{"title":"Alan H Goldman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"life-s-values-book-alan-goldman-9780192857019","title":"Life's Values","description":"In Life's Values Alan H. Goldman seeks to explain what is of ultimate value in individual lives. The proposed candidates include pleasure, happiness, meaning, and well-being. Only the latter is the all-inclusive category of personal value, and it consists in the satisfaction of deep rational desires. Since individuals' rational desires differ, the book cannot dictate what will maximize your own well-being and what in particular you ought to pursue. However it can tell you to make your desires rational (that is, informed and coherent) and it can also explain the nature of these states that typically enter into well-being: pleasure, happiness, and meaning being typically partial causes as well as effects of well-being. All are by-products of satisfying rational desires and rarely successfully aimed at directly. Pleasure comes in sensory, intentional, and pure feeling forms, each with an opposite in pain or distress. Happiness in its primary sense is an emotion, not a constant state as some philosophers assume, and in secondary senses a mood (disposition to have an emotion) or temperament (disposition to be in a mood). Meaning in life is a matter of events in one's life fitting into intelligible narratives. Events in narratives are understood teleologically as well as causally, in terms of outcomes aimed at as well antecedent events. So, in the briefest terms, this book distinguishes and relates pleasure, happiness, well-being, and meaning, and relates each to motivation and value.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50018080850193,"sku":"GOR013837341","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52103157776657,"sku":"CIN0192857010G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53564447228177,"sku":"NIN9780192857019","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0192857010.jpg?v=1786615092"},{"product_id":"reasons-from-within-book-alan-h-goldman-9780199658275","title":"Reasons from Within","description":"Do the reasons we have for acting as we do derive from our concerns and desires, or are there objective values in the world that we are rationally required to pursue and protect? Alan Goldman argues for the internalist or subjectivist view of practical reasons on the grounds that it is simpler, more unified, and more comprehensible than the rival objectivist position. He provides a naturalistic account of practical rationality in terms of coherence within sets of desires or motivational states, and between motivations, intentions, and actions. Coherence is defined as the avoidance of self-defeat, the defeat of one's own deepest concerns. The demand for coherence underlies both practical and theoretical reason and derives from the natural aims of belief and action. In clarifying which desires create reasons, drawing on the literature of cognitive psychology, Goldman offers conceptual analyses of desires, emotions, and attitudes. Reasons are seen to derive ultimately from our deepest occurrent concerns. These concerns require no reasons themselves but provide reasons for many more superficial desires. In defense of this theory, Goldman argues that rational agents need not be morally motivated or concerned for their narrow self-interest. Objective values would demand such concern. They would be independent of our desires but would provide reasons for us to pursue and protect them. They would require rational agents to be motivated by them. But, Goldman argues, we are not motivated in that way, and it makes no sense to demand that our informed and coherent desires be generally other than they are. We need not appeal to such objective values in order to explain how our lives can be good and meaningful. Reasons from Within will appeal to anyone interested in the nature of values and reasons, particularly students of philosophy, psychology, and decision theory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50053136908561,"sku":"GOR013847484","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52516219650321,"sku":"NLS9780199658275","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199658277.jpg?v=1786614297"},{"product_id":"philosophy-and-the-novel-book-alan-h-goldman-9780199674459","title":"Philosophy and the Novel","description":"Alan H. Goldman presents an original and lucid account of the relationship between philosophy and the novel. In the first part, on philosophy of novels, he defends theories of literary value and interpretation. Literary value, the value of literary works as such, is a species of aesthetic value. Goldman argues that works have aesthetic value when they simultaneously engage all our mental capacities: perceptual, cognitive, imaginative, and emotional. This view contrasts with now prevalent narrower formalist views of literary value. According to it, cognitive engagement with novels includes appreciation of their broad themes and the theses these imply, often moral and hence philosophical theses, which are therefore part of the novels' literary value. Interpretation explains elements of works so as to allow readers maximum appreciation, so as to maximize the literary value of the texts as written. Once more, Goldman's view contrasts with narrower views of literary interpretation, especially those which limit it to uncovering what authors intended. One implication of Goldman's broader view is the possibility of incompatible but equally acceptable interpretations, which he explores through a discussion of rival interpretations of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Goldman goes on to test the theory of value by explaining the immense appeal of good mystery novels in its terms. The second part of the book, on philosophy in novels, explores themes relating to moral agency--moral development, motivation, and disintegration--in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, John Irving's The Cider House Rules, and Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. By narrating the course of characters' lives, including their inner lives, over extended periods, these novels allow us to vicariously experience the characters' moral progressions, positive and negative, to learn in a more focused way moral truths, as we do from real life experiences.