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Books > Promotion > Routledge Philosophy
Sir Peter Strawson (1919–2006) was one of the leading British philosophers of his generation and an influential figure in a golden age for British philosophy between 1950 and 1970.
Individuals, his most important book, is a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it presents Strawson’s now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics. Rather than setting out to replace our overall view of the world, in the manner of the great 'revisionary' philosophers of the past, Strawson sets himself the seemingly (but not actually) more modest task of simply describing it. The aim is nothing less than to lay bare the most basic structure of our thought—the most general features of the way in which we think about particular things. A landmark book in the philosophical world and above all analytical philosophy, it remains of vital importance today.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a substantial new Foreword by Michelle Montague, setting out some of Strawson's key themes and arguments. Also included is Strawson's essay 'Individuals'. Published thirty-five years after the book itself and until now not widely available, it sees Strawson summarizing and reflecting on some of the key arguments presented in his book of the same name.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Michelle Montague
Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Particulars
1. Bodies
2. Sounds
3. Persons
4. Monads
Part 2: Logical Subjects
5. Subject and Predicate (1): Two Criteria
6. Subject and Predicate (2): Logical Subjects and Particular Objects
7. Language without Particulars
8. Logical Subjects and Existence
Conclusion
Appendix: Individuals
Index
Hailed as the 'Guru of the New Left' and a leading figure of 1960s counterculture and liberation movements, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse is amongst the most renowned and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Eros and Civilization is one of his best-known books and brought him international fame.
Taking his cue from Freud's view that repression of the instincts is a defining characteristic of the human mind, Marcuse fuses Freud's insight with Marx's theories of alienation and oppression. He argues that rather than our instincts turned in on themselves, it is modern capitalism itself that is preventing us from reaching the freedom we can find in a non-repressive society.
A sweeping indictment of modern capitalism and consumerism that remains fresh and insightful, Eros and Civilization is a classic of activist and radical thinking that continues to fire debate and controversy today.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Douglas Kellner.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Douglas Kellner
Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Under the Rule of the Reality Principle
1. The Hidden Trend in Psychoanalysis
2. The Origin of the Repressed Individual (Ontogenesis)
3. The Origin of Repressive Civilization (Phylogenesis)
4. The Dialectic of Civilization
5. Philosophical Interlude
Part 2: Beyond the Reality Principle
6. The Historical Limits of the Established Reality Principle
7. Phantasy and Utopia
8. The Images of Orpheus and Narcissus
9. The Aesthetic Dimension
10. The Transformation of Sexuality into Eros
11. Eros and Thanatos
Epilogue: Critique of Neo-Freudian Revisionism.
Index
Written in political exile during the Second World War and first published in 1945, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. Hailed by Bertrand Russell as a 'vigorous and profound defence of democracy', its now legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx exposed the dangers inherent in centrally planned political systems. Popper's highly accessible style, his erudite and lucid explanations of the thought of great philosophers and the recent resurgence of totalitarian regimes around the world are just three of the reasons for the enduring popularity ofThe Open Society and Its Enemies, and for why it demands to be read both today and in years to come.
This is the first of two volumes of The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Table of Contents
Introduction The Spell of Plato. The Myth of Origin and Destiny 1. Historicism and the Myth of Destiny 2. Heraclitus 3.Plato's Theory of Forms or Ideas Plato's Descriptive Sociology 4.Change and Rest 5 Nature and Convention Plato's Political Programme 6.Totalitarian Justice 7.The Principle of Leadership 8.The Philosopher King 9.Aestheticism, Perfectionism, Utopianism The Background of Plato's Attack 10.The Open Society and its Enemies Notes _ _ _
First published in 1923, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization is considered the most ambitious of Bertrand Russell's works on modern society. It offers a rare glimpse into often-ignored subtleties of his political thought and in it he argues that industrialism is a threat to human freedom, since it is fundamentally linked with nationalism. His proposal for one government for the whole world as the ultimate solution, along with his argument that the global village and prevailing political democracy should be its eventual results, is both provocative and thoroughly engaging.
