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631The importance of us: a philosophical study of basic social notionsStanford University Press. 1995.This book develops a systematic philosophical theory of social action and group phenomena, in the process presenting detailed analyses of such central social notions as 'we-attitude' (especially 'we-intention' and mutual belief, social norm, joint action, and - most important - group goal, group belief, and group action). Though this is a philosophical work, it presents a unified conceptual framework that may be useful to social scientists, especially social psychologists, as well as philosopher…Read more
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6Dispositions (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2013.This anthology consists of a collection of papers on the nature of dis positions and the role of disposition concepts in scientific theories. I have tried to make the collection as representative as possible, except that problems specifically connected with dispositions in various special sciences are relatively little discussed. Most of these articles have been previously published. The papers by Mackie, Essler and Trapp, Fetzer (in Section 11), Levi, and Tuomela appear here for the first time,…Read more
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206Joint intention, we-mode and I-modeMidwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (1). 2006.The central topic of this paper is to study joint intention to perform a joint action or to bring about a certain state. Here are some examples of such joint action: You and I share the plan to carry a heavy table jointly upstairs and realize this plan, we sing a duet together, we clean up our backyard together, and I cash a check by acting jointly with you, a bank teller, and finally we together elect a new president for our country. In these cases the participants can be said to have a joint i…Read more
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38Scientific realism and perception (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 29 (1): 87-104. 1978.
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19Confirmation, Explanation and the Paradoxes of TransitivityProceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy 5 121-125. 1975.
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19Causes and Deductive ExplanationPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1974. 1974.According to the backing law account of causation a singular causal claim is to be analyzed (or “justified”) by reference to a suitable nomic theory which, together with the given singular statement describing a cause, deductively supports or explains the statement describing the effect. This backing law (or deductive-nomological) account of singular causation has recently become the target of several kinds of criticism. First, the possibility of giving a detailed and elaborate account of the re…Read more
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86Ruben and the metaphysics of the social worldBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (2): 261-273. 1989.
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76We-intentions, free-riding, and being in reserveErkenntnis 36 (1). 1992.A person can intend to achieve his own personal aims and ends, but he can also intend to promote the goals of his groups or collectives. In many cases of collective action these two types of intention will coincide, but they need not, and when they clash, collective action dilemmas, like free-riderism, will emerge. In this paper we discuss and analyze a central kind of group-intentions termed we-intentions, and distinguish between absolute and conditional we-intentions. The analyses of the latte…Read more
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38On the eliminative explanation of social theoriesStudia Logica 42 (2-3). 1983.The paper discusses eliminative explanation in which a (social) successor theory correctively explains and, as a consequence, eliminates its predecessor theory. Technical concepts and results from general logic are applied to the explication of corrective explanation, especially to the notion of framework translation that it involves.
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17Social Action: A Teleological AccountAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2): 300-301. 2003.Book Information Social Action: A Teleological Account. By Seumas Miller. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 2001. Pp. xi + 308. Hardback, £45. Paperback, £16.95.
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30Morgan on deductive explanation: A rejoinder (review)Journal of Philosophical Logic 5 (4). 1976.This paper is mainly a response to Charles Morgan's criticisms (this journal, pp. 511-25) of the author's model of the (formal aspects of) explanation. It is claimed in the paper that with two modifications and some additional specifications the model withstands Morgan's criticisms
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32Theoretical conceptsSpringer Verlag. 1973.to that goal, and it is hoped that it will incorporate further works dealing in an exact way with interesting philosophical issues. Zurich, April 1973 Mario Bunge Preface In this book I have investigated the logical and methodological role of the much debated theoretical concepts in scientific theories. The philosophical viewpoint underlying my argumentation is critical scientific realism. My method of exposition has been to express ideas first in general terms and then to develop and elaborate …Read more
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729Cooperation and trust in group contextMind and Society 4 (1): 49-84. 2005.This paper is mainly about cooperation as a collective action in a group context (acting in a position or participating in the performance of a group task, etc.), although the assumption of the presence of a group context is not made in all parts of the paper. The paper clarifies what acting as a group member involves, and it analytically characterizes the ‘‘we-mode’’ (thinking and acting as a group member) and the ‘‘I-mode’’ (thinking and acting as a private person).
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7Review of Keith Graham, Practical Reasoning in a Social World (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (9). 2002.
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23Collective acceptance and collective attitudes: on the socialIn Uskali Mäki (ed.), Fact and Fiction in Economics: Models, Realism and Social Construction, Cambridge University Press. pp. 269. 2002.
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305We will do it: An analysis of group-intentionsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (2): 249-277. 1991.
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263Group beliefsSynthese 91 (3): 285-318. 1992.It is argued in this paper that there can be both normative and nonnormative, merely factual group beliefs. The former involve the whole social group in question, while the latter only relate to the distributions of personal beliefs within the group. The paper develops a detailed theory, called the positional account of group beliefs, to explicate normative, group-involving group beliefs. Normative group beliefs are characterized within this approach in terms of joint acceptances of views by the…Read more
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87Philosophy and distributed artificial intelligence: The case of joint intentionIn N. Jennings & G. O'Hare (eds.), Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Wiley. 1996.In current philosophical research the term 'philosophy of social action' can be used - and has been used - in a broad sense to encompass the following central research topics: 1) action occurring in a social context; this includes multi-agent action; 2) joint attitudes (or "we-attitudes" such as joint intention, mutual belief) and other social attitudes needed for the explication and explanation of social action; 3) social macro-notions, such as actions performed by social groups and properties …Read more
Raimo Tuomela
(1940 - 2020)
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University of HelsinkiDepartment of Philosophy (Theoretical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy in Swedish)Retired faculty