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51328164593937,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328167411985,"sku":"CIN0199674450VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52487100662033,"sku":"NLS9780199674459","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199674450.jpg?v=1786614291"},{"product_id":"practical-rules-book-alan-h-goldman-9780521034074","title":"Practical Rules","description":"Rules proliferate; some are kept with a bureaucratic stringency bordering on the absurd, while others are manipulated and ignored in ways that injure our sense of justice. Under what conditions should we make exceptions to rules, and when should they be followed despite particular circumstances? The two dominant models in the literature on rules are the particularist account and that which sees the application of rules as normative. Taking a position that falls between these two extremes, Alan Goldman provides a systematic framework to clarify when we need to follow rules in our moral, legal and prudential decisions, and when we ought not to do so. The book distinguishes among various types of rules; it illuminates concepts such as integrity, self-interest and self-deception; and finally, it provides an account of ordinary moral reasoning without rules. This book will be of great interest to advanced students and professionals working in philosophy, law, decision theory and the social sciences.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52143553511697,"sku":"NLS9780521034074","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780521034074.jpg?v=1786115678"},{"product_id":"reasons-from-within-book-alan-h-goldman-9780199576906","title":"Reasons from Within","description":"Do the reasons we have for acting as we do derive from our concerns and desires, or are there objective values in the world that we are rationally required to pursue and protect? Alan Goldman argues for the internalist or subjectivist view of practical reasons on the grounds that it is simpler, more unified, and more comprehensible than the rival objectivist position. He provides a naturalistic account of practical rationality in terms of coherence within sets of desires or motivational states, and between motivations, intentions, and actions. Coherence is defined as the avoidance of self-defeat, the defeat of one's own deepest concerns. The demand for coherence underlies both practical and theoretical reason and derives from the natural aims of belief and action. In clarifying which desires create reasons, drawing on the literature of cognitive psychology, Goldman offers conceptual analyses of desires, emotions, and attitudes. Reasons are seen to derive ultimately from our deepest occurrent concerns. These concerns require no reasons themselves but provide reasons for many more superficial desires.In defense of this theory, Goldman argues that rational agents need not be morally motivated or concerned for their narrow self-interest. Objective values would demand such concern. They would be independent of our desires but would provide reasons for us to pursue and protect them. They would require rational agents to be motivated by them. But, Goldman argues, we are not motivated in that way, and it makes no sense to demand that our informed and coherent desires be generally other than they are. We need not appeal to such objective values in order to explain how our lives can be good and meaningful.Reasons from Within will appeal to anyone interested in the nature of values and reasons, particularly students of philosophy, psychology, and decision theory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52425417720081,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52425418539281,"sku":"NLS9780199576906","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199576906.jpg?v=1786100553"},{"product_id":"moral-knowledge-book-alan-h-goldman-9780367462819","title":"Moral Knowledge","description":"Originally published in 1988, this book discusses if moral knowledge exists, and if so, if it is similar to other forms of knowledge. This book approaches the issues from both historical and contemporary perspectives and looks to the ethical theories of Hobbes, Hume and Kant.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52434326716689,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52434327404817,"sku":"NLS9780367462819","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780367462819.jpg?v=1786119905"},{"product_id":"practical-rules-book-alan-h-goldman-9780521807296","title":"Practical Rules","description":"Rules proliferate; some are kept with a bureaucratic stringency bordering on the absurd, while others are manipulated and ignored in ways that injure our sense of justice. Under what conditions should we make exceptions to rules, and when should they be followed despite particular circumstances? The two dominant models in the literature on rules are the particularist account and that which sees the application of rules as normative. Taking a position that falls between these two extremes, Alan Goldman provides a systematic framework to clarify when we need to follow rules in our moral, legal and prudential decisions, and when we ought not to do so. The book distinguishes among various types of rules; it illuminates concepts such as integrity, self-interest and self-deception; and finally, it provides an account of ordinary moral reasoning without rules. This book will be of great interest to advanced students and professionals working in philosophy, law, decision theory and the social sciences.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52587993039121,"sku":"NLS9780521807296","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780521807296.jpg?v=1761057339"},{"product_id":"moral-foundations-of-professional-ethics-philosophy-society-book-alan-h-goldman-9780847662852","title":"Moral Foundations of Professional Ethics (Philosophy \u0026 Society)","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53522168316177,"sku":"NLS9780847662852","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780847662852.jpg?v=1778457201"},{"product_id":"subjectivity-of-value-book-alan-h-goldman-9780197867402","title":"The Subjectivity of Value","description":"The Subjectivity of Value is a sustained attack on the claim that values are objective, in the world independent of people's attitudes. The fist section argues via examples that fundamental moral disagreements are irresolvable, that the arguments on both sides are a standoff, and that an objectivist has no plausible explanation of why one side would be mistaken. It argues further that objective value properties would be strange not in being instrinsically motivating (as J. L. Mackie claimed), but in giving rise to intransitive orderings and weird variations (from Larry Temkin). The second section considers objective list accounts of well-being. It argues that typical items on such lists, such as knowledge, are not good for all people, that properly narrowing their descriptions requires appeal to people's attitudes (prohibited to an objectivist), and that other things that are intrinsically good for only some people, such as tennis, cannot fit such lists. The section on aesthetic value argues against there being aesthetic principles that link objective properties of artworks to proper evaluative responses to them. The final section argues that experienced values vary with the times at which they are experienced, as objective values would not.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53751683514641,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53751683744017,"sku":"NGR9780197867402","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-alan-h-goldman.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}