Norms of Nature - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Norms of Nature write by Paul Sheldon Davies. This book was released on 2003-01-24. Norms of Nature available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The components of living systems strike us as functional-as for the sake of certain ends—and as endowed with specific norms of performance. The mammalian eye, for example, has the function of perceiving and processing light, and possession of this property tempts us to claim that token eyes are supposed to perceive and process light. That is, we tend to evaluate the performance of token eyes against the norm described in the attributed functional property. Hence the norms of nature. What, then, are the norms of nature? Whence do they arise? Out of what natural properties or relations are they constituted? In Norms of Nature, Paul Sheldon Davies argues against the prevailing view that natural norms are constituted out of some form of historical success—usually success in natural selection. He defends the view that functions are nothing more than effects that contribute to the exercise of some more general systemic capacity. Natural functions exist insofar as the components of natural systems contribute to the exercise of systemic capacities. This is so irrespective of the system's history. Even if the mammalian eye had never been selected for, it would have the function of perceiving and processing light, because those are the effects that contribute to the exercise of the visual system. The systemic approach to conceptualizing natural norms, claims Davies, is superior to the historical approach in several important ways. Especially significant is that it helps us understand how the attribution of functions within the life sciences coheres with the methods and ontology of the natural sciences generally.
The Norms of Nature
The Norms of Nature - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Norms of Nature write by Malcolm Schofield. This book was released on 2007-08-16. The Norms of Nature available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Can moral philosophy alter our moral beliefs or our emotions? Does moral scepticism mean making up our own values, or does it leave us without moral commitments at all? Is it possible to find a basis for ethics in human nature? These are some of the main questions explored in this volume, which is devoted to the ethics of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy. Some of the leading scholars in the field have here taken a look at the bases of the Stoics' and Epicureans' thinking about what the Greeks took to be the central questions of philosophy. Their essays, which originated in a conference held at Bad Homburg in 1983, the third in a series of conferences on Hellenistic philosophy, propose important interpretations of the texts, and pose some fascinating problems about the different roles of argument and reason in ancient and modern moral philosophy. This book will be of interest to moral philosophers and to scholars of Greek philosophy too.
Teleology and the Norms of Nature
Teleology and the Norms of Nature - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Teleology and the Norms of Nature write by William J. FitzPatrick. This book was released on 2017-09-25. Teleology and the Norms of Nature available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This work is an examination of teleological attributions i.e. ascriptions of proper functions and natural ends) to the features and behavior of living things with a view to understanding their application to human life.
Against Nature
Against Nature - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Against Nature write by Lorraine Daston. This book was released on 2019-05-28. Against Nature available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders. Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the “is” of natural orders with the “ought” of moral orders. In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition—specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws—and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.
Blame
Blame - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Blame write by D. Justin Coates. This book was released on 2013-01-31. Blame available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. What is it to blame someone, and when are would-be blamers in a position to do so? What function does blame serve in our lives, and is it a valuable way of relating to one another? The essays in this volume explore answers to these and related questions.
