Drawing on a rich pragmatist tradition, this book offers an account of the different kinds of ‘oughts’, or varieties of normativity, that we are subject to contends that there is no conflict between normativity and the world as science describes it. The authors argue that normative claims aim to evaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state of affairs ought to be. These claims articulate forms of action-guidance that are different in kind from descriptive claims, with a wholly distinct practical and expressive character. This account suggests that there are no normative facts, and so nothing that needs any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world. This work explains that nevertheless, normative claims are constrained by the world, and answerable to reason and argumentation, in a way that makes them truth-apt and objective.

Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of Kant and Helmholtz, who adopted opposing stances on whether central questions about spatial perception were amenable to natural-scientific treatment. At stake were the proper understanding of the relationships among sensation, perception, and experience, and the proper methodological framework for investigating the mental activities of judgment, understanding, and reason issues which remain at the core of philosophical psychology and cognitive science. Hatfield presents these important issues as living philosophies of science that shape and are shaped by actual research programs, creating a complex and fascinating picture of the entire nineteenth-century battle between nativism and empiricism. His examination of Helmholtz's work in physiological optics and epistemology is a tour de force. Gary Hatfield is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The work of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars continues to have a significant impact on the contemporary philosophical scene. His writings have influenced major thinkers such as Rorty, McDowell, Brandom, and Dennett, and many of Sellars basic conceptions, such as the logical space of reasons, the myth of the given, and the manifest and scientific images, have become standard philosophical terms. Often, however, recent uses of these terms do not reflect the richness or the true sense of Sellars original ideas. This book gets to the heart of Sellars philosophy and provides students with a comprehensive critical introduction to his lifes work. The book is structured around what Sellars himself regarded as the philosophers overarching task: to achieve a coherent vision of reality that will finally overcome the continuing clashes between the world as common sense takes it to be and the world as science reveals it to be. It provides a clear analysis of Sellars groundbreaking philosophy of mind, his novel theory of consciousness, his defense of scientific realism, and his thoroughgoing naturalism with a normative turn. Providing a lively examination of Sellars work through the central problem of what it means to be a human being in a scientific world, this book will be a valuable resource for all students of philosophy.

The emergent “science” of transgenderism and related philosophies of gender propose a full-scale inversion of the understanding of God, man, and the created order articulated in classical metaphysics, undermining and parodying both the causality and ontology voiced by Genesis 1:27 (“God created man in His own image, . . . male and female He created them”). Whether through subversive performative identity or by surgical sex change, the divinely made human person is now threatened with abolition and replacement by the self-made man and the man-made woman. In Metaphysics and Gender, Michele M. Schumacher offers a corrective to this distorted and distorting outlook, calling for the recovery of an anthropological vision rooted in recognition of the normative divine “art” of nature and of the likeness—and far greater unlikeness—between divine and human causality. Surveying contemporary transgender trends, Schumacher identifies and excavates their conceptual and ideological foundations in the gender theory of Judith Butler, the existentialist feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, and the atheistic existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. To the erroneous philosophical presuppositions of these thinkers Schumacher contrasts the metaphysically grounded thought of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, advancing their positive account of the good of creation and of the meaning of ethical norms, human freedom and natural inclinations, and embodiment, and mounting a timely and trenchant defense of the divinely created human person.

Professionals function in what can be called “social practices.” Norms in the practice set professionals’ responsibilities and rights and classify what is seen as morally proper and improper. Tensions arise when norms emerge that are not coherent with the nature of the practice. For example, when a hospital is assessed on the basis of economic criteria only, staff will feel uncomfortable and find difficulty in functioning properly in that practice. The Normative Nature of Social Practices and Ethics in Professional Environments is an essential research book that helps professionals in a variety of practices understand how normativity in their practice either helps or hampers them to function well and align with what they see as their personal and professional responsibility. Additionally, it explains the normative practical model/approach and how it can be applied to a series of concrete practices, as well as the role of innovative and disruptive technologies in these practices. Featuring a broad range of topics such as governance theory, sustainable development, and engineering, this book is ideally designed for managers, philosophers, sociologists, professionals, academicians, and researchers.

The semantics of normative thought and discourse -- Thinking about what ought to be -- Expressivism -- Causal theories and conceptual analyses -- Conceptual role semantics -- Context and the logic of 'ought' -- The metaphysics of normative facts -- The metaphysical issues -- The normativity of the intentional -- Irreducibility and causal efficacy -- Non-reductive naturalism -- The epistemology of normative belief -- The status of normative intuitions -- Disagreement and the a priori.

Antirealist views about morality claim that moral facts or truths do not exist. Do these views imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemic ones, do not exist? The Normative Web develops a positive answer to this question. Terence Cuneo argues that the similarities between moral and epistemic facts provide excellent reason to believe that, if moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist. But epistemic facts, it is argued, do exist: to deny their existence would commit us to an extreme version of epistemological skepticism. Therefore, Cuneo concludes, moral facts exist. And if moral facts exist, then moral realism is true. In so arguing, Cuneo provides not simply a defense of moral realism, but a positive argument for it. Moreover, this argument engages with a wide range of antirealist positions in epistemology such as error theories, expressivist views, and reductionist views of epistemic reasons. If the central argument of The Normative Web is correct, antirealist positions of these varieties come at a very high cost. Given their cost, Cuneo contends, we should find realism about both epistemic and moral facts highly attractive.