Within Reason

Author : Susan Wolf
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1993-10-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780195358971

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Freedom within Reason by Susan Wolf Pdf

Philosophers typically see the issue of free will and determinism in terms of a debate between two standard positions. Incompatibilism holds that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature. According to compatibilism, people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a path between these traditional positions: We are not free and responsible, she argues, for actions that are governed by desires that we cannot help having. But the wish to form our own desires from nothing is both futile and arbitrary. Some of the forces beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it: they endow us with faculties of reason, perception, and imagination, and provide us with the data by which we come to see and appreciate the world for what it is. The independence we want, Wolf argues, is not independence from the world, but independence from forces that prevent or preclude us from choosing how to live in light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. The freedom we want is a freedom within reason and the world.

Author : Donald Calne
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2010-02-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780307493309

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Within Reason by Donald Calne Pdf

It has long been a central conviction of western humanistic thought that reason is the most godlike of human traits, and that it makes us unique among animals. Yet if reason directs what we do, why is human behavior so often violent, irrational and disastrous? In Within Reason, leading neurologist Donald B. Calne investigates the phenomenon of rationality from an astonishingly wide array of scientific, sociological, and philosophical perspectives--and shows that although reason evolved as a crucial tool for human survival, it is an aspect of mind and brain which has no inherent moral or spiritual qualities and one whose relationship to our thoughts and actions may not be as central as we want to believe. Learned, lucid, and always illuminating, Within Reason brings together the latest developments in the science of mind with some of the most enduring questions of Western thought.

Author : George E. Marcus
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 462 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 1999-02-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0226504581

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Paranoia Within Reason by George E. Marcus Pdf

This text examines conspiracy theories and tackles paranoia as a style of debate within science, psychotherapy, and popular entertainment. A conspiracy theory emerges as a way to address the inadequacies of rational expertise and organization in the face of the changes that undermine them

Author : Steven M. Cahn
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 121 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2017-03-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780231543668

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Religion Within Reason by Steven M. Cahn Pdf

In the views of most believers and critics, religion is essentially connected to the existence of a supernatural deity. If supernaturalism is not reasonable, the argument goes, religion cannot be reasonable—or if supernaturalism is reasonable, religion must be as well. Are faith and reason, religion and science, doomed to a constant struggle for the heart of humanity? Steven M. Cahn believes that they are not, that even if God exists, religion may not be justified and that even if religion is justified, belief in God may not be. In Religion Within Reason, Cahn argues that the common understanding of the relationship between religion and supernaturalism is flawed and that while supernaturalism is not reasonable, religious commitment may well be. Writing not as a theist but as one who finds much to admire in a religious life, he examines faith and reason, miracles, heaven and hell, religious diversity, and the problem of evil, using a variety of examples taken from religious thought, literature, and popular culture. Lucidly written in a nonpolemical spirit, Religion Within Reason offers an exciting new approach to the reconciliation of science and religion.

Author : Martin Hollis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 1998-03-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 052158681X

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Trust Within Reason by Martin Hollis Pdf

Does trust grow fragile when people are too rational or when they are not rational enough? Both thoughts are plausible. Which is right depends on how we define "reason." Martin Hollis' elegant and distinctive study argues for an interpretation of "reason" as putting the common good before one's own. This offers a universal reciprocity to people who then choose what reason shall mean for them.

Author : Herbert McCabe
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2007-10-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781441191878

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Faith Within Reason by Herbert McCabe Pdf

Is it possible to think about religious beliefs philosophically? Should religious beliefs be viewed as a flight from reason or as capable of rational support? Can theologians learn from philosophers? Can philosophers learn from theologians? Is it possible to be both a good Christian and a good thinker? Can there be such a thing as reasonable faith? This book is chiefly concerned with these questions and others related to them. A collection of previously unpublished papers written by the late Herbert McCabe O.P., it examines the nature of religious belief, especially belief in God, with an eye on both theological and philosophical arguments. Some thinkers have sought to drive a wedge between philosophy and theology. Like Thomas Aquinas, whose writings he especially admired, McCabe seeks to show how the two can be systematically connected. Some religious truths, he argues, may defy our understanding. But this does not mean that they cannot be reasonably discussed.

Author : Sandro Galea
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : COVID-19 (Disease)
ISBN : 9780226822914

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Within Reason by Sandro Galea Pdf

"The COVID-19 response was a collision of politics and public health-a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As public-health expertise became a tool for serving political ends, it did more than just prolong a crisis; it left the public-health establishment, like the country, mired in polarization. It was, Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the spirit of enlightenment and its reliance on evidence-informed reason above all else. In Within Reason, Galea offers a critical appraisal of public health's capture by the lesser angels of today's society. Across 50 spirited essays, he shows that this is a story much larger than COVID or Trump. The diminishing of US public health is symptomatic of the same insidious social trends that were accelerated under COVID and now pervade the administration of public good everywhere: an intolerance for incrementalism, an intolerance of tradeoffs, an expectation of absolutism and moral purity. Galea challenges this recent intellectual drift while articulating how it has undermined much of the progress of earlier eras. With his trademark incision, he makes a case for a return to critical, unbeholden inquiry as a guiding principle for the future we want-and will have to work in order to achieve"--

Author : Rene Ramirez
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 133 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2012-02-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781465358233

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Within Reason by Rene Ramirez Pdf

