Wise Choices, Apt Feelings

Possibly the most important moral philosophy book of the 1990s

This treatise explores what is at issue in narrowly moral questions, and in questions of rational thought and conduct in general. It helps to explain why normative thought and talk so pervade human life, and why our highly social species might have evolved to be gripped by these questions.`Choices can be wise or foolish, and feelings can be apt or off the mark.' Since this is how we judge, it would be good to know what content these normative judgements carry. Gibbard offers an answer, and elaborates it. His theory explores what is at issue in narrowly moral questions, and in questions of rational thought and conduct in general. It helps to explain why normative thought and talk so pervade human life, and why our highly social species might have evolved to be gripped by these questions. Gibbard asks how, if his theory is right, we can interpret our normative puzzles, and thus proceed toward finding answers to them. Not available from OUP in the USA, Canada, Japan or the Phillippines.