Marion Ledwig Bücher

This book stands in the tradition of past and current common sense philosophers, like Reid, Berkeley, Sidgwick, Moore, Conant, Slote, Bogdan, and Lemos, who defend common sense, yet it goes beyond their accounts by not only defending common sense but also considering what common sense means. Besides giving a historical exegesis of common sense in Thomas Reid and showing parallels in Austin, Searle, Moore, and Wittgenstein, common sense is also discovered in Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It is made clear how far common sense generalizes, whether proverbs are a form of common sense, and whether common sense can be found in the common knowledge assumption in game theory. Also, folk psychology as a common sense psychology is discussed. In its account of common sense, this book draws on research from history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, and science, linguistics, and game theory to substantiate its position.

Reid's philosophy of psychology offers a surprisingly contemporary perspective, particularly in his examination of instincts, which aligns closely with Tinbergen's modern theories. His insights into appetites and desires remain relevant, bridging historical thought with current psychological understanding. This connection highlights the enduring significance of Reid's work in contemporary discussions of human behavior and motivation.

This book explores the rationality of faith, expanding on traditional philosophical views. It examines various senses of rationality in faith, discusses concepts like Pascal's wager and miracles, and offers unique solutions to the problem of evil and the paradoxes of omnipotence and omniscience.

This book opens up a new area of research by not only considering the rationality of such diverse phenomena as ordinary emotions, generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, psychotic depression, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder, but also by evaluating the question whether the vagueness of these diverse disorders and emotions poses an obstacle to the rationality of these phenomena. As these emotional phenomena turn out to be vague on many different levels, an explanation is found for the millennia long dispute of which kind of phenomena fall under the emotions and whether such diverse phenomena as hope and alexithymia fall under the emotions. Since vagueness can be most easily identified in mixed feelings, the rationality of mixed feelings will also be dealt with.

Their Rationality & Consistency stands in the tradition of current emotion theorists, such as Elster, Damasio, de Sousa, Greenspan, Nussbaum, and Solomon, who advance the rationality of the emotions. Yet this book goes beyond their accounts, for it not only defends the view that emotions can be termed rational, but also considers in which different senses emotions can be termed rational. Besides discussing whether emotional intelligence and emotional consistency are forms of emotional rationality, this book makes clear how far this view on the rationality of the emotions can be whether it can, for instance, be generalized to computers having rational emotions and whether emotional responses to art can be considered to be rational. This book draws not only on knowledge from neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind, but also on evolutionary theory and developmental psychology, to substantiate its position.