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Reason And Explanation
by Ted PostonReason and Explanation develops a novel explanationist account of epistemic justification. Poston argues that the explanatory virtues provide all the materials necessary for a plausible account of justified belief. The justification of a subject's belief consists in the explanatory virtues of the entire set of the subject's beliefs in comparison with other sets of beliefs she could have. Poston's argument for explanatory coherentism involves a defense of the epistemic value of background beliefs, the development of a novel framework view of reasons, and the articulation of a mentalist, evidentialist account of explanatory coherentism. Poston also argues against foundationalist attempts to ground facts about justification in sense experience. He extends the argument against foundationalism by examining how a priori justification consists in one's overall explanatory position. Finally, Poston articulates a compatiblist position regarding the relationship between inference to the best explanation and Bayesianism.
Reason And Religious Faith
by Terence Penelhum EmeritusThe concerns of philosophy and of religion overlap to a considerable extent—each seeks, among other things, to develop an account of mankind's place in the universe. But their relationship has never been an easy one. Faith gives rise to philosophical puzzlement just as secular beliefs do, but it also generates special philosophical questions that secular beliefs do not. This engaging text encourages students and other readers to grapple with these special questions of faith, to look at how they relate to other issues in philosophy and in the empirical study of religion. Equally accurate and insightful in its treatment of historical authors such as Aquinas and Pascal as it is in treatment of such contemporaries as Plantinga and Alston, Reason and Religious Faith is the most up-to-date and balanced introduction to these issues available. It marks an advance over earlier surveys in its recognition of religious pluralism and the relevance of non-Christian religious views. It is an ideal introduction to the issues of religious epistemology for students of both religious studies and philosophy.
Reason Without Freedom: The Problem of Epistemic Normativity (International Library of Philosophy)
by David OwensWe call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this imply about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? Or does it imply that we are in control of our beliefs and that what we believe is up to us? Reason Without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. David Owens focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume - the founders of epistemology - and presents a critical discussion of the current trends in contemporary epistemology. He proposes that the problems we confront today - scepticism, the analysis of knowlege, and debates on epistemic justification - can be tackled only once we have understood the moral psychology of belief. This can be resolved when we realise that our responsibility for beliefs is profoundly different from our rationality and agency, and that memory and testimony can preserve justified belief without preserving the evidence which might be used to justify it. Reason Without Freedom should be of value to those interested in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, ethics, and the history of 17th and 18th century.
Reason and Analysis (Paul Carus Lectures #Vol. 12)
by Blanshard, BrandThis is Volume II in a series of seventeen on Metaphysics. Originally published in 1962, The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was designed as a contribution to the History of Modern Philosophy under the heads: first of Different Schools of Thought-Sensationalist, Realist, Idealist, Intuitivist; secondly of different Subjects-Psychology, Ethics, Political Philosophy and Theology.
Reason and Analysis in Ancient Greek Philosophy
by Fred D. Miller Jr. Georgios AnagnostopoulosThis distinctive collection of original articles features contributions from many of the leading scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. They explore the concept of reason and the method of analysis and the central role they play in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They engage with salient themes in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory, as well as tracing links between each thinker's ideas on selected topics. The volume contains analyses of Plato's Socrates, focusing on his views of moral psychology, the obligation to obey the law, the foundations of politics, justice and retribution, and Socratic virtue. On Plato's Republic, the discussions cover the relationship between politics and philosophy, the primacy of reason over the soul's non-rational capacities, the analogy of the city and the soul, and our responsibility for choosing how we live our own lives. The anthology also probes Plato's analysis of logos (reason or language) which underlies his philosophy including the theory of forms. A quartet of reflections explores Aristotelian themes including the connections between knowledge and belief, the nature of essence and function, and his theories of virtue and grace. The volume concludes with an insightful intellectual memoir by David Keyt which charts the rise of analytic classical scholarship in the past century and along the way provides entertaining anecdotes involving major figures in modern academic philosophy. Blending academic authority with creative flair and demonstrating the continuing interest of ancient Greek philosophy, this book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all those studying and researching the origins of Western philosophy.
