Thinking and Doing

Philosophy is the search for the large patterns of the world and of the large patterns of experience, perceptual, theoretical, . . . , aesthetic, and practical - the patterns that, regardless of specific contents, characterize the main types of experience. In this book I carry out my search for the large patterns of practical experience: the experience of deliberation, of recognition of duties and their conflicts, of attempts to guide other person's conduct, of deciding to act, of influencing the physical world with one's doings, and the like. This is the experience that makes possible our social life, the formulation of plans for teamwork, the building of institutions, the development of nations, and the adoption of the ideal of morality. Here I develop a network of theories about the most fundamental aspects of practical thinking: what is thought in such thinking; what makes that thinking correct; what makes it practical; and the structure of the doings that accrue to the world when such thinking is effective. I have attempted to build each theory in sufficient detail, so that it il luminates its subject matter with a certain degree of fullness. But I have also aimed at producing an harmonious system of theories, so that the grand pattern of practical thinking can be admired, not only for the beauty of the separate structures of its parts, but also for its architectonic unity. Chapter 1 gives the details of the many facets of this project and discusses some methodological techniques.

Contenu
1: Introduction: Tasks and Problems.- 1. The Foundations of Normative Systems and Institutions.- 2. Practical Thinking.- 3. Our Six Types of Philosophical Problems.- 4. Practical Language.- 5. Conventions on Quotation Marks.- I The Logico-Ontological Structure of the Representational Image of Practical Thinking.- 2: Practical Thinking: Dramatis Personae.- 3: Propositional Structure and Propositional Implication.- 4: Imperatives and Prescriptions.- 5: Imperative Designated Values: Orthotes and Anarthotes.- 6: Intentions and Intending.- 7: Deontic Judgments and Their Implicational Structure.- 8: Deontic Truth.- 9: A Formal System for the Quantificational Logic with Identity of Propositions, Practitions, and Deontic Judgments.- II The Meta-Psychology of Practical Thinking: The Action Schema.- 10: The Internal Causality of Practical Thinking.- 11: Oughts and the Reasonableness of Action.- III The Metaphysics of Practical Thinking: The Reality of Doing and of Deontic Properties.- 12: Events and the Structure of Doing.- 13: The Autonomy of Practical Thinking and the Non-Natural Character of Practical Noemata.- Index of Names.- Index of Topics.