Constructing Practical Reasons

Constructing Practical Reasons
Author: Andreas Müller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-12-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191070955

Some things are reasons for us to perform certain actions. That it will spare you great pain in the future, for example, is a reason for you to go to the dentist now, and that you are already late for work is a reason for you not to read the next article in the morning paper. Why are such considerations reasons for or against certain actions? Constructivism offers an intriguing answer to this question. Its basic idea is often encapsulated in the slogan that reasons are not discovered but made by us. Andreas Müller elaborates this idea into a fully-fledged account of practical reasons, makes its theoretical commitments explicit, and defends it against some well-known objections. Constructing Practical Reasons begins with an examination of the distinctive role that reason judgements play in the process of practical reasoning. This provides the resources for an anti-representationalist conception of the nature of those judgements, according to which they are true, if they are true, not because they accurately represent certain normative facts, but because of their role in sound reasoning. On the resulting view, a consideration owes its status as a reason to the truth of the corresponding reason judgement and thus, ultimately, to the soundness of a certain episode of reasoning. Consequently, our practical reasons exhibit a kind of mind-dependence, but this does not force us to deny their objectivity.

Constructivism in Practical Philosophy

Constructivism in Practical Philosophy
Author: James Lenman
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2012-08-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199609837

This volume presents twelve original papers on the idea that moral objectivity is to be understood in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can accept. The contributors offer new perspectives, some sympathetic and some critical, on constructivist understandings - Kantian or otherwise - of morality and reason.

Constructions of Reason

Constructions of Reason
Author: Onora O'Neill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1989
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521388160

This book traces the alleged incoherences to attempts to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, actions and rights.

Imagination and Depth in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Imagination and Depth in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Author: Bernard Freydberg
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 144
Release: 1994
Genre: Bibles
ISBN:

The Kerygma of the Wilderness Traditions in the Hebrew Bible examines biblical writers' use of the wilderness traditions in the books of Exodus and Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Prophets, and the Writings to express their beliefs in God and their understandings of the community's relationship to God. Kerygma is the proclamation of God's actions with the purpose of affirming faith/or appealing to an obedient response from the community. The experiences of the wilderness community, who rebelled and refused to live according to God's purposes, serve as a polemic against disbelief in God and the refusal to embrace Israel's religious heritage. In the Writings, more than in the Prophets, the wilderness traditions are remembered with a notable resemblance to the traditions in Exodus and Numbers, which reflects a heightened interest in the ancient traditions in the closing turbulent period of Israelite history. Recollections of Israel's beginnings in the wilderness address problems associated with faith, obedience, and ultimately, the nature of the Israelite community.

Kant on Practical Justification

Kant on Practical Justification
Author: Mark Timmons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2013-03-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199875367

This volume of new essays provides a comprehensive and structured examination of Kant's justification of norms, a crucial but neglected theme in Kantian practical philosophy. The essays engage with the view that a successful account of justification of normative claims has to be non-metaphysical and go on to pursue further implications in ethics, legal and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion.

Legal Directives and Practical Reasons

Legal Directives and Practical Reasons
Author: Noam Gur
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199659877

This book investigates law's interaction with practical reasons. What difference can legal requirements-e.g. traffic rules, tax laws, or work safety regulations-make to normative reasons relevant to our action? Do they give reasons for action that should be weighed among all other reasons? Or can they, instead, exclude and take the place of some other reasons? The book critically examines some of the existing answers and puts forward an alternative understanding of law's interaction with practical reasons. At the outset, two competing positions are pitted against each other: Joseph Raz's view that (legitimate) legal authorities have pre-emptive force, namely that they give reasons for action that exclude some other reasons; and an antithesis, according to which law-making institutions (even those that meet prerequisites of legitimacy) can at most provide us with reasons that compete in weight with opposing reasons for action. These two positions are examined from several perspectives, such as justified disobedience cases, law's conduct-guiding function in contexts of bounded rationality, and the phenomenology associated with authority. It is found that, although each of the above positions offers insight into the conundrum at hand, both suffer from significant flaws. These observations form the basis on which an alternative position is put forward and defended. According to this position, the existence of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes a reason that fits neither into a model of ordinary reasons for action nor into a pre-emptive paradigm-it constitutes a reason to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system's requirements.

Practical Shape

Practical Shape
Author: Jonathan Dancy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2018-06-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192528025

Everyone allows that we can reason to a new belief from beliefs that we already have. Aristotle thought that we could also reason from beliefs to action. Practical Shape: A Theory of Practical Reasoning establishes this possibility of reasoning to action, in a way that allows also for reasoning to intention, hope, fear, and doubt. While many philosophers have found little sense in Aristotle's claim, Dancy offers a general theory of reasoning that is sensitive to current debates but still Aristotelian in spirit. The text clearly sets out the similarities between reasoning to action and reasoning to belief, which are far more striking than any dissimilarities. Its detailed account of practical reasoning, a topic inadequately covered in current literature, is presented in such a way as to be intelligible to a variety of readers, making it an ideal resource for students of philosophy but also of interest to academics in related disciplines.

Kant on Practical Life

Kant on Practical Life
Author: Kristi E. Sweet
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2013-07-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107037239

This book offers a comprehensive account of Kant's practical philosophy that highlights the unity across its disparate themes.

The Making of Constitutional Democracy

The Making of Constitutional Democracy
Author: Paolo Sandro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2022-01-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509905219

This open access book addresses a palpable, yet widely neglected, tension in legal discourse. In our everyday legal practices – whether taking place in a courtroom, classroom, law firm, or elsewhere – we routinely and unproblematically talk of the activities of creating and applying the law. However, when legal scholars have analysed this distinction in their theories (rather than simply assuming it), many have undermined it, if not dismissed it as untenable. The book considers the relevance of distinguishing between law-creation and law-application and how this transcends the boundaries of jurisprudential enquiry. It argues that such a distinction is also a crucial component of political theory. For if there is no possibility of applying a legal rule that was created by a different institution at a previous moment in time, then our current constitutional-democratic frameworks are effectively empty vessels that conceal a power relationship between public authorities and citizens that is very different from the one on which constitutional democracy is grounded. After problematising the most relevant objections in the literature, the book presents a comprehensive defence of the distinction between creation and application of law within the structure of constitutional democracy. It does so through an integrated jurisprudential methodology, which combines insights from different disciplines (including history, anthropology, political science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of action) while also casting new light on long-standing issues in public law, such as the role of legal discretion in the law-making process and the scope of the separation of powers doctrine. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Constructing Authorities

Constructing Authorities
Author: Onora O'Neill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2015-12-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1316453782

This collection of essays brings together the central lines of thought in Onora O'Neill's work on Kant's philosophy, developed over many years. Challenging the claim that Kant's attempt to provide a critique of reason fails because it collapses into a dogmatic argument from authority, O'Neill shows why Kant held that we must construct, rather than assume, the authority of reason, and how this can be done by ensuring that anything we offer as reasons can be followed by others, including others with whom we disagree. She argues that this constructivist view of reasoning is the clue to Kant's claims about knowledge, ethics and politics, as well as to his distinctive accounts of autonomy, the social contract, cosmopolitan justice and scriptural interpretation. Her essays are a distinctive and illuminating commentary on Kant's fundamental philosophical strategy and its implications, and will be a vital resource for scholars of Kant, ethics and philosophy of law.