Reason and Cause: Social Science and the Social World
by Richard Ned LebowPhilosophy and social science assume that reason and cause are objective and universally applicable concepts. Through close readings of ancient and modern philosophy, history and literature, Richard Ned Lebow demonstrates that these concepts are actually specific to time and place. He traces their parallel evolution by focusing on classical Athens, the Enlightenment through Victorian England, and the early twentieth century. This important book shows how and why understandings of reason and cause have developed and evolved, in response to what kind of stimuli, and what this says about the relationship between social science and the social world in which it is conducted. Lebow argues that authors reflecting on their own social context use specific constructions of these categories as central arguments about the human condition. This highly original study will make an immediate impact across a number of fields with its rigorous research and the development of an innovative historicised epistemology.
Reason and Character: The Moral Foundations of Aristotelian Political Philosophy
by Lorraine Smith PangleWhat does it mean to live a good life or a happy life, and what part does reason play in the quest for fulfillment? Proceeding by means of a close and thematically selective commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, this book offers a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s teachings on the relation between reason and moral virtue. Pangle shows how Aristotle’s arguments for virtue as the core of happiness and for reason as the guide to virtue emerge in dialectical response to Socrates’s paradoxical claim that virtue is knowledge and vice is ignorance, and as part of a politically complex project of giving guidance to lawgivers and ordinary citizens while offering spurs to deep theoretical reflection. Against Socrates, Aristotle insists that both virtue and vice are voluntary and that individuals are responsible for their characters, a stance that lends itself to vigorous defense of moral responsibility. At the same time, Pangle shows, Aristotle elucidates the importance of unchosen concerns in shaping all that we do and the presence of some form of ignorance or subtle confusions in all moral failings. Thus the gap between his position and that of Socrates comes on close inspection to be much smaller than first appears, and his true teaching on the role of reason in shaping moral existence far more complex. The book offers fresh interpretations of Aristotle’s teaching on the relation of passions to judgments, on what it means to choose virtue for its own sake, on the way reason finds the mean, especially in justice, and on the crucial intellectual virtue of phronesis or active wisdom and its relation to theoretical wisdom. Offering answers to longstanding debates over the status of reason and the meaning of happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics, this book will kindle in readers a new appreciation for Aristotle’s lessons on how to make the most out of life, as individuals and in society.
Reason and Controversy in the Arts
by Mortimer R. KadishThis study is a fresh and original attempt to liberate the theory of criticism from the limitations of connoisseurship, and the assumptions of aesthetics from the difficulties and paradoxes of aesthetic relativism. It presents a picture of what rationality in the assessment of the arts would be like if one were expected to justify one's decisions in and about the arts.Kadish focuses upon the way in which competent and reasonable people express their differences, not upon the way they instruct novices. Among good critics, the author proposes, differences are not managed as differences concerning matters of taste, nor would anyone presume otherwise were it not for a prior and gratuitous choice of a context of consumption for considering the arts. The author examines the hypothesis that differences of opinion in artistically relevant controversy are in a fundamental sense practical, that when critics of the arts differ seriously, proposals for the proper conduct of the arts and a procedure for interpretation of the arts are what is at issue.To understand the special logic of controversy in the arts Kadish compares that controversy with legally relevant and scientifically relevant controversies. Finally, the arts and criticism are found to be parts of a coherent enterprise the criteria of which are generated in an evolving practice, as are the criteria of law. This illuminating discourse is of continuing relevance to those interested in aesthetics.
Reason and Conversion in Kierkegaard and the German Idealists (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy)
by Ryan S. Kemp Christopher IacovettiIn his late work Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Immanuel Kant struggles to answer a straightforward, yet surprisingly difficult, question: how is radical conversion—a complete reorientation of a person’s most deeply held values—possible? In this book, Ryan S. Kemp and Christopher Iacovetti examine how this question gets taken up by Kant’s philosophical heirs: Schelling, Fichte, Hegel and Kierkegaard. More than simply developing a novel account of each thinker’s position, Kemp and Iacovetti trace how each philosopher formulates his theory in response to tensions in preceding views, culminating in Kierkegaard’s claim that radical conversion lies outside a person’s control. Kemp and Iacovetti close by examining some of the moral-psychological implications of Kierkegaard’s account, particularly the question of how someone might responsibly relate to values that have, by their own admission, been acquired in contingent and accidental fashion.
