Reasons and Intentions

Reasons and Intentions
Author: Bruno Verbeek
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351906321

There are a number of problems in philosophy that seem to share a similar possible solution: 'Why do promises and contracts bind?', 'Why ought citizens and judges obey the law?' and 'Can we realize the gains to be made from cooperation?'. All three problems (as well as some others) share a possible solution in the form of rational internal commitment. Reasons and Intentions is a 'state-of-the-art' overview of the relevant positions on the possibility of such commitment, including critical ones. The introduction provides a survey of the central problem of the volume, 'how the will can bind itself and still be instrumental in nature', and the various positions which are further examined in the contributions. Addressing the question of the relation between intentions and action, the considerations which make an intention rational and how this translates into our conception of (moral) agency, this book brings together specially commissioned essays by the leading scholars in the field.

Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason

Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason
Author: Michael Bratman
Publisher: Stanford Univ Center for the Study
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1987
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781575861920

Bratman develops a planning theory of intention in this book.

How We Act

How We Act
Author: Berent En C
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2006
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780199204182

'How We Act' presents a compelling picture of human action as part of the natural causal order. Berent Enç eschews any appeal to special capacities supposedly unique to rational agents, such as agent causation or irreducible acts of volition, and by appealing to analogous positions in epistemology and the theory of perception, shows why it is a mistake to subscribe to such capacities. His defense begins with a foundationalist definition of action that rests on a theory of basic acts, conceived here as derived from empirical studies of animal behaviour. Basic acts are complex units that agents acquire as part of their repertoire of things they can readily do - things with which practical syllogisms end.

Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency

Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency
Author: George Pavlakos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2015-02-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107070724

A collection of new essays on the interplay between intentions and practical reasons in law and practical agency.

Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency

Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency
Author: George Pavlakos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2015-02-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1316240568

This collection of new essays explores in depth how and why we act when we follow practical standards, particularly in connection with the authority of legal texts and lawmakers. The essays focus on the interplay of intentions and practical reasons, engaging incisive arguments to demonstrate both the close connection between them, and the inadequacy of accounts that downplay this important link. Their wide-ranging discussion includes topics such as legal interpretation, the paradox of intention, the relation between moral and legal obligation, and legal realism. The volume will appeal to scholars and students of legal philosophy, moral philosophy, law, social science, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of action.

Effective Intentions

Effective Intentions
Author: Alfred R. Mele
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2009-04-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0195384261

Introduction -- Conscious intentions and decisions -- Neuroscience and causes of action -- Neuroscience and free will -- Intentional actions and the alleged illusion of conscious will -- Proximal intentions and awareness reports -- The power of conscious will -- Conclusion.

Faces of Intention

Faces of Intention
Author: Michael Bratman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1999-01-13
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780521637275

A collection of essays is concerned with deepening our understanding of the notion of intention.

Intention

Intention
Author: G. E. M. Anscombe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2000-10-16
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780674003996

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble problems and must be abandoned. This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

Intentions in Great Power Politics

Intentions in Great Power Politics
Author: Sebastian Rosato
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300258682

Why the future of great power politics is likely to resemble its dismal past Can great powers be confident that their peers have benign intentions? States that trust each other can live at peace; those that mistrust each other are doomed to compete for arms and allies and may even go to war. Sebastian Rosato explains that states routinely lack the kind of information they need to be convinced that their rivals mean them no harm. Even in cases that supposedly involved mutual trust—Germany and Russia in the Bismarck era; Britain and the United States during the great rapprochement; France and Germany, and Japan and the United States in the early interwar period; and the Soviet Union and United States at the end of the Cold War—the protagonists mistrusted each other and struggled for advantage. Rosato argues that the ramifications of his argument for U.S.–China relations are profound: the future of great power politics is likely to resemble its dismal past.

Anscombe's Intention

Anscombe's Intention
Author: John Schwenkler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-10-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019005204X

Written against the background of her controversial opposition to the University of Oxford's awarding of an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman, Elizabeth Anscombe's Intention laid the groundwork she thought necessary for a proper ethical evaluation of actions like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devoutly Catholic Anscombe thought that these actions made Truman a murderer, and thus unworthy of the university's honor-but that this verdict depended on an understanding of intentional action that had been widely rejected in contemporary moral philosophy. Intention was her attempt to work out that understanding and argue for its superiority over a conception of intention as an inner mental state. Though recognized universally as one of the definitive works in analytic philosophy of action, Anscombe's book is often dismissed as unsystematic or obscure, and usually read through the lens of philosophical concerns very far from her own. Schwenkler's Guide offers a careful and critical presentation of Anscombe's main lines of argument at a level appropriate to advanced undergraduates but also capable of benefiting specialists in action theory, moral philosophy, and the history of analytic philosophy. Further, it situates Intention in a context that emphasizes Anscombe's debts to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein, and her engagement with the work of contemporaries like Gilbert Ryle and R.M. Hare, inviting new avenues of engagement with the ideas of historically important philosophers.