Table of Contents
Preface to the Second Edition; Preface to the First Edition; Introduction; Part 1 1. Caused of Present Chaos 2. Inherent Tendencies of Industrialism 3. Industrialism and Private Property 4. Interactions of Industrialism and Nationalism 5. The Transition to Internationalism 6. Socialism on Undeveloped Countries 7. Socialism in Advanced Countries Part 2 8. What Makes a Social System Good or Bad? 9. Moral Standards and Social Well-Being 10. The Sources of Power 11. Education 12. Economic Organisation and Mental Freedom Index
Now in itsthird edition,Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction introduces students to the main issues and theories in twenty-first-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena. Author William G. Lycan structures the book into four general parts. Part I, Reference and Referring, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Descriptions (and its objections), Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the Description Theory of proper names, Searle's Cluster Theory, and the Causal-Historical Theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics and includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force. Part IV, The Expressive and the Figurative, examines various forms of expressive language and what "metaphorical meaning" is and how most listeners readily grasp it.
Features of Philosophy of Language include:
chapter overviews and summaries;
clear supportive examples;
study questions;
annotated lists of further reading;
a glossary.
Updates to the third edition include:
an entirely new chapter, "Expressive Language" (Chapter 14), covering verbal irony, sarcasm, and pejorative language (particularly slurs);
the addition in several chapters of short sections on pretense theories, addressing (1) puzzles about reference, (2) irony, and (3) metaphor;
a much expanded discussion of Relevance Theory, particularly its notion of ad hoc concept construction or "loosening and tightening," and the application of that to metaphor;
new discussion of Cappelen and Lepore's skepticism about content-dependence;
up-to-date coverage of new literature, further reading lists, and the bibliography, as well as an improved glossary.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Meaning and Reference Part 1: Reference and Referring 2. Definite Descriptions 3. Proper Names: The Description Theory 4. Proper Names: Direct Reference and the Causal–Historical Theory Part II: Theories of Meaning 5. Traditional Theories of Meaning 6. "Use" Theories 7. Psychological Theories: Grice's Program 8. Verificationism 9. Truth-Condition Theories: Davidson's Program 10. Truth-Condition Theories: Possible Worlds and Intensional Semantics Part III: Pragmatics and Speech Acts 11. Semantic Pragmatics 12. Speech Acts and Illocutionary Force 13. Implicative Relations Part IV: The Expressive and the Figurative 14. Expressive Language 15. Metaphor Glossary Bibliography Index
“To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things – this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship.”
—Bertrand Russell
Mysticism and Logic is one of Russell's most celebrated collection of essays. They not only set the tone for analytical philosophy in the English-speaking world but are Russell's first proper foray into the role of public philosopher, one he would occupy for years to come. Both scientific and romantic, Russell explores and unpacks, in his inimitable pellucid prose, some of the thorniest problems and puzzles in philosophy. These include different ways of knowing something, the foundations of mathematics, the ultimate nature of matter and whether, in Russell's view, we should seek a philosophical theory of causation.
Taken together, they show the considerable changes that occurred in Russell's thinking during the years he was producing some of his best philosophy, leading up to World War One. Also included is Russell's renowned essay 'A Free Man's Worship', where he argues that we can construct a deeper form of faith based on the power of reason for those who wish to be free.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Bernard Linsky.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Bernard Linsky
Preface (1917)
Preface (1929)
1. A Free Man's Worship
2. Mysticism and Logic
3. The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
4. The Study of Mathematics
5. Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
6. On Scientific Method in Philosophy
7. The Ultimate Constituents of Matter
8. The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics
9. On the Notion of Cause
10. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description.
Index
Philosophers have traditionally concentrated on the qualities that make human beings different from other species. In Beast and Man Mary Midgley, one of our foremost intellectuals, stresses continuities. What makes people tick? Largely, she asserts, the same things as animals. She tells us humans are rather more like other animals than we previously allowed ourselves to believe, and reminds us just how primitive we are in comparison to the sophistication of many animals. A veritable classic for our age, Beast and Man has helped change the way we think about ourselves and the world in which we live.