Reason and Democracy
by Thomas A. Spragens Jr.Reason and Democracy breaks new ground in providing a plausible philosophical basis for the communitarian view of a healthy democracy as the rational pursuit of common purposes by free and equal citizens. Thomas A. Spragens Jr. argues that the most persistent paradigms of Western political rationality originated in classical philosophy, took their modern expression in the philosophies of Kant and Mill, and terminated in Max Weber's pairing of purely technical rationality with arbitrary ends. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of language, combined with appropriate analogies in political thought and action, Spragens maintains that it is possible to discern the outlines of a philosophically cogent and morally beneficial concept of rational practice on the part of a political community. This possibility, he contends, provides a philosophical basis for liberal democratic politics that is superior to utilitarian and deontological accounts.
Reason and Emotion in International Ethics
by Renée JefferyThe study of international ethics is marked by an overwhelming bias towards reasoned reflection at the expense of emotionally driven moral deliberation. For rationalist cosmopolitans in particular, reason alone provides the means by which we can arrive at the truly impartial moral judgments a cosmopolitan ethic demands. However, are the emotions as irrational, selfish and partial as most rationalist cosmopolitans would have us believe? By re-examining the central claims of the eighteenth-century moral sentiment theorists in light of cutting-edge discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and psychology, Renée Jeffery argues that the dominance of rationalism and marginalisation of emotions from theories of global ethics cannot be justified. In its place she develops a sentimentalist cosmopolitan ethic that does not simply provide a framework for identifying injustices and prescribing how we ought to respond to them, but which actually motivates action in response to international injustices such as global poverty.
Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Method of Treating Human Disturbances, Revised and Updated
by Albert Ellis[from inside flaps] "Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, a seminal work in twentieth-century psychology, was the first book on rational-emotive therapy. Written for psychotherapists, it soon became one of the most important and most quoted books in the field. Although intended for professionals, it has since become a widely popular and indispensable self-help book. This updated and revised edition reflects new findings by Dr. Albert Ellis and his colleagues. Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy started the cognitive-behavior movement in psychotherapy. When Dr. Ellis began practicing this groundbreaking new therapy in 1955, his was a little-heard voice. Two main forms of psychotherapy, both passive, then dominated the field: Freudian psychoanalysis, with its interminable listening to troubled people's complaints and supposedly unraveling their unconscious "complexes" and purportedly healing them of childhood traumas; and Carl Rogers's client-centered therapy, which forbade therapists from using any active-directive techniques to show clients what really troubled them or what to do about it. Other forms of therapy, such as Adlerian, Gestalt, Jungian, and behavior therapy, existed but had few followers. Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy helped change all this. Including Dr. Ellis's major papers, it was the pioneering work in cognitive-behavior therapy and presented a revolutionary, powerful, brief, and effective psychological treatment that was deeper and more intensive than either psychoanalysis or the therapy of Rogers and his followers. Dr. Ellis's new approach caught the imagination of practitioners all over the world, and by the late 1960s he was joined by Aaron Beck, William Glasser, Donald Meichenbaum, and a host of other therapists who primarily followed his theories and practices. By the 1970s, Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and cognitive-behavior therapy were supported by scores of experimental studies and were being used by innumerable mental health practitioners. Today, REBT continues to be increasingly popular and effective. Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy helped so many therapists and laypeople over the years that a new edition might have seemed unnecessary. But psychotherapy, including REBT, moves on, and Dr. Ellis has expanded his original theory and practice and has added a large number of cognitive, emotive, and behavioral techniques to its innovative multimodal approach. This revised edition therefore includes all the important original theories and practices, as well as a significant number of corrections and changes derived from clinical experience and experimentation, featuring a revision of its famous ABC's on human neurosis. A great many of the therapeutic techniques have been perfected since 1955, and the teachings of unconditional self-acceptance (USA) have been updated."
Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory
by John M. CooperThis book brings together twenty-three distinctive and influential essays on ancient moral philosophy--including several published here for the first time--by the distinguished philosopher and classical scholar John Cooper. The volume gives a systematic account of many of the most important issues and texts in ancient moral psychology and ethical theory, providing a unified and illuminating way of reflecting on the fields as they developed from Socrates and Plato through Aristotle to Epicurus and the Stoic philosophers Chrysippus and Posidonius, and beyond. For the ancient philosophers, Cooper shows here, morality was "good character" and what that entailed: good judgment, sensitivity, openness, reflectiveness, and a secure and correct sense of who one was and how one stood in relation to others and the surrounding world. Ethical theory was about the best way to be rather than any principles for what to do in particular circumstances or in relation to recurrent temptations. Moral psychology was the study of the psychological conditions required for good character--the sorts of desires, the attitudes to self and others, the states of mind and feeling, the kinds of knowledge and insight. Together these papers illustrate brilliantly how, by studying the arguments of the Greek philosophers in their diverse theories about the best human life and its psychological underpinnings, we can expand our own moral understanding and imagination and enrich our own moral thought. The collection will be crucial reading for anyone interested in classical philosophy and what it can contribute to reflection on contemporary questions about ethics and human life.
Reason and Ethics: The Case Against Objective Value (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)
by Joel MarksReason and Ethics defends the theoretical claim that all values are subjective and the practical claim that human affairs can be conducted fruitfully in full awareness of this. Joel Marks goes beyond his previous work defending moral skepticism to question the existence of all objective values. This leads him to suggest a novel answer to the Companions in Guilt argument that the denial of morality would mean relinquishing rationality as well. Marks disarms the argument by conceding the irreality of both morality and logic, but is still able to rescue rationality while dispensing with morality on pragmatic grounds. He then offers a positive account of how life may be lived productively without recourse to attributions and assertions of right and wrong, good and bad, and even truth and falsity. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Reason and Ethics will be of interest to scholars and students working in metaethics as well as to the generally intellectually curious.
Reason and Experience in Tibetan Buddhism: Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü and the Traditions of the Middle Way (Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism)
by Thomas DoctorBased on newly discovered texts, this book explores the barely known but tremendously influential thought of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Mabja Jangchub Tsöndrü (d. 1185).This Tibetan Buddhist master exercised significant influence on the interpretation of Madhyamaka thinking in Tibet during the formative phase of Tibetan Buddhism and plays a key role in the religious thought of his day and beyond. The book studies the framework of Mabja’s philosophical project, holding it up against the works of both his own Madhyamaka teachers as well as those of central authors of the later "classical period". The emerging account of the evolution of Madhyamaka in Tibet reveals a striking pattern of transformative appropriations. This, in turn, affords us insights into the nature and function of tradition in Tibetan religious culture and Mahāyāna Buddhism at large. Innovation is demanded for both the advancement and consolidation of tradition. This ground-breaking book is an invaluable contribution to the study of Tibetan philosophy. It is of great interest to Buddhist practitioners, specialists in Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism.
Reason and Faith at Early Princeton: Piety and the Knowledge of God
by Owen AndersonTeaching piety and the highest good have been goals from the beginning of the Academy. Princeton University and Seminary had their start in these same ideas. This book explores the concepts of reason and faith at early Princeton by looking at how this institution was shaped by a pursuit of piety and the knowledge of God.
Reason and Goodness
by Blanshard, BrandFirst published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy and Aesthetic Individuality
by Morton SchoolmanMorton Schoolman develops a fascinating and entirely new interpretation of the work of Horkenheimer and Adorno.
Reason and Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas 1600-1800 (Routledge Revivals)
by Mark E. ByrnesFirst published in 1962, Reason and Imagination presents collection of fourteen essays dedicated to Marjorie Hope Nicholson and is divided equally between works of her colleagues and of her former students. It contains themes like noble numbers and poetry of devotion, Cromwell as Davidic King, the isolation of the renaissances hero, Milton’s dialogue on Astronomy, music, mirth and galenic traditions in England, the Augustan conception of history, Locke and Sterne, and literary criticism and artistic interpretation, to weave a narrative of the history of ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of literary history, philosophy, comparative literature, and English literature in general.
