This is a collection of Isaac Levi's philosophical papers. Over the period represented by the work here, Professor Levi has developed an interrelated set of views, in the tradition of Peirce and Dewey, on epistemology and the philosophy of science and social science. This focus has been on the problem of induction and the growth of knowledge, the foundations of probability and the theory of rational decision making. His most important essays in these areas are assembled here, with an introduction setting out their main themes and connections. Part I considers how the aims of scientific inquiry should constrain its practice, employing the crucial notion of 'epistemic utility'. The essays in Part II explain Professor Levi's conception of human knowledge; those in Part III consider objective or statistical probability and evaluate the notion of potential surprise; while Part IV extends his views to central questions of individual and collective decision making. As a whole the volume presents a coherent, elaborated position which will be of great interest to a range of philosophers, decision theorists, welfare and social choice theorists and cognitive scientists.

The Critical Thinking Toolkit is a comprehensive compendium that equips readers with the essential knowledge and methods for clear, analytical, logical thinking and critique in a range of scholarly contexts and everyday situations. * Takes an expansive approach to critical thinking by exploring concepts from other disciplines, including evidence and justification from philosophy, cognitive biases and errors from psychology, race and gender from sociology and political science, and tropes and symbols from rhetoric * Follows the proven format of The Philosopher s Toolkit and The Ethics Toolkit with concise, easily digestible entries, see also recommendations that connect topics, and recommended reading lists * Allows readers to apply new critical thinking and reasoning skills with exercises and real life examples at the end of each chapter * Written in an accessible way, it leads readers through terrain too often cluttered with jargon * Ideal for beginning to advanced students, as well as general readers, looking for a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to critical thinking

This volume responds to the growing interest in finding explanations for why moral claims may lose their validity based on what they ask of their addressees. Two main ideas relate to that question: the moral demandingness objection and the principle "ought implies can." Though both of these ideas can be understood to provide an answer to the same question, they have usually been discussed separately in the philosophical literature. The aim of this collection is to provide a focused and comprehensive discussion of these two ideas and the ways in which they relate to one another, and to take a closer look at the consequences for the limits of moral normativity in general. Chapters engage with contemporary discussions surrounding "ought implies can" as well as current debates on moral demandingness, and argue that applying the moral demandingness objection to the entire range of normative ethical theories also calls for an analysis of its (metaethical) presuppositions. The contributions to this volume are at the leading edge of ethical theory, and have implications for moral theorists, philosophers of action, and those working in metaethics, theoretical ethics and applied ethics.

In this book, David Stump traces alternative conceptions of the a priori in the philosophy of science and defends a unique position in the current debates over conceptual change and the constitutive elements in science. Stump emphasizes the unique epistemological status of the constitutive elements of scientific theories, constitutive elements being the necessary preconditions that must be assumed in order to conduct a particular scientific inquiry. These constitutive elements, such as logic, mathematics, and even some fundamental laws of nature, were once taken to be a priori knowledge but can change, thus leading to a dynamic or relative a priori. Stump critically examines developments in thinking about constitutive elements in science as a priori knowledge, from Kant's fixed and absolute a priori to Quine's holistic empiricism. By examining the relationship between conceptual change and the epistemological status of constitutive elements in science, Stump puts forward an argument that scientific revolutions can be explained and relativism can be avoided without resorting to universals or absolutes.

Series Information:
Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell

Model theory begins with an audacious idea: to consider statements about mathematical structures as mathematical objects of study in their own right. While inherently important as a tool of mathematical logic, it also enjoys connections to and applications in diverse branches of mathematics, including algebra, number theory and analysis. Despite this, traditional introductions to model theory assume a graduate-level background of the reader. In this innovative textbook, Jonathan Kirby brings model theory to an undergraduate audience. The highlights of basic model theory are illustrated through examples from specific structures familiar from undergraduate mathematics, paying particular attention to definable sets throughout. With numerous exercises of varying difficulty, this is an accessible introduction to model theory and its place in mathematics.

