Understanding the Role of Values and Norms in Practical Reasoning

2020 ◽  
pp. 431-439
Author(s):  
Jazon Szabo ◽  
Jose M. Such ◽  
Natalia Criado
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning

The Frame Problem in Ethics

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gałecki
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Frame Problem ◽  
Classical Philosophy ◽  
The Frame Problem ◽  
The Invisible

Although the “frame problem” in philosophy has been raised in the context of the artificial intelligence, it is only an exemplification of broader problem. It seems that contemporary ethical debates are not so much about conclusions, decisions, norms, but rather about what we might call a “frame”. Metaethics has always been the bridge between purely ethical principles (“this is good and it should be done”, “this is wrong and it should be avoided”) and broader (ontological, epistemic, anthropological etc.) assumptions. One of the most interesting meta-ethical debates concerns the “frame problem”: whether the ethical frame is objective and self-evident, or is it objective but not self-evident? In classical philosophy, this problem takes the form of a debate on the first principles: nonprovable but necessary starting points for any practical reasoning. They constitute the invisible but essential frame of every moral judgment, decision and action. The role of philosophy is not only to expose these principles, but also to understand the nature of the moral frame.

scholarly journals Truth in Practical Reason: Practical and Assertoric Truth in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michail Pantoulias ◽  
Vasiliki Vergouli ◽  
Panagiotis Thanassas
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
Practical Syllogism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
De Interpretatione

Truth has always been a controversial subject in Aristotelian scholarship. In most cases, including some well-known passages in the Categories, De Interpretatione and Metaphysics, Aristotle uses the predicate ‘true’ for assertions, although exceptions are many and impossible to ignore. One of the most complicated cases is the concept of practical truth in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics: its entanglement with action and desire raises doubts about the possibility of its inclusion to the propositional model of truth. Nevertheless, in one of the most extensive studies on the subject, C. Olfert has tried to show that this is not only possible but also necessary. In this paper, we explain why trying to fit practical truth into the propositional model comes with insurmount­able problems. In order to overcome these problems, we focus on multiple aspects of practical syllogism and correlate them with Aristo­tle’s account of desire, happiness and the good. Identifying the role of such concepts in the specific steps of practical reasoning, we reach the conclusion that practical truth is best explained as the culmination of a well-executed practical syllogism taken as a whole, which ultimately explains why this type of syllogism demands a different approach and a different kind of truth than the theoretical one.

The Role of Public Practical Reasoning in Good Governance

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Shashi Motilal ◽  
Keya Maitra ◽  
Prakriti Prajapati
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Good Governance

scholarly journals Francisco de Vitoria on Prudence and the Nature of Practical Reasoning

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-60
Author(s):  
Anselm Spindler
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria ◽  
Scientific Framework

Abstract The history of prudence is often depicted as a history of loss. According to one version, the scientification of moral knowledge in medieval philosophy calls into question the role of prudence in moral action (Nussbaum 1978). And while Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) still tries to integrate prudence into a scientific framework of moral knowledge, the Salmantine theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) eventually abandons this approach and excludes prudence from moral knowledge altogether (Fidora 2013). I would like to argue, however, that Vitoria plays a different role in this development: He does not exclude prudence from scientific moral knowledge but gives an integrated account that Aquinas lacks. But this integration comes at a price because he is eventually unable to explain how prudence allows an agent to deal with the problem of contingency in action.

scholarly journals Associative learning and animal cognition

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1603) ◽  
pp. 2733-2742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
Associative Learning ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Associative Processes ◽  
Directed Action ◽  
Processing Architectures ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Component

Associative learning plays a variety of roles in the study of animal cognition from a core theoretical component to a null hypothesis against which the contribution of cognitive processes is assessed. Two developments in contemporary associative learning have enhanced its relevance to animal cognition. The first concerns the role of associatively activated representations, whereas the second is the development of hybrid theories in which learning is determined by prediction errors, both directly and indirectly through associability processes. However, it remains unclear whether these developments allow associative theory to capture the psychological rationality of cognition. I argue that embodying associative processes within specific processing architectures provides mechanisms that can mediate psychological rationality and illustrate such embodiment by discussing the relationship between practical reasoning and the associative-cybernetic model of goal-directed action.

scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Joshua Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The Way

In the introduction the book’s central themes are introduced. Agents are often considered special, in that agents actively do things. Non-agents, by contrast, are zones of mere passivity. The aim of this book is to offer a perspective on agency that allows agency to stand out as special when compared to non-agentive systems. This perspective will be developed by way of interlinked explanations of the basic building blocks of agency, as well as its exemplary instances. Novel accounts of several key phenomena are developed: control over behavior, non-deviant causation, intentional action, skill, and knowledgeable action. Along the way the role of planning, practical reasoning, belief, and knowledge receive thorough discussion.

