Norms Of Nature

Norms Of Nature Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Norms Of Nature book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

Norms of Nature

Author : Paul Sheldon Davies
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2003-01-24
Category : Science
ISBN : 0262262371

Get Book

Norms of Nature by Paul Sheldon Davies Pdf

The components of living systems strike us as functional-as for the sake of certain ends—and as endowed with specific norms of performance. The mammalian eye, for example, has the function of perceiving and processing light, and possession of this property tempts us to claim that token eyes are supposed to perceive and process light. That is, we tend to evaluate the performance of token eyes against the norm described in the attributed functional property. Hence the norms of nature. What, then, are the norms of nature? Whence do they arise? Out of what natural properties or relations are they constituted? In Norms of Nature, Paul Sheldon Davies argues against the prevailing view that natural norms are constituted out of some form of historical success—usually success in natural selection. He defends the view that functions are nothing more than effects that contribute to the exercise of some more general systemic capacity. Natural functions exist insofar as the components of natural systems contribute to the exercise of systemic capacities. This is so irrespective of the system's history. Even if the mammalian eye had never been selected for, it would have the function of perceiving and processing light, because those are the effects that contribute to the exercise of the visual system. The systemic approach to conceptualizing natural norms, claims Davies, is superior to the historical approach in several important ways. Especially significant is that it helps us understand how the attribution of functions within the life sciences coheres with the methods and ontology of the natural sciences generally.

The Norms of Nature

Author : Malcolm Schofield,Gisela Striker
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2007-08-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521039886

Get Book

The Norms of Nature by Malcolm Schofield,Gisela Striker Pdf

Can moral philosophy alter our moral beliefs or our emotions? Does moral scepticism mean making up our own values, or does it leave us without moral commitments at all? Is it possible to find a basis for ethics in human nature? These are some of the main questions explored in this volume, which is devoted to the ethics of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Some of the leading scholars in the field have here taken a look at the bases of the Stoics' and Epicureans' thinking about what the Greeks took to be the central questions of philosophy. Their essays, which originated in a conference held at Bad Homburg in 1983, the third in a series of conferences on Hellenistic philosophy, propose important interpretations of the texts, and pose some fascinating problems about the different roles of argument and reason in ancient and modern moral philosophy. This book will be of interest to moral philosophers and to scholars of Greek philosophy too.

Teleology and the Norms of Nature

Author : William J. FitzPatrick
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2017-09-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781136712678

Get Book

Teleology and the Norms of Nature by William J. FitzPatrick Pdf

This work is an examination of teleological attributions i.e. ascriptions of proper functions and natural ends) to the features and behavior of living things with a view to understanding their application to human life.

Against Nature

Author : Lorraine Daston
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 88 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2019-05-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780262353816

Get Book

Against Nature by Lorraine Daston Pdf

A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders. Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the “is” of natural orders with the “ought” of moral orders. In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition—specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws—and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.

Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy

Author : Martin Lenz,Anik Waldow
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-13
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789400762411

Get Book

Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy by Martin Lenz,Anik Waldow Pdf

Normativity has long been conceived as more properly pertaining to the domain of thought than to the domain of nature. This conception goes back to Kant and still figures prominently in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and ethics. By offering a collection of new essays by leading scholars in early modern philosophy and specialists in contemporary philosophy, this volume goes beyond the point where nature and normativity came apart, and challenges the well-established opposition between these all too neatly separated realms. It examines how the mind’s embeddedness in nature can be conceived as a starting point for uncovering the links between naturally and conventionally determined standards governing an agent’s epistemic and moral engagement with the world. The original essays are grouped in two parts. The first part focuses on specific aspects of theories of perception, thought formation and judgment. It gestures towards an account of normativity that regards linguistic conventions and natural constraints as jointly setting the scene for the mind’s ability to conceptualise its experiences. The second part of the book asks what the norms of desirable epistemic and moral practices are. Key to this approach is an examination of human beings as parts of nature, who act as natural causes and are determined by their sensibilities and sentiments. Each part concludes with a chapter that integrates features of the historical debate into the contemporary context.​

Blame

Author : D. Justin Coates,Neal A. Tognazzini
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2013-01-31
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199860821

Get Book

Blame by D. Justin Coates,Neal A. Tognazzini Pdf

What is it to blame someone, and when are would-be blamers in a position to do so? What function does blame serve in our lives, and is it a valuable way of relating to one another? The essays in this volume explore answers to these and related questions.

The Grammar of Society

Author : Cristina Bicchieri
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2005-12-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1139447149

Get Book

The Grammar of Society by Cristina Bicchieri Pdf

In The Grammar of Society, first published in 2006, Cristina Bicchieri examines social norms, such as fairness, cooperation, and reciprocity, in an effort to understand their nature and dynamics, the expectations that they generate, and how they evolve and change. Drawing on several intellectual traditions and methods, including those of social psychology, experimental economics and evolutionary game theory, Bicchieri provides an integrated account of how social norms emerge, why and when we follow them, and the situations where we are most likely to focus on relevant norms. Examining the existence and survival of inefficient norms, she demonstrates how norms evolve in ways that depend upon the psychological dispositions of the individual and how such dispositions may impair social efficiency. By contrast, she also shows how certain psychological propensities may naturally lead individuals to evolve fairness norms that closely resemble those we follow in most modern societies.

The Social Creation of Nature

Author : Lorne Leslie Neil Evernden
Publisher : Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 1992-10
Category : Science
ISBN : UOM:39076001352579

Get Book

The Social Creation of Nature by Lorne Leslie Neil Evernden Pdf

The book traces the evolution of the concept of "nature" over the past five centuries. In exploring the consequences of conventional understandings, it also seeks a way around the limitations of a socially created nature, in order to defend what is actually imperiled - "wildness".