The first systematic exposition of all the central topics in the philosophy of logic, Susan Haack's book has established an international reputation (translated into five languages) for its accessibility, clarity, conciseness, orderliness, and range as well as for its thorough scholarship and careful analyses. Haack discusses the scope and purpose of logic, validity, truth-functions, quantification and ontology, names, descriptions, truth, truth-bearers, the set-theoretical and semantic paradoxes, and modality. She also explores the motivations for a whole range of nonclassical systems of logic, including many-valued logics, fuzzy logic, modal and tense logics, and relevance logics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes in Greek and Roman science, medicine, mathematics and technology. A distinguished team of specialists engage with topics including the role of observation and experiment, Presocratic natural philosophy, ancient creationism, and the special style of ancient Greek mathematical texts, while several chapters confront key questions in the philosophy of science such as the relationship between evidence and explanation. The volume will spark renewed discussion about the character of 'ancient' versus 'modern' science, and will broaden readers' understanding of the rich traditions of ancient Greco-Roman natural philosophy, science, medicine and mathematics.

A valuable guide on creativity and critical thinking to improve reasoning and decision-making skills

Critical thinking skills are essential in virtually any field of study or practice where individuals need to communicate ideas, make decisions, and analyze and solve problems. "An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity: Think More, Think Better" outlines the necessary tools for readers to become critical as well as creative thinkers. By gaining a practical and solid foundation in the basic principles that underlie critical thinking and creativity, readers will become equipped to think in a more systematic, logical, and imaginative manner.

Creativity is needed to generate new ideas to solve problems, and critical thinking evaluates and improves an idea. These concepts are uniquely introduced as a unified whole due to their dependence on each other. Each chapter introduces relevant theories in conjunction with real-life examples and findings from cognitive science and psychology to illustrate how the theories can be applied in numerous fields and careers. An emphasis on how theoretical principles of reasoning can be practical and useful in everyday life is featured, and special sections on presentation techniques, the analysis of meaning, decision-making, and reasoning about personal and moral values are also highlighted.

All chapters conclude with a set of exercises, and detailed solutions are provided at the end of the book. A companion website features online tutorials that further explore topics including meaning analysis, argument analysis, logic, statistics, and strategic thinking, along with additional exercises and multimedia resources for continued study. "An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity" is an excellent book for courses on critical thinking and logic at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The book also serves as a self-contained study guide for readers interested in the topics of critical thinking and creativity as a unified whole.

For centuries, the sorites paradox has spurred philosophers to think and argue about the problem of vagueness. This volume offers a guide to the paradox which is both an accessible survey and an exposition of the state of the art, with a chapter-by-chapter presentation of all of the main solutions to the paradox and of all its main areas of influence. Each chapter offers a gentle introduction to its topic, gradually building up to a final discussion of some open problems. Students will find a comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of the paradox, together with lucid explanations of the challenges it continues to raise. Researchers will find exciting new ideas and debates on the paradox.

Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History explores the ways interpretation (of key figures, factions, texts, etc.) shaped the analytic tradition, from Frege to Dummet. It offers readers 17 chapters, written especially for this volume by an international cast of leading scholars. Some chapters are devoted to large, thematic issues like the relationship between analytic philosophy and other philosophical traditions such as British Idealism and phenomenology, while other chapters are tied to more fine-grained topics or to individual philosophers, like Moore and Russell on philosophical method or the history of interpretations of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Throughout, the focus is on interpretations that are crucial to the origin, development, and persistence of the analytic tradition. The result is a more fully formed and philosophically satisfying portrait of analytic philosophy.

Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History explores the ways interpretation (of key figures, factions, texts, etc.) shaped the analytic tradition, from Frege to Dummet. It offers readers 17 chapters, written especially for this volume by an international cast of leading scholars. Some chapters are devoted to large, thematic issues like the relationship between analytic philosophy and other philosophical traditions such as British Idealism and phenomenology, while other chapters are tied to more fine-grained topics or to individual philosophers, like Moore and Russell on philosophical method or the history of interpretations of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Throughout, the focus is on interpretations that are crucial to the origin, development, and persistence of the analytic tradition. The result is a more fully formed and philosophically satisfying portrait of analytic philosophy.

