The Authority of Reason
The Authority of Reason
$64.00
USDThis challenging and provocative book argues against much contemporary orthodoxy in philosophy and the social sciences by showing why objectivity in the domain of ethics is really no different from the objectivity of scientific knowledge. Many philosophers and social scientists have challenged the idea that we act for objectively authoritative reasons. Jean Hampton takes up the challenge by undermining two central assumptions of this contemporary orthodoxy: that one can understand instrumental reasons without appeal to objective authority, and that the adoption of the scientific world view requires no such appeal. In the course of the book Jean Hampton examines moral realism, the general nature of reason and norms, internalism and externalism, instrumental reasoning, and the expected utility model of practical reasoning. The book is sure to prove to be a seminal work in the theory of rationality that will be read by a broad swathe of philosophers and social scientists.
- Major book on the theory of rationality that will interest philosophers, economists, psychologists, legal theorists
- Jean Hampton (now deceased) was an internationally respected philosopher and very well-known all over the world
- Author of Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge 1988)
Reviews & endorsements
"Hampton had a sharp eye for the hidden thread that, once tugged, unravels entire philosophical tapestries. She is in one sense a good ally of expressivism, for she reserves especial scorn for various varieties of naturalism that purport to defend or explain objective authority. As she was well aware, her insistence on its mysterious nature is calculated to discompose some of its more complacent friends. Nevertheless, the best chapters here show a crispness and a focus that demand attention from everyone interested in the phenomena of human reason." Ethics
Product details
February 1998Paperback
9780521556149
324 pages
228 × 152 × 21 mm
0.48kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I. Science and Objective Norms:
- 1. Naturalism and moral reasons
- 2. The anatomy of a reason
- 3. Reasons' authority
- Part II. Instrumental Reason:
- 4. Instrumental Reason
- 5. Why instrumental reasoning isn't instrumental
- 6. Instrumental reasoning and the methodology of science
- Part III. Reasons and Reasoning:
- 7. Expected utility theory and instrumental reasoning
- 8. Expected utility theory and consequentialism
- 9. Toward a 'post-naturalist' theory of reasons.
