The Nature of Reasoning

The Nature of Reasoning PDF

Author: Jacqueline P. Leighton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780521009287

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We are bombarded with information - press releases, television news, Internet websites, and office memos, just to name a few - on a daily basis. However, the important conclusions that may or need to be inferred from such information are typically not provided. We must draw the conclusions by ourselves. How do we draw these conclusions? This book addresses how we reason to reach sensible conclusions. The purpose of this book is to organize in one volume what is known about reasoning, such as its structural prerequisites, its mechanisms, its susceptibility to pragmatic influences, its pitfalls, and the bases for its development. Given that reasoning underlies so many of our intellectual activities - when we learn, criticize, analyze, judge, infer, evaluate, optimize, apply, discover, imagine, devise, and create - we stand to gain a great deal if we can learn to define, operate, apply, and nurture our reasoning.

Reason in Nature

Reason in Nature PDF

Author: Matthew Boyle

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2022-12-06

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0674241045

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Against the dominant view of reductive naturalism, John McDowell argues that human life should be seen as transformed by reason so that human minds, while not supernatural, are sui generis. This collection assembles eleven critical essays that highlight the enduring significance and wide ramifications of McDowell’s unorthodox position.

Medical Reasoning

Medical Reasoning PDF

Author: Erwin B. Montgomery

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2018-11-14

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0190912928

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Modern medicine is one of humankind's greatest achievements.Yet today, frequent medical errors and irreproducibility in biomedical research suggest that tremendous challenges beset it. Understanding these challenges and trying to remedy them have driven considerable and thoughtful critical analyses, but the apparent intransigence of these problems suggests a different perspective is needed. Now more than ever, when we see options and opportunities for healthcare expanding while resources are diminishing, it is extremely important that healthcare professionals practice medicine wisely. In Medical Reasoning, neurologist Erwin B. Montgomery, Jr. offers a new and vital perspective. He begins with the idea that the need for certainty in medical decision-making has been the primary driving force in medical reasoning. Doctors must routinely confront countless manifestations of symptoms, diseases, or behaviors in their patients. Therefore, either there are as many different "diseases" as there are patients or some economical set of principles and facts can be combined to explain each patient's disease. The response to this epistemic conundrum has driven medicine throughout history: the challenge is to discover principles and facts and then to develop means to apply them to each unique patient in a manner that provides certainty. This book studies the nature of medical decision making systematically and rigorously in both an analytic and historical context, addressing medicine's unique need for certainty in the face of the enormous variety of diseases and in the manifestations of the same disease in different patients. The book also examines how the social, legal, and economic circumstances in which medical decision-making occurs greatly influence the nature of medical reasoning. Medical Reasoning is essential for those at the intersection of healthcare and philosophy.

Reason and Nature

Reason and Nature PDF

Author: José Luis Bermúdez

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780199256839

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In a series of essays nine philosophers and two psychologists address three main themes: the status of norms of rationality; the precise form taken by them; and the role of norms in belief and actions.

Rethinking the Good

Rethinking the Good PDF

Author: Larry S. Temkin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-12-04

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 0190233710

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In choosing between moral alternatives -- choosing between various forms of ethical action -- we typically make calculations of the following kind: A is better than B; B is better than C; therefore A is better than C. These inferences use the principle of transitivity and are fundamental to many forms of practical and theoretical theorizing, not just in moral and ethical theory but in economics. Indeed they are so common as to be almost invisible. What Larry Temkin's book shows is that, shockingly, if we want to continue making plausible judgments, we cannot continue to make these assumptions. Temkin shows that we are committed to various moral ideals that are, surprisingly, fundamentally incompatible with the idea that "better than" can be transitive. His book develops many examples where value judgments that we accept and find attractive, are incompatible with transitivity. While this might seem to leave two options -- reject transitivity, or reject some of our normative commitments in order to keep it -- Temkin is neutral on which path to follow, only making the case that a choice is necessary, and that the cost either way will be high. Temkin's book is a very original and deeply unsettling work of skeptical philosophy that mounts an important new challenge to contemporary ethics.

The Enigma of Reason

The Enigma of Reason PDF

Author: Hugo Mercier

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-04-17

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 0674368304

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“Brilliant...Timely and necessary.” —Financial Times “Especially timely as we struggle to make sense of how it is that individuals and communities persist in holding beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited.” —Darren Frey, Science If reason is what makes us human, why do we behave so irrationally? And if it is so useful, why didn’t it evolve in other animals? This groundbreaking account of the evolution of reason by two renowned cognitive scientists seeks to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue, helps us justify our beliefs, convince others, and evaluate arguments. It makes it easier to cooperate and communicate and to live together in groups. Provocative, entertaining, and undeniably relevant, The Enigma of Reason will make many reasonable people rethink their beliefs. “Reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant...Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way?...Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber [argue that] reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems...[but] to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker “Turns reason’s weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well.” —Financial Times “The best thing I have read about human reasoning. It is extremely well written, interesting, and very enjoyable to read.” —Gilbert Harman, Princeton University

Nature as Reason

Nature as Reason PDF

Author: Jean Porter

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 9780802849069

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This noteworthy book develops a new theory of the natural law that takes its orientation from the account of the natural law developed by Thomas Aquinas, as interpreted and supplemented in the context of scholastic theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Though this history might seem irrelevant to twenty-first-century life, Jean Porter shows that the scholastic approach to the natural law still has much to contribute to the contemporary discussion of Christian ethics. Aquinas and his interlocutors provide a way of thinking about the natural law that is distinctively theological while at the same time remaining open to other intellectual perspectives, including those of science. In the course of her work, Porter examines the scholastics' assumptions and beliefs about nature, Aquinas's account of happiness, and the overarching claim that reason can generate moral norms. Ultimately, Porter argues that a Thomistic theory of the natural law is well suited to provide a starting point for developing a more nuanced account of the relationship between specific beliefs and practices. While Aquinas's approach to the natural law may not provide a system of ethical norms that is both universally compelling and detailed enough to be practical, it does offer something that is arguably more valuable -- namely, a way of reflecting theologically on the phenomenon of human morality.

Nature, Reason, and the Good Life

Nature, Reason, and the Good Life PDF

Author: Roger Teichmann

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780198708971

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At the centre of our ethical thought stands the human being. Roger Teichmann examines the ways in which facts about human nature determine the shape of ethical concepts such as rationality, virtue, and happiness.

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