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A rigorous, yet accessible and entertaining introduction to the field of logic, this book provides students with a unique insight into logic as a living field and how it connects to other fields of inquiry including philosophy, computer science, linguistics, and mathematics. With no background knowledge needed, students are introduced to a critical examination of 'classical logic', and the technical issues and paradoxes that may be encountered. Each chapter includes key pedagogical features such as marginal notes, definitions, chapter summaries and practice exercises. Arguments are backed up by authentic examples of logic within natural languages and everyday life. The flexible chapter structure allows instructors to tailor their teaching for either a one-semester or two-semester course, according to their students' needs and knowledge. Online resources include a companion website featuring further readings, class handouts, LaTeX resources, along with an Online Proof Evaluator allowing students to get real-time feedback.
This thoroughly updated second edition guides readers through the central concepts and debates in the philosophy of science. Using concrete examples from the history of science, Kent W. Staley addresses questions about what science is, why it is important, and the basis for trust in scientific results. The first part of the book introduces the central concepts of philosophy of science, with updated discussions of the problem of induction, underdetermination, rationality, scientific progress, and important movements such as falsificationism, logical empiricism, and postpositivism, together with a new chapter on social constructionism. The second part offers updated chapters on probability, scientific realism, explanation, and values in science, along with new discussions of the role of models in science, science in policy-making, and feminist philosophy of science. This broad yet detailed overview will give readers a strong grounding in philosophy of science whilst also providing opportunities for further exploration.
Classical logic – which studies the structural features of purported claims of fact – and modal logic – which studies relations of necessity and possibility – are different but complementary areas of logical thought. In this lively and accessible textbook, Adam Bjorndahl provides a comprehensive and unified introduction to the two subjects, treating them with the same level of rigour and detail and showing how they fit together. The core material appears in the main text, with hundreds of supplemental examples, comments, clarifications, and connections presented throughout in easy-to-read sidenotes, giving the book a distinct conversational feel. A detailed, multi-part appendix covers important background mathematical material that some students may lack, such as induction or the concept of countable infinity. A fully self-contained learning resource, this book will be ideal for a semester-long upper-level university course on either or both of the topics.
Now in an expanded and revised second edition, this book offers clear, penetrating examination of the central questions of ethics through study of the most important ethical theories in Western philosophy. Readers are introduced not only to the main ideas of each theory but also to contemporary developments and defenses of those ideas. Among theories the book covers are egoism, the eudaimonism of Plato and Aristotle, act and rule utilitarianism, modern natural law theory, Kant's moral theory, and existentialist ethics. Two new chapters add to this coverage expositions of Hume's ethics, Sidgwick's program for defending utilitarianism, and Rawls's hypothetical contractarianism. The discussions throughout draw the reader into philosophical inquiry through argument and criticism that illuminate the profundity of the questions under examination. Students will find this book to be a helpful guide to how philosophical inquiry is undertaken as well as to what the major theories of ethics hold.
Plato's Republic is a central text in the Western philosophical tradition and also a specimen of its author's exceptional literary and dramatic skill. The first book introduces, and conspicuously fails to answer, the question: What is justice? It also introduces the sophist Thrasymachus, who is quite certain that he knows what justice is, namely that it is nothing other than what the dominant power in the state considers to be in its own interest. The contentious confrontation between Thrasymachus and Socrates sets the stage for Plato's controversial construction of an ideal state in which the true nature of justice will be revealed. The Commentary draws attention to the way Plato anticipates developments in later books, thus serving as an introduction to Republic as a whole. Particular attention is paid to Plato's language and style, so that students of Greek literature as well as philosophy are well served.
How does Christian belief and practice relate to living well amid the difficulties of everyday life and the catastrophes and injustices that afflict so many today? In his introduction to Christian ethics, Bretherton provides a new, constructive framework for addressing this question. Connecting the theory and practice of Christian moral thought to contemporary existential concerns, this book integrates classic approaches to the pursuit of wisdom with contemporary liberationist and critical voices. The relationship between human and nonhuman life provides a central focus to the work, foregrounding environmental justice. As well as addressing a broad range of ethical questions, Bretherton situates moral formation and the pursuit of human and nonhuman flourishing alongside a concern for spirituality, pastoral care, and political struggles to survive and thrive in the contemporary context. Written for those seeking a place to start, as well as those seasoned in the field, Bretherton's book provides an innovative ethical framework that moves beyond many of the impasses that shape current moral and political debates.