Paradoxes are arguments that lead from apparently true premises, via apparently uncontroversial reasoning, to a false or even contradictory conclusion. Paradoxes threaten our basic understanding of central concepts such as space, time, motion, infinity, truth, knowledge, and belief.In this volume Roy T Cook provides a sophisticated, yet accessible and entertaining, introduction to the study of paradoxes, one that includes a detailed examination of a wide variety of paradoxes. The book is organized around four important types of paradox: the semantic paradoxes involving truth, the set-theoretic paradoxes involving arbitrary collections of objects, the Soritical paradoxes involving vague concepts, and the epistemic paradoxes involving knowledge and belief. In each of these cases, Cook frames the discussion in terms of four different approaches one might take towards solving such paradoxes. Each chapter concludes with a number of exercises that illustrate the philosophical arguments and logical concepts involved in the paradoxes."Paradoxes" is the ideal introduction to the topic and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in a wide variety of disciplines who wish to understand the important role that paradoxes have played, and continue to play, in contemporary philosophy.

This volume presents the best scholarship from the 19th National Communication Association/American Forensic Association Conference on Argumentation, which took place July 30-August 2, 2015, at Cliff Lodge, Snowbird Resort, in Alta, Utah. The Alta Conference, first held in 1979, is the oldest conference in argumentation studies in the world and biennially brings together a lively group of scholars, representing a variety of countries, with diverse perspectives on the theory and practice of argument. The essays in Recovering Argument invite reflection upon and reconsideration of argumentation's legacy, present status, and potential roles in social, cultural, and political life. Readers will encounter essays that treat the relationship between argumentation and memory, historical approaches to argumentation, the vitality of public and interpersonal argument, argument's role in leadership, discursive and presentational forms of argument, and the challenges of difference. Readers also will find these topics addressed from a variety of historical, social-scientific, and critical-interpretive perspectives.

Now reissued for contemporary readers, this entertaining primer on critical thinking has been teaching people to think and speak more clearly for more than four decades. Do you know when you're being deceived? Can you trust the information coming from Washington, the media, and the Internet? This classic work on critical thinking uses a novel approach to teach the basics of informal logic. On the assumption that "it takes one to know one," the authors have written the book from the point of view of someone who wishes to deceive, mislead, or manipulate others. Having mastered the art of deception, readers will then be able to detect the misuse or abuse of logic when they encounter it in others -- whether in a heated political debate or while trying to evaluate the claims of a persuasive sales person. Using a host of real-world examples, the authors show you how to win an argument, defend a case, recognize a fallacy, see through deception, persuade a skeptic, and turn defeat into victory. Whether you're evaluating a social media rumor or you just want to become more adept at making your points and analyzing others' arguments, The Art of Deception--now with an updated preface--will give you the intellectual tools to become a more effective thinker and speaker. Helpful exercises and discussion questions are also included.

In this book, David Stump traces alternative conceptions of the a priori in the philosophy of science and defends a unique position in the current debates over conceptual change and the constitutive elements in science. Stump emphasizes the unique epistemological status of the constitutive elements of scientific theories, constitutive elements being the necessary preconditions that must be assumed in order to conduct a particular scientific inquiry. These constitutive elements, such as logic, mathematics, and even some fundamental laws of nature, were once taken to be a priori knowledge but can change, thus leading to a dynamic or relative a priori. Stump critically examines developments in thinking about constitutive elements in science as a priori knowledge, from Kant's fixed and absolute a priori to Quine's holistic empiricism. By examining the relationship between conceptual change and the epistemological status of constitutive elements in science, Stump puts forward an argument that scientific revolutions can be explained and relativism can be avoided without resorting to universals or absolutes.

When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the 'problem of many hands.' This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking (accountability, blameworthiness, and liability) and forward-looking (obligation, virtue). Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings.

This open access book is the first ever collection of Karl Popper's writings on deductive logic. Karl R. Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His philosophy of science ("falsificationism") and his social and political philosophy ("open society") have been widely discussed way beyond academic philosophy. What is not so well known is that Popper also produced a considerable work on the foundations of deductive logic, most of it published at the end of the 1940s as articles at scattered places. This little-known work deserves to be known better, as it is highly significant for modern proof-theoretic semantics. This collection assembles Popper's published writings on deductive logic in a single volume, together with all reviews of these papers. It also contains a large amount of unpublished material from the Popper Archives, including Popper's correspondence related to deductive logic and manuscripts that were (almost) finished, but did not reach the publication stage. All of these items are critically edited with additional comments by the editors. A general introduction puts Popper's work into the context of current discussions on the foundations of logic. This book should be of interest to logicians, philosophers, and anybody concerned with Popper's work.

