This book treats practical and political reasoning as an active engagement with the world and other people; it cannot be understood as exclusively cognitive and this is seen as a virtue rather than a deficiency. Informal, emotional, characterological, aesthetic and interactional aspects of thought can be constituents of reasonable arguing. The work examines key capacities connected with argumentation, in a variety of fields from professional and medical ethics to work organization and the practice of art.

The following essays are about what it is to believe something, how we make up our minds and decide, what it means that conflicts anddisagreements are not eliminable, and the fact that new technological developments are substantially changing the way we live.

Ciertas ideas erróneas que solemos asociar con el fenómeno de la libertad son aquí objeto de una crítica que se propone mostrar en qué consiste realmente la libertad de los seres humanos.

Human beings choose rationally according to their own belief systems. Without taking into consideration these belief systems, which do not only contain theoretical assumptions about reality but also practical convictions, emotions, evaluations and preferences, it is not possible to understand how and why they choose and decide as they choose and decide under uncertainty. Belief systems are of great utility for beings whose form of rationality is a limited and bounded one. Due to the qualitative structure of belief systems, the (...) mathematical models develo-ped in the fields of game theory and rational choice theory are not always the adequate instrument to conceptualize them. (shrink)

Thomas Gil und Wolfgang Mack befassen sich aus der Perspektive zweier unterschiedlicher Disziplinen –Philosophie und Psychologie – mit der Frage nach den Funktionen der Seele. Aus der Sicht der Philosophie wird untersucht, was unter psychischen Funktionen zu verstehen ist. Aus der Sicht der Psychologie wird der Begriff der Seele historisch-kritisch diskutiert. Ist für die Psychologie die Seele als wissenschaftlicher Begriff möglicherweise (wieder) geeignet? In gemeinsamer Diskussion beantworten die Autoren die Frage danach, was das Psychische ist.

In den drei hier veröffentlichten philosophischen Studien geht es um die Begriffsarbeit des menschlichen Geistes, durch welche er in der Lage ist, die Struktur physischer und geschichtlicher Prozesse zu erfassen.

This chapter contains sections titled: Scientific Historiography Substantive Assumptions The Meaning of History Bibliography and Further Reading.