In this clearly written and accessible book, Stephen J. Laumakis explains the origin and development of Buddhist ideas and concepts, focusing on the philosophical ideas and arguments presented and defended by selected thinkers and sutras from various traditions. Starting with a sketch of the Buddha and the Dharma and highlighting the origins of Buddhism in India, he then considers specific details of the Dharma with special attention to Buddhist ontology and epistemology. He examines the development of Buddhism in China, Japan, and Tibet, and concludes with the ideas of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Each chapter includes explanations of key terms and teachings, excerpts from primary source materials, and presentations of relevant arguments. This second edition is revised and updated throughout and includes two new chapters, on Buddhist ethics and Buddhist meditation. It will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in this rich and vibrant philosophy.
Semantics and pragmatics – the study of meaning, and meaning in context, respectively – are two fundamental areas of linguistics, and as such are crucial to our understanding of how meaning is created. However, their theoretical ideas are often introduced without making clear connections between views, theories, and problems. This pioneering volume is both a textbook and a research guide, taking the reader on a journey through language and ultimately enabling them to think about meaning as linguists and philosophers would. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it introduces semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language, showing how all three fields can address the 'big questions' that run through the study of meaning. It covers key theories and approaches, while also enabling increasingly more sophisticated questions about the interconnected aspects of meaning, with the end goal of preparing the reader to make their own, original contributions to ideas about meaning.
Pragmatics – the study of language in context, and of how we understand what other people say – is a core subject in English language, linguistics, and communication studies. This textbook introduces the key topics in this fast-moving field, including metaphor, irony, politeness, disambiguation, and reference assignment. It walks the reader through the essential theories in pragmatics, including Grice, relevance theory, speech act theory, and politeness theory. Each chapter includes a range of illustrative examples, guiding readers from the basic principles to a thorough understanding of the topics. A dedicated chapter examines how research is conducted in pragmatics, providing students with resources and ideas for developing their own projects. Featuring exercises, a comprehensive glossary, and suggestions for further reading, this book is accessible to beginner undergraduates, including those with no prior knowledge of linguistics. It is an essential resource for courses in English language, English studies, and linguistics.
This textbook gives a complete and modern introduction to mathematical logic. The author uses contemporary notation, conventions, and perspectives throughout, and emphasizes interactions with the rest of mathematics. In addition to covering the basic concepts of mathematical logic and the fundamental material on completeness, compactness, and incompleteness, it devotes significant space to thorough introductions to the pillars of the modern subject: model theory, set theory, and computability. Requiring only a modest background of undergraduate mathematics, the text can be readily adapted for a variety of one- or two-semester courses at the upper-undergraduate or beginning-graduate level. Numerous examples reinforce the key ideas and illustrate their applications, and a wealth of classroom-tested exercises serve to consolidate readers' understanding. Comprehensive and engaging, this book offers a fresh approach to this enduringly fascinating and important subject.
The fourth edition of this popular text has been significantly rewritten to make it more accessible to students and easier for instructors to use. It remains distinctive in presenting a unified narrative of cognitive science as a field of inquiry in its own right. Thematically organized, Cognitive Science underscores the problems and solutions of cognitive science rather than more narrowly examining individually the subjects that contribute to it - psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and so on. The generous use of examples, illustrations, and applications demonstrates how theory and experiment can be applied to unlock the mysteries of the human mind. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text has been updated and enhanced with a new chapter on emotions and the emerging field of affective science. An extensive online set of resources is available to aid both instructors and students.
Consciousness concerns awareness and how we experience the world. How does awareness, a feature of the mental world, arise from the physical brain? Is a dog conscious, or a jellyfish, and what explains the difference? How is consciousness related to psychological processes such as perception and cognition? The Science of Consciousness covers the psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience of consciousness. Written for introductory courses in psychology and philosophy, this text examines consciousness with a special emphasis on current neuroscience research as well as comparisons of normal and damaged brains. The full range of normal and altered states of consciousness, including sleep and dreams, hypnotic and meditative states, anesthesia, and drug-induced states, as well as parapsychological phenomena and their importance for the science of consciousness is covered, as well as the 'higher' states and how we can attain them. Throughout the text attempts to relate consciousness to the brain.
Now revised and containing three new chapters, this book provides a clear and accessible introduction to epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. It discusses some of the main theories of justification, including foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and virtue epistemology. Other topics include the Gettier problem, internalism and externalism, skepticism, the problem of epistemic circularity, a priori knowledge, naturalized epistemology, and the epistemic significance of testimony and disagreement. Intended primarily for students taking their first classes in epistemology, this lucid and well-written text will provide an excellent introduction to anyone interested in knowing more about this important area of philosophy.
