skills and conventions that help us cope with a world way too diverse for us to hope to always reinterpret it. The book presents the empirical evidence that has been accumulating over the last few decades and offers a philosophical analysis of mindless phenomena such as habits, skilled activity, automatic actions, emotional and spontaneous reactions and social conventions, arguing that traditional philosophical theories of action should be revised to do justice to this forgotten but important part of our lives: when we act mindlessly, we are free and fully rational even though we neither deliberate nor are aware of what we are doing.
Download or read book Human Action Deliberation and Causation written by J.A.M Bransen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an interesting and far-reaching disagreement between Smith and Frederick Stoutland. In his 'The Real Reasons' Stoutland argues that one of the mistakes that turned the belief-desire model of action into the 'received view' is the underlying commitment to the idea that there is an underlying unity to all action explanations. According to Stoutland the unity is no deeper than the superficial fact that actions are responses of agents to the world, and the challenge for the philosophy of action is to make sense of that fact without falling victim to the un fruitful assumption that reasons should be understood as the normative content of determinate representational inner states of agents. Stoutland suggests an alternative according to which reasonable agents possess the know how to respond appropriately to the normative import of the external situations they find themselves in. These situations are, Stout land claims, the real reasons. Stoutland raises an important issue. If beliefs and desires should be understood as reasons, as introducing normative constraints that de serve respect, it seems we are bound to distinguish between on the one hand the content of our beliefs and desires and on the other hand their objects. Moreover, it seems we have good reasons to believe that the content of our beliefs and desires derives its normative import qua normative import from the objects of our beliefs and desires.
Download or read book Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts written by Enamul Choudhury and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Complexity of Transboundary Water Conflicts’ seeks to understand transboundary water issues as complex systems with contingent conditions and possibilities. To address those conditions and leverage the possibilities it introduces the concept of enabling conditions as a pragmatic way to identify and act on the emergent possibilities to resolve transboundary water issues. Based on this theoretical frame, the book applies the ideas and tools from complexity science, contingency and enabling conditions to account for events in the formulation of treaties/agreements between disputing riparian states in river basins across the world (Indus, Jordan, Nile, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Colorado, Danube, Senegal and Zayandehrud). It also includes a section with scholars’ reflections on the relevance and weakness of the theoretical framework.
