Gerhard Preyer Book order

The Joint Commitment Account: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Sociality of Margaret Gilbert with Her Comments

This volume critically evaluates the recent work of philosopher Prof. Raimo Tuomela, offering fresh perspectives on the collectivism-versus-individualism debate. It focuses on Tuomela's book, Social Ontology, particularly his insights on collective intentionality and related topics. Featuring eight essays by expert contributors, the book presents diverse viewpoints on Tuomela’s exploration of sociality, social ontology, action theory, and decision and game theory. Tuomela responds comprehensively to each essay, defending his theories against new arguments. Readers will gain deeper insights into group reasoning and the "we-mode" approach, which explains collective intention, cooperation, group attitudes, social practices, institutions, and group solidarity. This work appeals to a broad audience, including graduate students and researchers interested in contemporary philosophy of sociality, sociological theory, social ontology, the philosophy of mind, decision and game theory, and cognitive science. Tuomela’s contributions are exemplary in the challenging field of social ontology, showcasing his philosophical rigor. His work is essential reading for anyone engaged in this area of inquiry.

Donald Davidson has contributed to many subjects in contemporary philosophy. He was one of the most influential Anglo-American analytical philosophers in the late 20th century. His leading topics are the theory of meaning, the philosophy of action and the theory of mind. His claim is to give a Unified Theory of Thought, Meaning, Action, and Evaluation as a new foundational account of language. In the history of his work emerged an overall view of mind and its relation to the world. This approach argues for a total revision of the Cartesian tradition and of traditional empiricism in epistemology. This book systemizes his philosophy and refers to the critiques of his theory of meaning, action, and mind since the 1970s years. It is not fixed what Davidson's place in the history of philosophy will be, but many patterns of philosophical thought in the last fifty years would not have been without him.

The philosophical questions about action concern it’s nature, it’s description and it’s explanation. The leading questions are „What a theory of action is possible?“, „Are reasons causes?“, „What are practical thoughts?“ and „What is the formal logic of practical inference?“ Gerhard Preyer offers new answers of some old question about the description and the explanation of action and the logical structure of deliberation or practical reasoning which results from the theory of action since the 1950s years. It is argued that a theory of agent can provide an alternative to any theory postulating actions as irreducible entities metaphysically. The author’s account presents intention as states irreducible to beliefs and desires. The analysis places also a requirement on a fruitful description of the mind-body problem.

Die Soziologie der Gegenwartsgesellschaft erkennt zunehmend die Bedeutung der kollektiven Identitäten und korrigiert die klassische Modernisierungstheorie. Sie erkennt, dass Moral wenig zu regeln vermag, da sie auf Konflikt angelegt ist. Die soziologische Forschung führt uns immer mehr vor Augen, dass wir den kollektiven Gefühlen nicht entgehen können. Sie belegt zudem die Klugheit der Selbststeuerung sozialer Systeme gegenüber ihrer staatlichen Übersteuerung. Soziologische Aufklärung trägt zu der Einsicht bei, dass sich auch der genoptimierte Neue Mensch den elementaren Prozessen des sozialen Lebens und den kollektiven Identitäten nicht entziehen könnte. Die Beiträge werfen auch ein Licht auf die Grenzen der Kommunikation, die durch die Kommunikationsgesellschaft selbst hervorgebracht werden. Der Band ist dem Gedenken an Karl Otto Hondrich (1937-2007) gewidmet, dessen Soziologie uns dafür sensibilisiert, im Zeitalter der Globalisierung und Hybridisierung die Dominanz der lokalen, regionalen und ethnischen Herkunftswelten nicht zu übersehen.

One main interest of philosophy is to become clear about the assumptions, premisses and inconsistencies of our thoughts and theories. And even for a formal language like mathematics it is controversial if consistency is acheivable or necessary like the articles in the firt part of the publication show. Also the role of formal derivations, the role of the concept of apriority, and the intuitions of mathematical principles and properties need to be discussed. The second part is a contribution on nominalistic and platonistic views in mathematics, like the "indispensability argument" of W. v. O. Quine H. Putnam and the "makes no difference argument" of A. Baker. Not only in retrospect, the third part shows the problems of Mill, Frege's and the unity of mathematics and Descartes's contradictional conception of mathematical essences. Together, these articles give us a hint into the relationship between mathematics and world, that is, one of the central problems in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science.