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.- 1. Deliberation.- 2. Propositions.- 3. Mandates.- 4. Prescriptions.- 5. Intentions.- 6. Practitions.- 7. Normatives or Deontic Judgments.- 3: Propositional Structure and Propositional Implication.- 1. Propositional Forms.- 2. Truth.- 3. Reasoning.- 4. Three Approaches to Implication.- A. The Semantical Approach.- 5. Truth-Functional Connections.- 6. English Semantical Connectives.- 7. 'If', 'Only if', and '?'.- 8. Logical Form.- 9. Semantical implication.- 10. Semantical Equivalence.- 11. Logical Truths: Tautologies.- B. The Inferential Approach.- 12. The Nature of the Approach.- 13. Connective Deducibility.- C. Implication and Deducibility.- 14. Equivalence of Implication and Deducibility.- 15. Inferential English Connectives.- D. The Analytic Approach.- 16. The Nature of the Approach.- E. Axioms, Implication, and Deducibility.- 17. The Equivalence of the Three Approaches.- F. Propositional Quantification.- 18. Quantifiers and Propositional Functions.- 19. Semantical Approach.- 20. Set-Theoretical Models.- 21. Inferential Approach to Quantification.- 22. Coincidence of the Three Approaches.- 4: Imperatives and Prescriptions.- 1. Prescriptions and Propositions.- 2. Is There a Logic of Imperatives?.- 3. The Inferential Approach: Pure Prescriptive Compounds.- 4. The Inferential Approach: Conditional Mandates.- 5. The Inferential Approach: General and Mixed Connective Mandates.- 6. The Semantics of Imperative Logic: The Values of Prescriptions.- 7. General and Connective Noematic Implication and Tautologies.- 8. Imperative Quantification.- 9. Set-Theoretical Models for Prescriptional-Propositional Systems.- 5: Imperative Designated Values: Orthotes and Anarthotes.- 1. Orthotes-in-Context-C (A, E).- 2. Endorsement.- 3. Unqualified Orthotes.- 6: Intentions and Intending.- 1. What is Intended is Not an Action.- 2. What is Intended is Not a Proposition: General Argument.- 3. What is Intended is Not a Non-First-Person Proposition.- 4. What is Intended is Not a First-Person Future-Tense Proposition.- 5. Intentions to Bring About.- 6. Intentions as First-Person Practitions.- 7. The Basic Structure of Intentions.- 8. The Legitimacy-Values of Intentions.- 7: Deontic Judgments and Their Implicational Structure.- 1. Deontic Judgments are Propositions.- 2. Deontic Properties.- 3. Deontic Propositions and Mandates.- 4. Enactment.- 5. Conflicts of Duties and the Nature of Promises.- 6. The Unqualified Ought.- 7. Deontic Propositions and Practitions.- 8. Deontic Propositions and Ought-to-be.- 9. Actions, Circumstances and Identifiers.- 10. The Good-Samaritan Paradox.- 11. Contrary-to-Duty Normatives.- 12. The Tenselessness of Obligatoriness.- 13. Conjunctive and Quantified Deontic Propositions.- 14. Consistency of Normative Systems.- 15. Deontic Quantification is Extensional.- 16. Identity and the Extensionality of Deontic Judgments.- 17. The Defeasibility Conditions of Obligation.- 18. A Pause and a Caution.- 8: Deontic Truth.- 1. Deontic Truth as Necessary Legitimacy.- 2. Deontic Truth as Practitional Implication.- 3. Alternative Deontic Worlds: Set Theoretical Models for Deontic Truth.- 9: A Formal System for the Quantificational Logic with Identity of Propositions, Practitions, and Deontic Judgments.- 1. Crucial Facts About Practical Languages.- 2. Basic Deontic Languages Di.- 3. The Axiomatic Deontic Systems Di*.- 4. Models for the Systems Di.- 5. The Adequacy, Especially the Extensionality, of D.- II The Meta-Psychology of Practical Thinking: The Action Schema.- 10: The Internal Causality of Practical Thinking.- 1. Practical or Practitional States of Mind.- 2. Intending as a Bundle or Propensities.- 3. The Practitional Copula and Volitions.- 4. Needs and Desires: Their Minimal Logical Structure.- 5. Wants: Types and Minimal Logical Structure.- 6. The Causality of Prescriptive Thinking.- 11: Oughts and the Reasonableness of Action.- 1. Rational and Reasonable Action.- 2. The First Two Steps Toward Reasonableness.- 3. Oughts and Ideal Wants.- 4. Hypothetical "Imperatives".- 5. Kant's Analyticity of Hypothetical Imperatives.- 6. Conflicts of Oughts and the Overriding Ought.- III The Metaphysics of Practical Thinking: The Reality of Doing and of Deontic Properties.- 12: Events and the Structure of Doing.- 1. The Structure of Doing: Its Basic Laws.- 2. Actions, Events, and Processes.- 3. The Confluence of Agency.- 4. The Times of Actions.- 5. The Identification and the Plurality of Actions and Events.- 13: The Autonomy of Practical Thinking and the Non-Natural Character of Practical Noemata.- 1. The Autonomy of Practical Thinking.- 2. Moral Classical Intuitionism and Moral Naturalism Reconciled.- 3. The Non-Natural Character of Deontic "Properties".- 4. The Dispensability of Deontic "Properties" or Operations.- Index of Names.- Index of Topics.