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 Language Truth and Logic written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A delightful book … I should like to have written it myself." — Bertrand Russell First published in 1936, this first full-length presentation in English of the Logical Positivism of Carnap, Neurath, and others has gone through many printings to become a classic of thought and communication. It not only surveys one of the most important areas of modern thought; it also shows the confusion that arises from imperfect understanding of the uses of language. A first-rate antidote for fuzzy thought and muddled writing, this remarkable book has helped philosophers, writers, speakers, teachers, students, and general readers alike. Mr. Ayers sets up specific tests by which you can easily evaluate statements of ideas. You will also learn how to distinguish ideas that cannot be verified by experience — those expressing religious, moral, or aesthetic experience, those expounding theological or metaphysical doctrine, and those dealing with a priori truth. The basic thesis of this work is that philosophy should not squander its energies upon the unknowable, but should perform its proper function in criticism and analysis.
Download or read book Probability and Evidence written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new edition of Probability and Evidence, first published in 1972, one of the foremost analytical philosophers of the twentieth century addresses central questions in epistemology and the philosophy of science. Based on Ayer's influential Dewey Lectures of 1970, Probability and Evidence contains revised versions of the lectures and two additional essays. This new edition includes Graham Macdonald's extensive introduction explaining the book's importance and influence in contemporary philosophy.
Download or read book The Problem of Knowledge written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by Viking Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A J Ayer written by Ben Rogers and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) was a man of startling complexity: an exceptionally rigorous and penetrating philosopher, he was also a dedicated hedonist and seducer. He traveled in the most glamorous social circles, yet his friends found him oddly remote. Internationally acclaimed author Ben Rogers brings the brilliant, strangely vulnerable author of the classic Language, Truth, and Logic to vivid life, along with the Oxford intellectual world where he met Isaiah Berlin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and many other great thinkers and writers of the era. Colorful, intimate, and often poignant, this is a powerful biography of a provocative and unforgettable man whose ideas changed the landscape of Western thought. "Beautifully written, sympathetic, and sensitive ... [a] balanced and rounded picture of a very complicated man." -- Simon Blackburn, The New Republic "A readable and well-researched account of the life and career of a remarkable figure." -- Lynwood Abram, Houston Chronicle "A.J. Ayer lived a fascinating life and in Rogers he has found an ideal biographer....." -- Frank McLynn, The New Statesman "Rogers succeeds in capturing the spirit of a philosophical maverick who many loved to hate." -- Kirkus Reviews "Exceptionally good ... A.J. Ayer weaves the philosophical, public, and private strands of Ayer's life together most skillfully." -- The Economist
Download or read book Talking Philosophy written by Bryan Magee and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2001 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a highly successful BBC television series, this book presents fifteen dialogues between author and broadcaster Bryan Magee and some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. Isaiah Berlin considers the fundamental question, "What is philosophy?," A. J. Ayer reviews logical positivism, and Iris Murdoch talks about the relation between philosophy and literature. Moral philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of science are all treated in depth by the thinkers who have shaped these fields--including Noam Chomsky, W. V. O. Quine, and Herbert Marcuse. Written in an informal, conversational style, even the most difficult philosophical ideas are made accessible to the general reader.
Download or read book Carnap and Twentieth Century Thought written by A. W. Carus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-13 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany and later a US citizen, he was a founder of the philosophical movement known as Logical Empiricism. He was strongly influenced by a number of different philosophical traditions (including the legacies of both Kant and Husserl), and also by the German Youth Movement, the First World War (in which he was wounded and decorated), and radical socialism. This book places his central ideas in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context, showing how he synthesised many different currents of thought to achieve a philosophical perspective that remains strikingly relevant in the twenty-first century. Its rich account of a philosopher's response to his times will appeal to all who are interested in the development of philosophy in the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge written by A J (Alfred Jules) 1910-1989 Ayer and published by Hassell Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Metaphysical Animals written by Clare Mac Cumhaill and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A vibrant portrait of four college friends—Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley—who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away fighting World War II. The history of European philosophy is usually constructed from the work of men. In Metaphysical Animals, a pioneering group biography, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman offer a compelling alternative. In the mid-twentieth century Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch were philosophy students at Oxford when most male undergraduates and many tutors were conscripted away to fight in the Second World War. Together, these young women, all friends, developed a philosophy that could respond to the war’s darkest revelations. Neither the great Enlightenment thinkers of the past, the logical innovators of the early twentieth century, or the new Existentialist philosophy trickling across the Channel, could make sense of this new human reality of limitless depravity and destructive power, the women felt. Their answer was to bring philosophy back to life. We are metaphysical animals, they realized, creatures that can question their very being. Who am I? What is freedom? What is human goodness? The answers we give, they believed, shape what we will become. Written with expertise and flair, Metaphysical Animals is a lively portrait of women who shared ideas, but also apartments, clothes and even lovers. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman show how from the disorder and despair of the war, four brilliant friends created a way of ethical thinking that is there for us today.