This brief introduction to making effective arguments helps readers to understand the basics of sound reasoning and to learn how to use it to persuade others. Practical, inexpensive, and easy-to-read, the book enables students in a wide variety of courses to improve the clarity of their writing and public speaking. It equips readers to formulate firmly grounded, clearly articulated, and logically arranged arguments, avoid fallacious thinking, and discover how to reason well. This supplemental text is especially suitable for use in Christian colleges and seminaries and includes classroom discussion questions.

THE ELEMENTS OF REASONING is a concise and lucid introduction to the basic elements of argumentative prose and the conceptual tools necessary to understand, analyze, criticize, and construct arguments. This text is not only perfect for a college course in argument analysis, but also as a reference tool when confronted with arguments outside the classroom experience. While THE ELEMENTS OF REASONING covers the standard formal tools of introductory logic, its emphasis is on practical applications to the kinds of arguments students most often encounter.

When is a reason for doing or believing something a good reason? Over the past century, logic's contribution to answering this question has typically involved finding ''logical forms": that is, using a special notation to bring out logical features more clearly.

The correct identification of logical forms has been held to be important not only to logic but also to philosophy. Bertrand Russell coined the phrase "philosophical logic" to describe an approach to philosophical problems: find the correct logical form of the problematic sentences, and the problems vanish. "Logical Forms" explains both the theoretical underpinnings of the approach and the detailed problems involved in finding logical forms in the languages of propositional logic, classical first order logic, modal logic, and some alternatives such as free logic, binary and substitutional quantifiers.

This revised edition incorporates results of recent work. Chapter 3 on conditionals, and the sections dealing with predicate quantifiers, free logics and subjunctive conditionals have been completely rewritten. The exercises are integrated throughout the book, and each chapter concludes with updated notes to guide further reading. The result is a genuinely interactive introduction which engages the reader in developing the argument.

This book does not presuppose knowledge of deductive methods in formal logic and it will be of immense benefit to those approaching philosophical logic for the first time.

""Thinking about Logic"" is an accessible and thought-provoking collection of classic articles in the philosophy of logic. An ideal companion to any formal logic course or textbook, this volume illuminates how logic relates to perennial philosophical issues about knowledge, meaning, rationality, and reality. The editors have selected each essay for its brevity, clarity, and impact and have included insightful introductions and discussion questions. The puzzles raised will help readers acquire a more thorough understanding of fundamental logic concepts and a firmer command of the connections between formal logic and other areas of philosophical study: epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and metaphysics.

We talk about irrationality when behaviour defies explanation or prediction, when decisions are driven by emotions or instinct rather than by reflection, when reasoning fails to conform to basic principles of logic and probability, and when beliefs lack coherence or empirical support. Depending on the context, agents exhibiting irrational behaviour may be described as foolish, ignorant, unwise or even insane. In this clear and engaging introduction to current debates on irrationality, Lisa Bortolotti presents the many facets of the concept and offers an original account of the importance of judgements of irrationality as value judgements. The book examines the standards against which we measure human behaviour, and reviews the often serious implications of judgements of irrationality for ethics and policy. Bortolotti argues that we should adopt a more critical stance towards accepted standards of rationality in the light of the often surprising outcomes of philosophical inquiry and cognitive science research into decision making. Irrationality is an accessible guide to the concept and will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in the limitations of human cognition and human agency.

Spinoza, Peirce and Deleuze are, in different ways, philosophers of immanence. Rocco Gangle addresses the methodological questions raised by a commitment to immanence in terms of how diagrams may be used both as tools and as objects of philosophical investigation. Gangle integrates insights from Spinozist metaphysics, Peircean semiotics and Deleuze's philosophy of difference in conjunction with the formal operations of category theory. He introduces the methods of category theory from a philosophical and diagrammatic perspective in a way that will allow philosophers with little or no mathematical training to come to grips with this important field.