What is the relation between a reason and an action when the reason explains the action by giving the agent's reason for doing what he did? We may call such explanations rationalizations, and say that the reason rationalizes the action. In this paper I want to defend the ancient - and common-sense - position that rationalization is a species of ordinary causal explanation. The defense no doubt requires some redeployment, but not more or less complete abandonment of the position, as (...) urged by many recent writers. (shrink)

Editorial preface to the fourth edition and modified translation -- The text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen -- Philosophische untersuchungen = Philosophical investigations -- Philosophie der psychologie, ein fragment = Philosophy of psychology, a fragment.

In this important new work, Haack develops an original theory of empirical evidence or justification, and argues its appropriateness to the goals of inquiry. In so doing, Haack provides detailed critical case studies of Lewis's foundationalism; Davidson's and Bonjour's coherentism; Popper's 'epistemology without a knowing subject'; Quine's naturalism; Goldman's reliabilism; and Rorty's, Stich's, and the Churchlands' recent obituaries of epistemology.

Such a conception, says Dummett, will form "a base camp for an assault on the metaphysical peaks: I have no greater ambition in this book than to set up a base ...

Philosophers of mind have long been interested in the relation between two ideas: that causality plays an essential role in our understanding of the mental; and that we can gain an understanding of belief and desire by considering the ascription of attitudes to people on the basis of what they say and do. Many have thought that those ideas are incompatible. William Child argues that there is in fact no tension between them, and that we should accept both. He shows (...) how we can have a causal understanding of the mental without having to see attitudes and experiences as internal, causally interacting entities and he defends this view against influential objections. The book offers detailed discussions of many of Donald Davidson's contributions to the philosophy of mind, and also considers the work of Dennett, Anscombe, McDowell, and Rorty, among others. Issues discussed include: the nature of intentional phenomena; causal explanation; the character of visual experience; psychological explanation; and the causal relevance of mental properties. (shrink)

Physics tells us what is objectively there. It has no place for the colours of things. So colours are not objectively there. Hence, if there is such a thing at all, colour is mind-dependent. This argument forms the background to disputes over whether common sense makes a mistake about colours. It is assumed that..

The problem with which I wish to deal in this paper is the problem of singular reasons in the humanities, whether they exist, or rather, whether they can exist: for it would seem that the word “reason” carried with it some idea of generality, so that the phrase “singular reason” was a contradiction in terms, a specification which could never be fulfilled. But humanists are always sensing the singularity of their studies: and the philosopher wondering about the nature of humane (...) thinking either must conclude that it is really only inadequate science, its singularity being the mark of the fact that we never really have an adequate basis for any of our generalizations, an unfortunate reminder that the whole structure is built on the shakiest of inductive foundations; or , if he is unwilling to allow that humanists are just bad, or at least amateur, scientists, he is tempted to vindicate the rationality of their reasoning by inventing a special faculty of particular ratiocination which is able to perceive particular truths—the intuition of the moralists or the insight of the Collingwoodian mode. (shrink)

Concern about two problems runs through the work of davidson: the problem of accounting for the "explanatory force" of rational explanations, and the problem posed for materialism by the apparent anomalousness of psychological events. davidson believes that his view of mental causation, imbedded in his theory of "anomalous monism," can provide satisfactory answers to both questions. however, it is argued in this paper that davidson's program contains a fundamental inconsistency; that his metaphysics, while grounding the doctrine of anomalous monism, makes (...) impossible a successful response to the problem of explanatory force in terms of a causal theory of action. (shrink)