Reason and Justice (SUNY series in Systematic Philosophy)
by Richard Dien WinfieldThis is a finely argued, detailed, and comprehensive systematic theory of justice, brilliantly extending Hegelian ethics much as Rawls's Theory of Justice rehabilitated and extended classical Liberalism. Winfield argues that justice, like reason, must be self-grounding, and that to achieve this, it must be self-determined. The theory of justice must therefore abandon its appeal to metaphysically given or transcendentally constituted norms and instead determine the institutions of freedom. In pursuit of this task, Winfield offers insightful discussions of property relations, morality, the family, capital and commodity relations, economic and social justice, and the state. In contrast to Liberalism, which sees the state as instrumental to non-political ends, Winfield defends the democratic state as the just realization of freedom. Throughout, it is argued that justice is defined interactively, where one's freedom is determined by how one's interactions respect and foster the institutional freedom of others.Although the author's arguments proceed systematically, at each stage he deals adroitly with the relevant major thinkers in the Western tradition—not only with Hegel, but with the ancients, the classical liberals, Marx, and contemporaries such as Rawls.
Reason and Morality (ASA Monographs)
by Joanna OveringFirst Published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method (Routledge Revivals)
by Morris R. CohenFirst published in 1931, this volume represents the culmination of twenty years’ of the study on the principles of science. Noticing a widespread craving for philosophical light at a time of scant such offerings, Morris R. Cohen aimed to demonstrate here the fundamental and ancient connection between nature and science - between hearts and minds – in an attempt to salve the developing mutual hostility between the two in the 1920s. The volume bears particular relation to George Santayana’s Life of Reason and Bertrand Russell’s Principles of Mathematics and explores areas including the character of the insurgence against reason and reason in the contexts of the natural and social sciences.
Reason and Professional Ethics
by Peter Davson-GalleMany professionals confront ethical issues concerning their proper roles and the manner in which they should carry out those roles. This book is aimed at those studying for entry into the various professions (such as teaching or social work) where ethical questions are commonly faced. It introduces readers to both the techniques and depth of ethical argument drawn from the fields of critical thinking and informal logic and enables practitioners to use these techniques so they can be deployed as 'tools of thought' for thinking in a carefully reasoned and extended way about problems of professional ethics. The book also provides a brief introduction to some of the normative and meta-ethical theory relevant to the principled discussion of professional ethics. Post-graduate students and academics should also find the treatment of some of the complexities of extended reasoning, in particular its focus upon careful metacognitive tracking and planning of an inquiry, to be of interest.
Reason and Rationality
by Jon ElsterOne of the world's most important political philosophers, Jon Elster is a leading thinker on reason and rationality and their roles in politics and public life. In this short book, he crystallizes and advances his work, bridging the gap between philosophers who use the idea of reason to assess human behavior from a normative point of view and social scientists who use the idea of rationality to explain behavior. In place of these approaches, Elster proposes a unified conceptual framework for the study of behavior. Drawing on classical moralists as well as modern scholarship, and using a wealth of historical and contemporary illustrations, Reason and Rationality marks a new development in Elster's thinking while at the same time providing a brief, elegant, and accessible introduction to his work.
Reason and Religion: Evaluating and Explaining Belief in Gods (Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society)
by Herman PhilipseReligion is relevant to all of us, whether we are believers or not. This book concerns two interrelated topics. First, how probable is God's existence? Should we not conclude that all divinities are human inventions? Second, what are the mental and social functions of endorsing religious beliefs? The answers to these questions are interdependent. If a religious belief were true, the fact that humans hold it might be explained by describing how its truth was discovered. If all religious beliefs are false, a different explanation is required. In this provocative book Herman Philipse combines philosophical investigations concerning the truth of religious convictions with empirical research on the origins and functions of religious beliefs. Numerous topics are discussed, such as the historical genesis of monotheisms out of polytheisms, how to explain Saul's conversion to Jesus, and whether any apologetic strategy of Christian philosophers is convincing. Universal atheism is the final conclusion.