Download or read book The Central Questions of Philosophy written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this introduction to some of the most frequently discussed areas of philosophy, Sir Alfred Ayer made his subject accessible to both the general reader and the student. Among the topics covered are the nature of philosophy, varieties of philosophical analysis, theory of knowledge, status of physical objects, relations between body and mind, character of scientific explanation, theory of probability, elements of logic and the claims of theology. Although it ranges more widely, the book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy.
Download or read book The Central Questions of Philosophy written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1976 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Problems of Philosophy written by Bertrand Russell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic work, first published in 1912, has never been supplanted as an approachable introduction to the theory of philosophical enquiry. It gives Russell's views on such subjects as the distinction between appearance and reality, the existence and nature of matter, idealism, knowledge by acquaintance and by description, induction, truth and falsehood, the distinction between knowledge, error and probable opinion, and the limits and value of philosophical knowledge.
Download or read book The Central Questions of Philosophy By A J Ayer written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Philosophy s Big Questions written by Steven M. Emmanuel and published by . This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this book turn to the major figures and texts of the Buddhist tradition in order to expand and enrich our thinking on enduring philosophical questions. Featuring striking and generative comparisons, Philosophy's Big Questions offers readers new conceptual tools, methods, and insights for the pursuit of a good and happy life.
Download or read book Philosophical Questions written by Bina Gupta and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophical Questions: East and West is an anthology of source material for use in comparative courses in philosophy, religion, and the humanities. The readings--derived from the great works of the Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Islamic, and Western intellectual traditions--are presented as answers to some of the most enduring questions in philosophy. Discussions are arranged under the headings of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and the nature of human being. Each section begins with an introductory essay in which the leading questions and their responses from different traditions are presented in overview.Philosophical Questions raises the central questions of comparative philosophy and eloquently argues the need for discarding familiar cliches to make a fresh, unprejudiced study of these traditions.
Download or read book The Making of a Confederate written by William L. Barney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-14 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the advances of the civil rights movement, many white southerners cling to the faded glory of a romanticized Confederate past. In The Making of a Confederate, William L. Barney focuses on the life of one man, Walter Lenoir of North Carolina, to examine the origins of southern white identity alongside its myriad ambiguities and complexities. Born into a wealthy slaveholding family, Lenoir abhorred the institution, opposed secession, and planned to leave his family to move to Minnesota, in the free North. But when the war erupted in 1860, Lenoir found another escape route--he joined the Confederate army, an experience that would radically transform his ideals. After the war, Lenoir, like many others, embraced the cult of the Lost Cause, refashioning his memory and beliefs in an attempt to make sense of the war, its causes, and its consequences. While some Southerners sank into depression, aligned with the victors, or fiercely opposed the new order, Lenoir withdrew to his acreage in the North Carolina mountains. There, he pursued his own vision of the South's future, one that called for greater self-sufficiency and a more efficient use of the land. For Lenoir and many fellow Confederates, the war never really ended. As he tells this compelling story, Barney offers new insights into the ways that (selective) memory informs history; through Lenoir's life, readers learn how individual choices can transform abstract historical processes into concrete actions.
Download or read book Equality and Tradition written by Samuel Scheffler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by noted philosopher Samuel Scheffler combines discussion of abstract questions in moral and political theory with attention to the normative dimension of current social and political controversies. In addition to chapters on more abstract issues such as the nature of human valuing, the role of partiality in ethics, and the significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, the volume also includes essays on immigration, terrorism, toleration, political equality, and the normative significance of tradition. Uniting the essays is a shared preoccupation with questions about human value and values. The volume opens with an essay that considers the general question of what it is to value something - as opposed, say, to wanting it, wanting to want it, or thinking that it is valuable. Other essays explore particular values, such as equality, whose meaning and content are contested. Still others consider the tensions that arise, both within and among individuals, in consequence of the diversity of human values. One of the overarching aims of the book is to illuminate the different ways in which liberal political theory attempts to resolve conflicts of both of these kinds.
Download or read book Ayer Writings on Philosophy written by A. J. Ayer and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2005-11-29 with total page 2200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British philosopher A.J. Ayer is known for his influence on the development of analytical philosophy, spreading and developing the ideas of logical positivism following his study with the Vienna Circle in the 1920s. Ayer rejected metaphysics and theology as meaningless and emotivist, and argued for what he identified as a "criterion of verifiability" as a test of meaningful statements. In addition to being a creative and rigorous philosopher, the major books included in this collection reveal him to have been a gifted teacher.
