Rationality Through Reasoning answers the question of how people are motivated to do what they believe they ought to do, built on a comprehensive account of normativity, rationality and reasoning that differs significantly from much existing philosophical thinking. Develops an original account of normativity, rationality and reasoning significantly different from the majority of existing philosophical thought Includes an account of theoretical and practical reasoning that explains how reasoning is something we ourselves do, rather than something that happens in us Gives an account of what reasons are and argues that the connection between rationality and reasons is much less close than many philosophers have thought Contains rigorous new accounts of oughts including owned oughts, agent-relative reasons, the logic of requirements, instrumental rationality, the role of normativity in reasoning, following a rule, the correctness of reasoning, the connections between intentions and beliefs, and much else. Offers a new answer to the ‘motivation question’ of how a normative belief motivates an action.

Rationality Through Reasoning answers the question of how people are motivated to do what they believe they ought to do, built on a comprehensive account of normativity, rationality and reasoning that differs significantly from much existing philosophical thinking. Develops an original account of normativity, rationality and reasoning significantly different from the majority of existing philosophical thought Includes an account of theoretical and practical reasoning that explains how reasoning is something we ourselves do, rather than something that happens in us Gives an account of what reasons are and argues that the connection between rationality and reasons is much less close than many philosophers have thought Contains rigorous new accounts of oughts including owned oughts, agent-relative reasons, the logic of requirements, instrumental rationality, the role of normativity in reasoning, following a rule, the correctness of reasoning, the connections between intentions and beliefs, and much else. Offers a new answer to the ‘motivation question’ of how a normative belief motivates an action.

This book addresses an apparent paradox in the psychology of thinking. On the one hand, human beings are a highly successful species. On the other, intelligent adults are known to exhibit numerous errors and biases in laboratory studies of reasoning and decision making. There has been much debate among both philosophers and psychologists about the implications of such studies for human rationality. The authors argue that this debate is marked by a confusion between two distinct notions: (a) personal rationality (rationality1 Evans and Over argue that people have a high degree of rationality1 but only a limited capacity for rationality2. The book re-interprets the psychological literature on reasoning and decision making, showing that many normative errors, by abstract standards, reflect the operation of processes that would normally help to achieve ordinary goals. Topics discussed include relevance effects in reasoning and decision making, the influence of prior beliefs on thinking, and the argument that apparently non-logical reasoning can reflect efficient decision making. The authors also discuss the problem of deductive competence - whether people have it, and what mechanism can account for it. As the book progresses, increasing emphasis is given to the authors' dual process theory of thinking, in which a distinction between tacit and explicit cognitive systems is developed. It is argued that much of human capacity for rationality1 is invested in tacit cognitive processes, which reflect both innate mechanisms and biologically constrained learning. However, the authors go on to argue that human beings also possess an explicit thinking system, which underlies their unique - if limited - capacity to be rational.

This volume is a selection of Broome's recent papers on normativity, rationality, and reasoning. It covers a variety of topics such as the meanings of 'ought', 'reason', and 'reasons'; the fundamental structure of normativity and the metaphysical priority of ought over reasons; the ownership - or agent-relativity - of oughts and reasons; the distinction between rationality and normativity; the notion of rational motivation; what characterizes the human activity of reasoning, and what is the role of normativity within it; the nature of preferences and of reasoning with preferences; and others. These papers extend the work presented in his book Rationality Through Reasoning but there is little overlap between their content and the book's. They develop further some themes and arguments from the book, and answer some questions that the book left unanswered.

Reason and rationality represent crucial elements of the self-image of human beings and have unquestionably been among the most debated issues in Western philosophy, dating from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, and to the present day. Many words and thoughts have already been spent trying to define the nature and standards of reason and rationality, what they could or ought to be, and under what conditions something can be said to be rational. This volume focuses instead on the relationships of reason and rationality to some relevant specific topics, i.e., science, knowledge, gender, politics, ethics, religion, aesthetics, language, logic, and metaphysics, trying to uncover and clarify both the connections and differences in their various characterisations and uses.

"This book examines the issue of rational cooperation, especially cooperation between people with conflicting moral commitments. The first part considers how the two main aspects of cooperation - the choice by a group of a particular cooperative scheme and the decision by each member to contribute to that scheme - can be understood as guided by reason. The second part explores how the activity of reasoning itself can take a cooperative form. The book is distinctive in offering an account of what people can accomplish by reasoning together, of the role of deliberation in democratic decision making, and of the negotiation of the proper use of concepts. Presenting for the first time a detailed analysis of the general problem of cooperation and collective reasoning between people with different moral commitments, this book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences and to students in political science, sociology and economics." --Cambridge Press.

Fifteen essays offer a comprehensive evaluation of Broome's philosophical works over the past thirty years. The first part focuses on Broome's work on the theory of value; the second part on his work on practical and theoretical reasoning, which culminated in his rationality through reasoning.

An argument that logic is intrinsically psychological and human psychology is intrinsically logical, and that the connection between human rationality and logic is both constitutive and mutual. In Rationality and Logic, Robert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals (including humans) and that rational animals are essentially logical animals. In order to do so, he defends the broadly Kantian thesis that all (and only) rational animals possess an innate cognitive "logic faculty." Hanna's claims challenge the conventional philosophical wisdom that sees logic as a fully formal or "topic-neutral" science irreconcilably separate from the species- or individual-specific focus of empirical psychology.Logic and psychology went their separate ways after attacks by Frege and Husserl on logical psychologism—the explanatory reduction of logic to empirical psychology. Hanna argues, however, that—despite the fact that logical psychologism is false—there is an essential link between logic and psychology. Rational human animals constitute the basic class of cognizers or thinkers studied by cognitive psychology; given the connection between rationality and logic that Hanna claims, it follows that the nature of logic is significantly revealed to us by cognitive psychology. Hanna's proposed "logical cognitivism" has two important consequences: the recognition by logically oriented philosophers that psychologists are their colleagues in the metadiscipline of cognitive science; and radical changes in cognitive science itself. Cognitive science, Hanna argues, is not at bottom a natural science; it is both an objective or truth-oriented science and a normative human science, as is logic itself.

While common sense and rationality have often been viewed as two distinct features in a unified cognitive map, this volume engages with this notion and comes up with novel and often paradoxical views of this relationship.

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media—books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television—while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory.