Spheres of Reason: New Essays in the Philosophy of Normativity (Mind Association Occasional Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199572933 ISBN 13: 9780199572939

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2009

Synopsis

Spheres of Reason comprises nine original essays on the philosophy of normativity, written by a combination of internationally renowned and up-and-coming philosophers working at the forefront of the topic. On one broad construal the normative sphere concerns norms, requirements, oughts, reasons, reasoning, rationality, justification, value. These notions play a central role in both everyday thought and philosophical enquiry; but there remains considerable disagreement about how to understand normativity -- its nature, metaphysical and epistemological bases -- and how different aspects of normative thought connect to one another. As well as exploring traditional and ongoing issues central to our understanding of normativity -- especially those concerning reasons, reasoning and rationality -- the volume's essays develop new approaches to and perspectives in the field. Notably, they make a timely and distinctive contribution to normativity as it features across each of the practical, epistemic and affective regions of thought, including the important issue of how normativity as it applies to action, belief and feeling may (or may not) be connected. In doing so, the essays engage topics within the philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, normative ethics and metaethics. With an editor's introduction providing a comprehensive and accessible background to the subject, Spheres of Reason is essential reading to anyone interested in the nature of normativity and the bearing it has on human thought.

About this title

About the Author

Simon Robertson is currently a Research Fellow on the AHRC funded research project Nietzsche & Modern Moral Philosophy at the University of Southampton, UK. His main research interests lie at the intersection of metaethics, practical reason and normative ethics, as well as Nietzsche. Before his current appointment, Simon completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews (2005), writing his doctoral thesis on moral obligation and normative reasons, and then taught for two years as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Leeds.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199572933
• ISBN 13: 9780199572939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Robertson Simon