Download or read book The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer s Language Truth and Logic written by Adam Tamas Tuboly and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2021-11-07 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on A. J. Ayer’s 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and philosophical significance of Ayer’s work, examining its place in the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy. Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language. Among the questions discussed are: How did Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact? The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind.
Download or read book The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers written by J. O. Urmson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fully revised third edition of this Concise Encyclopedia brings it completely up-to-date. Featuring lively and engaging entries by some of the leading philosophers of our age, it is a readable reference work and engaging introduction.
Download or read book Philosophy in the Present written by Alain Badiou and published by Polity. This book was released on 2009-12-14 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two controversial thinkers discuss a timeless but nonetheless urgent question: should philosophy interfere in the world? Nothing less than philosophy is at stake because, according to Badiou, philosophy is nothing but interference and commitment and will not be restrained by academic discipline. Philosophy is strange and new, and yet speaks in the name of all - as Badiou shows with his theory of universality. Similarly, Zizek believes that the philosopher must intervene, contrary to all expectations, in the key issues of the time. He can offer no direction, but this only shows that the question has been posed incorrectly: it is valid to change the terms of the debate and settle on philosophy as abnormality and excess. At once an invitation to philosophy and an introduction to the thinking of two of the most topical and controversial philosophers writing today, this concise volume will be of great interest to students and general readers alike.
Download or read book Perception and Identity written by G.F. Macdonald and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Little History of Philosophy written by Nigel Warburton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an introduction to the ideas of major Western philosophers, including Aristotle, Augustine, John Locke, and Karl Marx.
Download or read book Confessions of a Philosopher written by Bryan Magee and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 1999-05-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this infectiously exciting book, Bryan Magee tells the story of his own discovery of philosophy and not only makes it come alive but shows its relevance to daily life. Magee is the Carl Sagan of philosophy, the great popularizer of the subject, and author of a major new introductory history, The Story of Philosophy. Confessions follows the course of Magee's life, exploring philosophers and ideas as he himself encountered them, introducing all the great figures and their ideas, from the pre-Socratics to Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, including Wittgenstein, Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, rationalism, utilitarianism, empiricism, and existentialism.
Download or read book Philosophy in the Twentieth Century written by Alfred Jules Ayer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1984 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founder of the school of Logical Positivism looks back on twentieth-century Western philosophy, idiosyncratically stressing those developments and figures with which he is most in sympathy
Download or read book The Women Are Up to Something written by Benjamin J. Bruxvoort Lipscomb and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Résumé éditeur : This book tells two intertwined stories, centered on twentieth-century moral philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe, Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch. The first is the story of four friends who came up to Oxford together just before WWII. It is the story of their lives, loves, and intellectual preoccupations; it is a story about women trying to find a place in a man's world of academic philosophy. The second story is about these friends' shared philosophical project and their unintentional creation of a school of thought that challenged the dominant way of doing ethics. That dominant school of thought envisioned the world as empty, value-free matter, on which humans impose meaning. This outlook treated statements such as “this is good” as mere expressions of feeling or preference, reflecting no objective standards. It emphasized human freedom and demanded an unflinching recognition of the value-free world. The four friends diagnosed this moral philosophy as an impoverishing intellectual fad. This style of thought, they believed, obscured the realities of human nature and left people without the resources to make difficult moral choices or to confront evil. As an alternative, the women proposed a naturalistic ethics, reviving a line of thought running through Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, and enriched by modern biologists like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin. The women proposed that there are, in fact, moral truths, based in facts about the distinctive nature of the human animal and what that animal needs to thrive."