The Trouble with Nature

Author : Roger N. Lancaster
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2003-05
Category : History
ISBN : 0520236203

Get Book

The Trouble with Nature by Roger N. Lancaster Pdf

Lancaster provides the disproof of evolutionary stories about men, women, and the nature of desire of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene.

In Defense of an Evolutionary Concept of Health

Author : Mahesh Ananth
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 075465852X

Get Book

In Defense of an Evolutionary Concept of Health by Mahesh Ananth Pdf

One of the most controversial contemporary debates on the concept of health is the clash between the views of naturalists and normativists. Naturalists argue that, although health can be valued or disvalued, the concept of health is itself objective and value-free. In contrast, normativists argue that health is a contextual and value-laden concept, and that there is no possibility of a value-free understanding of health. This debate has fueled many of the, often very acrimonious, disputations arising from the claims of health, disease and disability activists and charities and the public policy responses to them.In responding to this debate, Ananth both surveys the existing literature, with special focus on the work of Christopher Boorse, and argues that a naturalistic concept of health, drawing on evolutionary considerations associated with biological function, homeostasis, and species-design, is defensible without jettisoning norms in their entirety.

Explaining Norms

Author : Geoffrey Brennan,Lina Eriksson,Robert E. Goodin,Nicholas Southwood
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 301 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2013-09-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199654680

Get Book

Explaining Norms by Geoffrey Brennan,Lina Eriksson,Robert E. Goodin,Nicholas Southwood Pdf

This book presents the concept of norms by four different philosophers. They discuss how norms emerge, persist, change, and how they serve to explain what we do.

From Nature to Norm

Author : John Post
Publisher : Booksurge Publishing
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2008-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1419698419

Get Book

From Nature to Norm by John Post Pdf

A meticulously scripted and thoughtfully considered monograph about the abyss between morality and biology, From Nature to Norm: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Morals proves as inventive as it is original. It combines the highest degree of originality with careful attention to potential objections, all in accord with Stravinsky's rule: To enjoy to the full the conquests of daring, we must demand that it operate in a pitiless light. Author and philosopher John F. Post explains how what seems an impossibility often proves to be a failure of the imagination. With wit and candor, he urges his readers to recall Stravinsky's rule and to ponder the relationships between the moral and biological dimensions of humankind. His is a dialogue to forge a path between the moral and the biological by way of forming a synthesis of these two crucial elements of human being.

Rule of Law for Nature

Author : Christina Voigt
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2013-11-21
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781107513211

Get Book

Rule of Law for Nature by Christina Voigt Pdf

'Human laws must be reformulated to keep human activities in harmony with the unchanging and universal laws of nature.' This 1987 statement by the World Commission on Environment and Development has never been more relevant and urgent than it is today. Despite the many legal responses to various environmental problems, more greenhouse gases than ever before are being released into the atmosphere, biological diversity is rapidly declining and fish stocks in the oceans are dwindling. This book challenges the doctrinal construction of environmental law and presents an innovative legal approach to ecological sustainability: a rule of law for nature which guides and transcends ordinary written laws and extends fundamental principles of respect, integrity and legal security to the non-human world.

Understanding Corruption and Social Norms: A Case Study in Natural Resource Management

Author : Richard Nash,Cheyanne Sharbatke-Church,Zita Toribio,Peter Woodrow,Derick W. Brinkerhoff
Publisher : RTI Press
Page : 22 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2023-09-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

Get Book

Understanding Corruption and Social Norms: A Case Study in Natural Resource Management by Richard Nash,Cheyanne Sharbatke-Church,Zita Toribio,Peter Woodrow,Derick W. Brinkerhoff Pdf

Corruption undermines many outcomes across development sectors, yet little is known about how social norms drive corruption or undermine anticorruption efforts in sector work. The conservation sector is no exception. The current study examined corruption and social norms related to infrastructure investments and site planning decisions and their subsequent effect on conservation outcomes. The study focused on the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, one of four protected areas under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Sustainable Interventions for Biodiversity, Oceans and Landscapes (SIBOL) project in the Philippines, implemented by RTI International. Based on a site visit, key informant interviews, and extensive document analysis, our findings elucidate a unique governance structure that enabled project partners to navigate the significant corruption risks present. Direct social norms were not found to be driving corrupt decision making. However, indirect norms played a role by dictating inaction or silence—powerful behaviors—in the face of abuse of entrusted power for personal gain. Our analysis highlights the challenges and importance of having practitioners clearly define and understand what they mean by “corruption” as well as the importance of undertaking a systems analysis that incorporates the influence of social norms on behaviors within that system.

Norms, Values, and Society

Author : Herlinde Pauer-Studer
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2013-06-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789401724548

Get Book

Norms, Values, and Society by Herlinde Pauer-Studer Pdf

Norms, Values, and Society is the second Yearbook of the Vienna Circle Institute, which was founded in October 1991. The main part of the book contains original contributions to an international symposium the Institute held in October 1993 on ethics and social philosophy. The papers deal among others with questions of justice, equality, just social institutions, human rights, the connections between rationality and morality and the methodological problems of applied ethics. The Documentation section contains previously unpublished papers by Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Charles W. Morris and Edgar Zilsel, and the review section presents new publications on the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle Institute is devoted to the critical advancement of science and philosophy in the broad tradition of the Vienna Circle, as well as to the focusing of cross-disciplinary interest on the history and philosophy of science in a social context. The Institute's Yearbooks will, for the most part, document its activities and provide a forum for the discussion of exact philosophy, logical and empirical investigations, and analysis of language.