Download or read book Introduction to Philosophy written by Steve Wilkens and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to Philosophy: Christianity and the Big Questions is a perfect primer for students of philosophy and anyone interested in a Christian perspective on the timeless and universal perplexities of human existence.--Thomas M. Crisp, Professor of Philosophy, Biola University
Download or read book Philosophy and the Problems of Work written by Kory Schaff and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy and the Problems of Work brings together for the first time important philosophical perspectives on the subjects of labor and work, spanning analytical and Continental traditions. This comprehensive collection engages contemporary debates in political theory and the philosophy of economics, including the perspectives of classical and welfare liberals, anarchists, and feminists, about the nature and meaning of work in modern technological society, the issues of meaningful work and exploitation, justice and equality, the welfare state and democratic rights, and whether market socialism is a competitive alternative to traditional capitalism. An introduction by the editor charts the historical development of these issues in philosophical and political discussions and examines the central importance of the organization and structures of work for both individual self-realization and human societies generally.Philosophy and the Problems of Work brings together for the first time important philosophical perspectives on the subjects of labor and work, spanning analytical and Continental traditions. This comprehensive collection engages contemporary debates in political theory and the philosophy of economics, including the perspectives of classical and welfare liberals, anarchists, and feminists, about the nature and meaning of work in modern technological society, the issues of meaningful work and exploitation, justice and equality, the welfare state and democratic rights, and whether market socialism is a competitive alternative to traditional capitalism. An introduction by the editor charts the historical development of these issues in philosophical and political discussions and examines the central importance of the organization and structures of work for both individual self-realization and human societies generally.
Download or read book What Do Philosophers Do written by Penelope Maddy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you know the world around you isn't just an elaborate dream, or the creation of an evil neuroscientist? If all you have to go on are various lights, sounds, smells, tastes and tickles, how can you know what the world is really like, or even whether there is a world beyond your own mind? Questions like these -- familiar from science fiction and dorm room debates -- lie at the core of venerable philosophical arguments for radical skepticism: the stark contention that we in fact know nothing at all about the world, that we have no more reason to believe any claim -- that there are trees, that we have hands -- than we have to disbelieve it. Like non-philosophers in their sober moments, philosophers, too, find this skeptical conclusion preposterous, but they're faced with those famous arguments: the Dream Argument, the Argument from Illusion, the Infinite Regress of Justification, the more recent Closure Argument. If these can't be met, they raise a serious challenge not just to philosophers, but to anyone responsible enough to expect her beliefs to square with her evidence. What Do Philosophers Do? takes up the skeptical arguments from this everyday point of view, and ultimately concludes that they don't undermine our ordinary beliefs or our ordinary ways of finding out about the world. In the process, Maddy examines and evaluates a range of philosophical methods -- common sense, scientific naturalism, ordinary language, conceptual analysis, therapeutic approaches -- as employed by such philosophers as Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin. The result is a revealing portrait of what philosophers do, and perhaps a quiet suggestion for what they should do, for what they do best.
Download or read book The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy written by Alfred Cyril Ewing and published by Routledge/Thoemms Press. This book was released on 1951 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1951, this outline work on the theory of knowledge and metaphysics in intended both for university students who have recently started on the subject and for any who, without having the advantage of studying it at University, wish by private reading to acquire a general idea of its nature. The book deals with all the main questions arising within the field in so far as they can be stated and discussed profitably and simply. The topics discussed include the place of reason in knowledge and life, the possibility of knowledge beyond sense-experiene, the theory of perception, the relation of body and mind, alleged philosophical implications of recent scientific doctrines, the problem of evil and the existence of God.
Download or read book Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind written by Brian P. McLaughlin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today. Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of the mental content, and the nature of consciousness
Download or read book Thinking It Through written by Kwame Anthony Appiah and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-06 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thinking it Through is a thorough, vividly written introduction to contemporary philosophy and some of the most crucial questions of human existence, including the nature of mind and knowledge, the status of moral claims, the existence of God, the role of science, and the mysteries of language. Noted philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah shows us what it means to "do" philosophy in our time and why it should matter to anyone who wishes to live a more thoughtful life. Opposing the common misconceptions that being a philosopher means espousing a set of philosophical beliefs--or being a follower of a particular thinker--Appiah argues that "the result of philosophical exploration is not the end of inquiry in a settled opinion, but a mind resting more comfortably among many possibilities, or else the reframing of the question, and a new inquiry." Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, Thinking It Through is organized around eight central topics--mind, knowledge, language, science, morality, politics, law, and metaphysics. It traces how philosophers in the past have considered each subject (how Hobbes, Wittgenstein, and Frege, for example, approached the problem of language) and then explores some of the major questions that still engage philosophers today. More importantly, Appiah not only explains what philosophers have thought but how they think, giving students examples that they can use in their own attempts to navigate the complex issues confronting any reflective person in the twenty-first century. Filled with concrete examples of how philosophers work, Thinking it Through guides students through the process of philosophical reflection and enlarges their understanding of the central questions of human life.
Download or read book The Big Questions Philosophy written by Simon Blackburn and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Simon Blackburn tackles the key questions in philosophy--and provides easy-to-understand and enlightening answers. In Big Questions: Philosophy, bestselling author Simon Blackburn addresses the 20 essential questions: What is the meaning of life? Am I free? Why is there something and not nothing? What do we really know? Is there such a thing as society? Can machines think? What is time? How can I deceive myself? Why be good? What fills up space? Can we truly understand each other? Why do things keep on keeping on? Are we rational? What am I? What are my rights? Is truth relative? Do we need God? What is human nature? What is beauty? Is death to be feared?
Download or read book The Big Questions written by Robert Solomon and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solomon and Higgins's engaging text covers philosophy's central ideas in an accessible, approachable manner. You'll explore timeless "big questions" about the self, God, justice, and other meaningful topics, gaining the context you need for an understanding of the foundational issues, as well as the confidence to establish your own informed positions on these "big questions."
