Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

by Simon Blackburn

In recent years a kind of ‘naturalized’ realism, avoiding the mysteries of Platonism, has seemed plausible to some philosophers. According to this there really are properties that things have, quite independently of whether we regard them one way or another. And our minds are built in response to these properties. Evolution and success shape us to be responsive to the real causal kinds that things fall into. While conceptualists are right to stress the contingent shape of our minds, they are wrong to forget that those minds do not exist in a vacuum. Our minds are naturally shaped by the causal structures of the world we inhabit. In favourable circumstances, we all ‘go on in the same way’ because, in the context of the world, that is the right way to go on.

But much of our reasoning is not so much theoretical, or concerned with how the world is, as practical, or concerned with how to act in it. We think about what to do, and muster considerations and arguments in favour of one course or another. How are we to think about that?

ethics and moral philosophy