The following essays are about what it is to believe something, how we make up our minds and decide, what it means that conflicts and disagreements are not eliminable, and the fact that new technological developments are substantially changing the way we live.
Believing could be considered to be, following Frank P. Ramsey´s recommendation, a sort of betting behaviour that manifests what we take things to be, and what we expect to happen.
In what we say subjective meaning intentions come together with meaning structures our natural languages provide.
We need causation, time, and truth in order to know how things in the broadest sense of the term hang together in the broadest sense of the term. The essays try to say something clarifying about those three classical questions of traditional metaphysics. Not dogmatic answers are offered, but guiding perspectives and possible justifiable ways of dealing with such fundamental matters.
Leading a good life, acting according to rational principles, and doing the right, beneficial thing are three different forms of being good traditional ethical theory focused upon.
Individual things, qualities, facts and classes are for many philosophers the basic entities that make up reality. Answering the ontological question on what there really is, means saying precisely what those entities actually are.
Whenever we try to master the tasks in front of us, in daily life or in science, we apply several thinking devices available to us: we use concepts, we assert things, we make inferences, we make comparisons and classifications, we make assumptions, we form rational expectations concerning the future, we test our beliefs, and we critically assess the results of our own actions and doings.
There are specific kinds of arguments reasoning scientists preferentially use. In this essay I describe the most typical ones. My classificatory list is not exhaustive but, I hope, representative enough.
Human beings, as the biological organisms they are, have different mental capacities that allow them to lead conscious lives. They intend to do things, they desire objects, they act and have feelings, they perceive, remember and imagine, they believe that something is the case and argue about it, they develop personal identities and understand other people. Through all these capacities and doings they are mentally connected to the physical world.
Understanding the real games individuals play collectively, when they use their natural languages, when they act and react, and when they create institutions in order to do what they want to do more efficiently, we grasp conceptually practical reality.