Formal logic provides us with a powerful set of techniques for criticizing some arguments and showing others to be valid. These techniques are relevant to all of us with an interest in being skilful and accurate reasoners. In this very accessible book, extensively revised and rewritten for the second edition, Peter Smith presents a guide to the fundamental aims and basic elements of formal logic. He introduces the reader to the languages of propositional and predicate logic, and develops natural deduction systems for evaluating arguments translated into these languages. His discussion is richly illustrated with worked examples and exercises, and alongside the formal work there is illuminating philosophical commentary. This book will make an ideal text for a first logic course and will provide a firm basis for further work in formal and philosophical logic.
The Third Edition of this popular and engaging text consolidates the interdisciplinary streams of cognitive science to present a unified narrative of cognitive science as a discipline in its own right. It teaches students to apply the techniques and theories of the cognitive scientist's 'toolkit' - the vast range of methods and tools that cognitive scientists use to study the mind. Thematically organized, Cognitive Science underscores the problems and solutions of cognitive science rather than more narrowly examining individually the subjects that contribute to it - psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and so on. The generous use of examples, illustrations, and applications demonstrates how theory is applied to unlock the mysteries of the human mind. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text has been substantially revised, with new material on Bayesian approaches to the mind and on deep learning. An extensive on-line set of resources is available to aid instructors and students alike. Sample syllabi show how the text can support a variety of courses, making it a highly flexible teaching and learning resource at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Instructor and student resources available at https://www.bermudezcogsci.com/
On the Duty of Man and Citizen (1673) is Pufendorf's succinct and condensed presentation of the natural law political theory he developed in his monumental classic On the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). His theory was the most influential natural law philosophy of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries. He advanced a compelling reply to Grotius and Hobbes, and in doing so, set the intellectual problems for theorists such as Locke, Hutcheson, Hume, Rousseau, and Smith. In the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, Pufendorf sets forth a classic justification of the early modern enlightened state and of the proper relations of moral and political subjection to it. This lucid and historically sensitive translation by Michael Silverthorne, (a classicist and a specialist in Roman Law and early modern political thought) is the first since the early twentieth century. James Tully's introduction sets the text in its seventeenth-century context, summarises the main arguments, surveys recent literature on Pufendorf, and shows how Pufendorf transformed natural law theory into an independent discipline of juristic political philosophy which dominated reflection on politics until Kant.
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This new edition includes slightly revised translations, a revised introduction with expanded discussion of certain key themes in the work, and up-to-date guidance on further reading.
Plato's Symposium is the most literary of all his works and one which all students of classics are likely to want to read whether or not they are studying Plato's philosophy. But the reader does need help in appreciating both the artistry and the arguments, and in comprehending the social and cultural background against which the 'praise of love' is delivered. Sir Kenneth Dover provides here a sympathetic and modern edition of the kind that is long overdue. It consists of an introduction, the Greek text accompanied by a very abbreviated critical apparatus, and a commentary on the text which is intended to elucidate the Greek, to make the philosophical argument intelligible, and to relate the content of what is said to the concepts and assumptions of contemporary morality and society. An edition for students of Greek in universities and the upper forms of schools.
Beginning with a long and extensively rewritten introduction surveying the predecessors of the Presocratics, this book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides and the complex physical theories of Anaxagoras and the Atomists in the fifth century it is based on a selection of some six hundred texts, in Greek and a close English translation which in this edition is given more prominence. These provide the basis for a detailed critical study of the principal individual thinkers of the time. Besides serving as an essential text for undergraduate and graduate courses in Greek philosophy and in the history of science, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers with interests in philosophy, theology, the history of ideas and of the ancient world, and indeed to anyone who wants an authoritative account of the Presocratics.
The original edition of Kant: Political Writings was first published in 1970, and has long been established as the principal English-language edition of this important body of writing. In this new, expanded edition, two important texts illustrating Kants's view of history are included for the first time: his reviews of Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of The History of Mankind and Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History; as well as the essay What is Orientation in Thinking. In addition to a general introduction assessing Kant's political thought in terms of his fundamental principles of politics, this edition also contains such useful student aids as notes on the texts, a comprehensive bibliography, and a new postscript, looking at some of the principal issues in Kantian scholarship that have arisen since first publication.