Aristotle on Practical Truth

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiana Olfert
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
De Anima ◽  
Common View ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Aristotle’s theories of truth, practical reasoning, and action are some of the most influential theories in the history of philosophy. It is surprising, then, that so little attention has been given to his notion of practical truth. In Aristotle on Practical Truth, C. M. M. Olfert gives the first book-length treatment of this notion and the role of truth in our practical lives overall. She offers a novel account of practical truth: it is the truth, in the technical Aristotelian sense of “truth,” about what is good simpliciter (haplôs) for a particular person in her particular situation. Olfert argues that, understood in this way, Aristotle’s notion of practical truth is an attractive idea that illuminates the core of his practical philosophy. But it is also an idea that challenges a common view that in practical reasoning, we aim at action or acting well as our primary goals, not at truth and knowledge. Contrary to this common view, Olfert shows that in dialogues such as Charmides, Protagoras, and Republic, Plato describes practical reasoning as being concerned equally with grasping the truth and with acting well. She argues that Aristotle develops this Platonic picture with the notion of practical truth and with a technical notion of rational action as fitting ourselves to the world. Using key texts from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, as well as De Anima, Metaphysics, De Interpretatione, and Categories, Olfert demonstrates that practical truth deserves to be treated as a central and plausible Aristotelian idea.

NATURE IN ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS AND POLITICS

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kraut
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
Treat All

Aristotle's doctrine that human beings are political animals is, in part, an empirical thesis, and posits an inclination to enter into cooperative relationships, even apart from the instrumental benefits of doing so. Aristotle's insight is that human cooperation rests on a non-rational propensity to trust even strangers, when conditions are favorable. Turning to broader questions about the role of nature in human development, I situate Aristotle's attitude towards our natural propensities between two extremes: he rejects both the view that we must bow to whatever nature dictates, and also the view that nature is generally or always to be suppressed or overcome. This middle position requires that Aristotle hold nature and goodness apart, so that the latter can serve as a standard for evaluating the former. He holds that nature does not treat all human beings alike: just as some are handicapped in their development by a deficiency in their natural abilities or propensities, others are extraordinarily fortunate and have so powerful a disposition to act well that they easily acquire good habits and skills of practical reasoning. Further, he recognizes that sociable inclinations and natural virtues have to compete in the human soul with other natural forces that make ethical life extraordinarily difficult. That is why things so often go so badly for us: we need not only to subdue the external environment, but to overcome certain inner natural obstacles as well. Even so, for Aristotle ethical life is not generally alienated from nature, as it is for other philosophers.

scholarly journals Acting Without Reasons

Disputatio ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (23) ◽  
pp. 229-246
Author(s):  
Josep L. Prades
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Practical Conclusion ◽  
Acting For Reasons

Abstract In this paper, I want to challenge some common assumptions in contemporary theories of practical rationality and intentional action. If I am right, the fact that our intentions can be rationalised is widely misunderstood. Normally, it is taken for granted that the role of rationalisations is to show the reasons that the agent had to make up her mind. I will argue against this. I do not object to the idea that acting intentionally is, at least normally, acting for reasons, but I will propose a teleological reading of the expression ‘for reasons.’ On this reading, it is quite possible to act for reasons without having reasons to act. In a similar way, paradigmatic cases of cogent practical reasoning do not require the transference of justification from the premises to the practical conclusion.

Francisco Suárez S.J. on the End of Peaceful Order among States and Systematic Doctrinal Scholarship

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Schaffner
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
State Action ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Francisco Suarez

This chapter argues that the work of Suárez, like that of other theologians and natural lawyers, offers an insightful (albeit imperfect) articulation of the values of peace and justice which continue to underpin the international legal order. Suárez reminds us that the practical reasoning of all upright statesmen, citizens, and lawyers is guided by the idea of a peaceful and just order among states. Peace and justice are potentialities which individuals and whole nations can establish and preserve, as well as fail to establish or preserve, through their co-ordinated actions. His work remains insightful precisely because most of today’s accounts of international law neglect the role of peace and justice as a starting point of legal reasoning, a goal of state action, and even a source of international law.

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