We live in a complex world that can at times frustrate our attempts to understand it. To cope with such an environment human beings must be able to reason clearly, methodically, subtly, comprehensively – in a word, skillfully. Although this ability depends to a certain extent on one’s innate intellectual endowment, much of it is due to learning and habit. One’s education, beginning in the home and continuing thereafter in school, plays an important role in how well we contend with the flood of natural and man-made information that daily washes over us. The university bears a particular responsibility for educating reason, that is, transmitting to students a set of thinking skills and content that will help them make their way, not just in the tumultuous present, but also in any alternative future they are likely to face. We will argue that, in order to carry out this responsibility, higher education must first acknowledge that its task is not simply to transmit a curriculum that enables the student to be technically proficient, that is, to apply skills competently and reliably. Education, properly so called, demands more than this. It requires that students develop a wealth of epistemic virtues: internal, deeply-grounded, acquired intellectual excellences which motivate and direct one’s use of the cognitive skills in such a way as to promote a life worth living. In order to address this theme we will examine a range of benefits and challenges associated with learning and teaching cognitive skills at the college level. Specifically, we will look at deduction and some of its multiple articulations with other intellectual skills. These benefits and challenges will be organized according to the following categories: (1) logical issues having to do with deduction itself; (2) linguistic concerns related to translation from natural language into the formal language of modern logic; (3) certain matters associated with other cognitive skills which bear an important functional relationship to deduction, such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation; and (4) an account of the epistemic virtues, including the fundamental role they play in the exercise of the skills and their importance in the development of the cognitive agent.

Author : George E. Marcus
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 460 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1999-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0226504573

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Paranoia Within Reason by George E. Marcus Pdf

This text examines conspiracy theories and tackles paranoia as a style of debate within science, psychotherapy, and popular entertainment. A conspiracy theory emerges as a way to address the inadequacies of rational expertise and organization in the face of the changes that undermine them

Author : Herbert McCabe
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2007-03-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780826495471

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Faith Within Reason by Herbert McCabe Pdf

Is it possible to think about religious beliefs philosophically? Can theologians learn from philosophers? Can philosophers learn from theologians? Is it possible to be both a good Christian and a good thinker? This book examines the nature of religious belief, especially belief in God, with an eye on both theological and philosophical arguments.

Author : James G. Dwyer
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2018-10-18
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781501723841

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Vouchers within Reason by James G. Dwyer Pdf

Observing the storm of recent debates around school vouchers, James G. Dwyer concludes that the welfare of children has been routinely subordinated to the interests and supposed rights of various groups of adults—parents, teachers, taxpayers, and advocates for ideological causes. Dwyer argues that a truly child-centered approach to education reform would yield dramatically different conclusions regarding the morality and constitutionality of government initiatives to improve public and private schooling in America.Dwyer makes the case that state funding of religious and other private schools is not only permissible, but mandatory, as a moral and constitutional right of the children already in private schools. In Vouchers within Reason, he also demonstrates the necessity of attaching to that funding robust standards for the content and nature of instruction and for treatment of students. These are just the sort of regulatory strings that most current supporters of vouchers fear.In the author's view, vouchers represent an opportunity for states to accomplish what they have been unable to do in the past—namely, to bring academic accountability to religious schools, many of which fail to provide a good secular education. He sees voucher programs that are now in place as morally irresponsible and clearly unconstitutional, however, because they require almost nothing of recipient schools in return for the funding. This book reorients the hot topic of universal school vouchers in a new and vital direction that may change the minds of scholars, educators, and policymakers alike.

Author : Miguel Angel Centeno
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 309 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780271045825

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Democracy Within Reason by Miguel Angel Centeno Pdf

Author : Mike Sacks
Publisher : Tin House Books
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2011-03-01
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9781935639039

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Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason by Mike Sacks Pdf

Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason collects Mike Sacks's unique humor pieces--craigslist ads, lesser-known tantric positions, letters to famous authors, lists, jokes, and the occasional illustration--into one handsome volume. Ever accidentally sent a mass e-mail to your office describing your Not Safe-For-Work fantasy kingdom? Or been confused about the ground rules at a cuddle party? Looking to rent an overpriced room in the Hamptons from a co-dependent sociopath with a checkered past (and a hot tub)? Good. Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason collects Mike Sacks’s unique humor pieces—Craigslist ads, lesser-known tantric positions, letters to famous authors, Shaft living in the suburbs, a classic-rock DJ suffering a nervous breakdown, the occasional list—into one handsome, convenient volume. Originally published in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and McSweeney’s, among other venerable publications, Sacks’s writing is original and sharp, yet broadly funny. Whether it’s a groom tweeting his wedding and honeymoon in real time, or a publisher offering editorial suggestions for The Diary of Anne Frank, Sacks’s work tangles contemporary social satire with his absurdist sensibilities.

Author : Jaume Navarro
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2016-04-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781317059103

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Science and Faith within Reason by Jaume Navarro Pdf

Scientists, historians, philosophers and theologians often engage in debates on the limitations and mutual interactions of their respective fields of study. Serious discussions are often overshadowed by the mass-produced popular and semi-popular literature on science and religion, as well as by the political agendas of many of the actors in these debates. For some, reducing religion and science to forms of social discourse is a possible way out from epistemological overlapping between them; yet is there room for religious faith only when science dissolves into one form of social discourse? The religion thus rescued would have neither rational legitimisation nor metaphysical validity, but if both scientific and religious theories try to make absolute claims on all possible aspects of reality then conflict between them seems almost inevitable. In this book leading authors in the field of science and religion, including William Carroll, Steve Fuller, Karl Giberson and Roger Trigg, highlight the oft-neglected and profound philosophical foundations that underlie some of the most frequent questions at the boundary between science and religion: the reality of knowledge, and the notions of creation, life and design. In tune with Mariano Artigas’s work, the authors emphasise that these are neither religious nor scientific but serious philosophical questions.

Author : Robert H. Frank
Publisher : W. W. Norton
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0393026043

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Passions Within Reason by Robert H. Frank Pdf

In looking at the behavior of the "me-generation" the author acknowledges the occurence of selfless acts and argues that looking out for number one may require looking out for others too