Philosophical Grounds of Rationality
Philosophical Grounds of Rationality

Author: Richard E. Grandy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 0198244649

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H.P. Grice is a distinguished philosopher predominantly known for his influential contributions to the philosophy of language, but that is only one strand in a rich tapestry of ideas bearing on the philosophy of mind, ethics, and metaphysics as well. Some of the essays in this collection of original papers by leading philosophers edited by Grandy and Warner develop Grice's earlier work in the philosophy of language, but most of them discuss or present his newer and less-known; work. Together they demonstrate the unified and powerful character of his thoughts on being, mind, meaning, and morals. An introductory essay provides some of the first overview of Grice's thought, and makes explicit some of the relations among the essays.

Rationality
Rationality

Author: Nicholas Rescher

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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Contending that only a normative theory of rationality can be adequate to the complexities of the subject, this book explains and defends the view that rationality consists of the intelligent pursuit of appropriate objectives. Rescher considers the mechanics, rationale, and rewards of reason, and argues that social scientists who want to present a theory of rationality while avoiding the vexing complexities of normative deliberations must amend their perspective of the rational enterprise.

Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science
Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science

Author: Stefano Gattei

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-10-16

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1134182953

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Rectifying misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, Gattei reconstructs the logic of Popper’s development to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

Problems of Rationality
Problems of Rationality

Author: Donald Davidson

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2004-03-25

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0191519235

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Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

Without Good Reason
Without Good Reason

Author: Edward Stein

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1996-01-11

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 019158472X

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Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational—we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy and cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality—the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on—and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowledge—in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized.

Reason and Rationality
Reason and Rationality

Author: Maria Cristina Amoretti

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 3110325861

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Reason and rationality represent crucial elements of the self-image of human beings and have unquestionably been among the most debated issues in Western philosophy, dating from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, and to the present day. Many words and thoughts have already been spent trying to define the nature and standards of reason and rationality, what they could or ought to be, and under what conditions something can be said to be rational. This volume focuses instead on the relationships of reason and rationality to some relevant specific topics, i.e., science, knowledge, gender, politics, ethics, religion, aesthetics, language, logic, and metaphysics, trying to uncover and clarify both the connections and differences in their various characterisations and uses.

The Value of Rationality
The Value of Rationality

Author: Ralph Wedgwood

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0198802692

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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').

Rationality and Religious Commitment
Rationality and Religious Commitment

Author: Robert Audi

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-09-22

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0191619523

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Rationality and Religious Commitment shows how religious commitment can be rational and describes the place of faith in the postmodern world. It portrays religious commitment as far more than accepting doctrines—it is viewed as a kind of life, not just as an embrace of tenets. Faith is conceived as a unique attitude. It is irreducible to belief but closely connected with both belief and conduct, and intimately related to life's moral, political, and aesthetic dimensions. Part One presents an account of rationality as a status attainable by mature religious people—even those with a strongly scientific habit of mind. Part Two describes what it means to have faith, how faith is connected with attitudes, emotions, and conduct, and how religious experience may support it. Part Three turns to religious commitment and moral obligation and to the relation between religion and politics. It shows how ethics and religion can be mutually supportive even though ethics provides standards of conduct independently of theology. It also depicts the integrated life possible for the religiously committed—a life with rewarding interactions between faith and reason, religion and science, and the aesthetic and the spiritual. The book concludes with two major accounts. One explains how moral wrongs and natural disasters are possible under God conceived as having the knowledge, power, and goodness that make such evils so difficult to understand. The other account explores the nature of persons, human and divine, and yields a conception that can sustain a rational theistic worldview even in the contemporary scientific age.

Unsettled Thoughts
Unsettled Thoughts

Author: Julia Staffel

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0198833717

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How should thinkers cope with uncertainty? Julia Staffel breaks new ground in the study of rationality by answering this question and many others. She also explains how it is better to be less irrational, because less irrational degrees of belief are generally more accurate and better at guiding our actions.