Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

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Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats’s ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false.” about whether or not our friends are really zombies or mutants. The point is that, if we are dualists, Well, two things: I’d just finished my bigger book on ethics or, if you like, more professional book, Ruling Passions, and I’d also just written Think and enjoyed writing that very much. It is an attempt to make more accessible to a wider public some of the major issues of philosophy. And I thought, well if I could do it for those major issues maybe I could do it for the issues in ethics which interested me, and that’s how Being Good came about. Brilliant. A helpful and/or enlightening book that, in addition to meeting the highest standards in all pertinent aspects, stands out even among the best. Often an instant classic and must-read for everyone.

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In philosophy, he is best known as the proponent of quasi-realism in meta-ethics [6] and as a defender of neo- Humean views on a variety of topics. "The quasi-realist is someone who endorses an anti-realist metaphysical stance but who seeks, through philosophical maneuvering, to earn the right for moral discourse to enjoy all the trappings of realist talk." [6]What do we mean when we ask what the point is? Reflection bakes no bread, but then neither does architecture, music, art, history, or literature.” Philosophy is often dismissed as a purely academic discipline with no relation to the "real" world non-philosophers are compelled to inhabit. Think dispels this myth and offers a springboard for all those who want I think David Hume stands head and shoulders above anyone else. I still think he’s the greatest philosopher Britain has produced and one of the great world philosophers. After that I would say Wittgenstein.

Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy eBook Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy eBook

To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.” I don’t think it is true of the vast majority of scientists actually. I think what happened is that the environmentalist issues became very, very dominant and a number of bodies were set up. The most influential is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC). They produced a mountain of excellent science, including the measurements I’ve been relying upon, but then there are the public pronouncements. And the public pronouncements have always been much much more alarmist than the measurements actually suggest they should be.

Ruling Passions (1998) A defence of a NeoHumean theory of reasons and moral motivation. ISBN 0-19-824785-0. There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything.” The chapter on free will discusses the possibility of a predetermined fate like voiced in countless religious texts: Do we have a choice in what we do or is it only the result of cultural conditioning? Can we really blame a murderer for killing someone if he had a depression? In this chapter I first encountered the belief that reducing people to predetermined and conditioned factors objectivies them, taking away their humanity. When I was given a book called Think just before I came to Oxford, I was a little offended. Philosophy, I had figured, was one area where I could confidently claim to know the basics, and I felt that an introductory book would have been too simple and not interesting enough for me. But since Think had the advantage of being a small book with large words, I gave it a shot.

Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy - Simon

What do we really know? -The Big Questions of Philosophy" – (2009) from Quercus. ISBN 978-1-78087-587-3. mental side as something quite separate from the physical. At first it seems to make sense to suppose Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing in which we live. We may end up proud of the structures we have built. Or we may believe that they need dismantling and starting afresh. But first, we have to know what they are.” The examples or analogies that SB employs to explain involved ideas or difficult concepts are not always helpful and in a couple of instances, they even compounded my confusion. On the whole, a lot of the chapters didn't seem coherent enough for you to be sufficiently confident about your understanding of the different topics. I often found it hard to explain what I had just read to someone else. I think all of these reasons make this book a rather dull reading for those that aren't deeply interested in philosophy. Science similarly contains within itself the devices for correcting the illusions of science. That is its crowning glory. When we come upon intellectual endeavours that contain no such devices—one might cite psychoanalysis, grand political theories, ‘new age’ science, creationist science—we need not be interested.”that is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking. For it could be, that were I totally to Finally, the chapter on reasoning will help with Logic, which all philosophers at Oxford study in their first year, and the chapter for knowledge is some fundamental stuff that will be interesting for anyone philosophically inclined. I've always wanted to learn more about philosophy, and gain an understanding of the value of the field.

Think A compelling introduction to philosophy - Academia.edu Think A compelling introduction to philosophy - Academia.edu

Leibniz thought that if we had a sufficiently logical notation, dispute and confusion would cease, and men would sit together and resolve their disputes by calculation.” The existence of god is the topic of the next chapter, in which all the standard arguments for god are shown and evaluated: ontological, cosmological, first cause and design. The issue of god - being all-caring - not being compatible with a world full of suffering is raised. Hume's most ingenious argument rejecting testimony of miracles is presented: He simply says that it is always more probably that someone made up the story than that the miracle happened. Problem solved. Pascal's argument for believing in god is described, namely that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.Well, in the course of my career I have found them successively the most interesting, I suppose. As you say, I started in philosophy of science and epistemology, and moved onto philosophy of language and then ethics. At those different times I have been obsessed by the particular things I had been doing. Just at the present time I have been fascinated by the philosophy of truth and that is what I am trying to work on just now. Think is by far the best introduction to philosophy that I know. Compact but hugely readable, this delightful book would be an excellent basis for an introductory course, as a text or as preliminary reading. You could also give it to family and friends, and all those annoying people who ask you what philosophers do. If Think doesn't explain it to them, nothing will!"--Huw Price, author of Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point Goya’s full motto for his etching is, ‘Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.” like a round square or a number that is both odd and even. We can say the words, but we don’t really