This long-awaited book sets out the implications of Habermas's theory of communicative action for moral theory. "Discourse ethics" attempts to reconstruct a moral point of view from which normative claims can be impartially judged. The theory of justice it develops replaces Kant's categorical imperative with a procedure of justification based on reasoned agreement among participants in practical discourse.Habermas connects communicative ethics to the theory of social action via an examination of research in the social psychology of moral and interpersonal development. (...) He aims to show that our basic moral intuitions spring from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition, namely from normative presuppositions of social interaction that belong to the repertoire of competent agents in any society. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. (shrink)

One of the major works of an important modem philosopher, Matter and Memory investigates the autonomous yet interconnected planes formed by matter and perception on the one hand and memory and time on the other. Henry Bergson (1859-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927. His works include Time and Free Will, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Creative Evolution, and The Creative Mind.

Much as we would like to conceive empirical thought as rationally grounded in experience, pitfalls await anyone who tries to articulate this position, and ...

Aspects of the world are normative in as much as they or their existence constitute reasons for persons, i.e. grounds which make certain beliefs, moods, emotions, intentions or actions appropriate or inappropriate. Our capacities to perceive and understand how things are, and what response is appropriate to them, and our ability to respond appropriately, make us into persons, i.e. creatures with the ability to direct their own life in accordance with their appreciation of themselves and their environment, and of the (...) reasons with which, given how they are, the world presents them. An explanation of normativity would explain the various puzzling aspects of this complex phenomenon. In particular it would explain how it is that aspects of the world can constitute reasons for cognitive, emotive, and volitional responses; how it is that we can come to realise that certain cognitive, emotional or volitional responses are appropriate in various circumstances, and inappropriate in others; and how it is that we can respond appropriately. This paper explores an aspect of the last of these questions. (shrink)

These works, as the sub-title makes clear, are unfinished sketches for Philosophical Investigations, possibly the most important and influential philosophical ...

Action theory has given rise to some perplexing puzzles in the past half century. The most prominent one can be summarized as follows: What distinguishes intentional from unintentional acts? Thanks to the ingenuity of philosophers and their thought experiments, we know better than to assume that the difference lies in the mere presence of an intention, or in its causal efficacy in generating the action. The intention might be present and may also cause the intended behavior, yet the behavior may (...) not be an intentional action; it may not be an action at all. The classic example is that of the nervous nephew who intends to kill his uncle to inherit his estate, and whose intention makes him so nervous as to drive recklessly, thereby running over a pedestrian... who happens to be his very uncle. The intention to kill is present and it causes the killing, yet the killing is not an intentional action. Rather, what appears to distinguish intentional from non-intentional action is voluntary control of the proper sort, and what distinguishes action from non-action is behavior caused in a particular manner. But spelling out the sort and specifying the manner have proven vexing tasks. (shrink)

Some fundamental epistemic norms govern the conduct of the activity of inquiry and the progress of theoretical deliberation. We monitor our deliberations by raising questions about how they should be conducted and about how effectively they have been carried out. Such questions ‘occur’ to us: we are often passive recipients of them. The paper discusses what determines when questions should occur to us and it investigates how far these observations can be seen as threatening our freedom of mind. These phenomena (...) help us to see the role of states such as virtues in epistemic evaluation. (shrink)