The Will and Human Action
The Will and Human Action

Author: Thomas Pink

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-05-05

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1134345275

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What is the will? And what is its relation to human action? Throughout history, philosophers have been fascinated by the idea of 'the will': the source of the drive that motivates human beings to act. However, there has never been a clear consensus as to what the will is and how it relates to human action. Some philosophers have taken the will to be based firmly in reason and rational choice, and some have seen it as purely self-determined. Others have replaced the idea of the human will with a more general drive uniting humans and the rest of nature, living and non-living. This collection of nine specially commissioned papers trace the formulation and treatment of the problem of the will from ancient philosophy through the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages, to modern philosophy, and right up to contemporary theories. Philosophers discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Action, Knowledge, and Will
Action, Knowledge, and Will

Author: John Hyman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0198735774

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John Hyman explores central problems in philosophy of action and the theory of knowledge, and connects these areas of enquiry in a new way. His approach to the dimensions of human action culminates in an original analysis of the relation between knowledge and rational behaviour, which provides the foundation for a new theory of knowledge itself.

Human Foundations of Management
Human Foundations of Management

Author: D. Melé

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2014-12-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780230368934

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Human Foundations of Management explores the human foundation of management and economic activity in a way that is accessible to readers. The structure and contents of this book examines those aspects of the human being which are relevant to management and economic activities.

The Works of Agency
The Works of Agency

Author: Hugh McCann

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780801485831

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In these essays, McCann develops a unified perspective on human action. Written over a period of 25 years, the essays provide a comprehensive survey of the major topics in contemporary action theory. In four sections, the book addresses the ontology of action; the foundations of action; intention, will and freedom; and practical rationality. McCann works out a compromise between competing perspectives on the individuation of action; explores the foundations of action and defends a volitional theory; argues for a libertarian view of both the formation and the execution of intention; and considers the question of consistency in rational intentions, as well as the relationship between practical and theoretical reasoning.

God's Grace and Human Action
God's Grace and Human Action

Author: Joseph P. Wawrykow

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 1996-01-08

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 026809683X

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Offering a fresh approach to one significant aspect of the soteriology of Thomas Aquinas, God's Grace and Human Action brings new scholarship and insights to the issue of merit in Aquinas's theology. Through a careful historical analysis, Joseph P. Wawrykow delineates the precise function of merit in Aquinas's account of salvation. Wawrykow accounts for the changes in Thomas's teaching on merit from the early Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard to the later Summa theologiae in two ways. First, he demonstrates how the teaching of the Summa theologiae discloses the impact of Thomas's profound encounter with the later writings of Augustine on predestination and grace. Second, Wawrykow notes the implications of Thomas's mature theological judgment that merit is best understood in the context of the plan of divine wisdom. The portrayal of merit in sapiential terms in the Summa permits Thomas to insist that the attainment of salvation through merit testifies not only to the dignity of the human person but even more to the goodness of God.

Brute Rationality
Brute Rationality

Author: Joshua Gert

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-08-19

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1139454153

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This book presents an account of normative practical reasons and the way in which they contribute to the rationality of action. Rather than simply 'counting in favour of' actions, normative reasons play two logically distinct roles: requiring action and justifying action. The distinction between these two roles explains why some reasons do not seem relevant to the rational status of an action unless the agent cares about them, while other reasons retain all their force regardless of the agent's attitude. It also explains why the class of rationally permissible action is wide enough to contain not only all morally required action, but also much selfish and immoral action. The book will appeal to a range of readers interested in practical reason in particular, and moral theory more generally.

Choice
Choice

Author: Alan Donagan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-14

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 135178627X

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This book, first published in 1987, investigates what distinguishes the part of human behaviour that is action (praxis) from the part that is not. The distinction was clearly drawn by Socrates, and developed by Aristotle and the medievals, but key elements of their work became obscured in modern philosophy, and were not fully recovered when, under Wittgenstein’s influence, the theory of action was revived in analytical philosophy. This study aims to recover those elements, and to analyse them in terms of a defensible semantics on Fregean lines. Among its conclusions: that actions are bodily or mental events that are causally explained by their doers’ propositional attitudes, especially by their choices or fully specific intentions; that choice cannot be reduced to desire and belief, and hence that the traditional concept of will as intellectual appetite must be revived.