Introduction to Logic is a proven textbook that has been honed through the collaborative efforts of many scholars over the last five decades. Its scrupulous attention to detail and precision in exposition and explanation is matched by the greatest accuracy in all associated detail. In addition, it continues to capture student interest through its personalized human setting and current examples. The 14th Edition of Introduction to Logic, written by Copi, Cohen & McMahon, is dedicated to the many thousands of students and their teachers - at hundreds of universities in the United States and around the world - who have used its fundamental methods and techniques of correct reasoning in their everyday lives.
Table of Contents
Foreward
Preface
Acknowledgments
PART I LOGIC AND LAGUAGE
SECTION A REASONING
Chapter 1 Basic Logical Concepts
Chapter 2 Analyzing Arguments
SECTION B INFORMAL LOGIC
Chapter 3 Language and Definitions
Chapter 4 Fallacies
Part II Deduction
Section A Classical Logic
Chapter 5 Categorical Propositions
Chapter 6 Categorical Syllogisms
Appendix: Deduction of the Fifteen Valid Forms of the Categorical Syllogism
Chapter 7 Syllogisms in Ordinary Language
Section B Modern Logic
Chapter 8 Symbolic Logic
Chapter 9 Methods of Deduction
Chapter 10 Quantification Theory
Part III Induction
Section A Analogy and Causation
Chapter 11 Analogical Reasoning
Chapter 12 Causal Reasoning
Section B Science and Probability
Chapter 13 Science and Hypothesis
Chapter 14 Probability
Appendix
Solutions to Selected Exercises
Glossary/Index
Logic: The Basics is an accessible introduction to several core areas of logic. The first part of the book features a self-contained introduction to the standard topics in classical logic, such as:
· mathematical preliminaries
· propositional logic
· quantified logic (first monadic, then polyadic)
· English and standard ‘symbolic translations’
· tableau procedures.
Alongside comprehensive coverage of the standard topics, this thoroughly revised second edition also introduces several philosophically important nonclassical logics, free logics, and modal logics, and gives the reader an idea of how they can take their knowledge further. With its wealth of exercises (solutions available in the encyclopedic online supplement), Logic: The Basics is a useful textbook for courses ranging from the introductory level to the early graduate level, and also as a reference for students and researchers in philosophical logic.
Table of Contents
I BACKGROUND IDEAS
1 Consequences
1.1 Relations of support
1.2 Logical consequence: the basic recipe
1.3 Valid arguments and truth
1.4 Summary, looking ahead, and reading
2 Models, Modeled, and Modeling
2.1 Models
2.2 Models in science
2.3 Logic as modeling
2.4 A note on notation, metalanguages, etc.
2.5 Summary, looking ahead, and reading
3 Language, Form, and Logical Theories
3.1 Language and formal languages
3.2 Languages: syntax and semantics
3.3 Atoms, connectives, and molecules
3.4 Connectives and form
3.5 Validity and form
3.6 Logical theories: rivalry
3.7 Summary, looking ahead, and reading
4 Set-theoretic Tools
4.1 Sets
4.2 Ordered sets: pairs and n-tuples
4.3 Relations
4.4 Functions
4.5 Sets as tools
4.6 Summary and looking ahead
II THE BASIC CLASSICAL THEORY
5 Basic Classical Syntax and Semantics
5.1 Cases: complete and consistent
5.2 Classical ‘truth conditions’
5.3 Basic classical consequence
5.4 Motivation: precision
5.5 Formal picture
5.6 Defined connectives
5.7 Some notable valid forms
5.8 Summary and looking ahead
6 Basic Classical Tableaux
6.1 What are tableaux?
6.2 Tableaux for the Basic Classical Theory
6.3 Summary and looking ahead
7 Basic Classical Translations
7.1 Atoms, Punctuation, and Connectives
7.2 Syntax, altogether
7.3 Semantics
7.4 Consequence
7.5 Summary and Looking Ahead
III FIRST-ORDER CLASSICAL THEORY
8 Atomic Innards: Unary
8.1 Atomic innards: names and predicates
8.2 Truth and falsity conditions for atomics
8.3 Cases, domains, and interpretation functions
8.4 Classicality
8.5 A formal picture
8.6 Summary and looking ahead
9 Everything and Something
9.1 Validity involving quantifiers
9.2 Quantifiers: an informal sketch
9.3 Truth and falsity conditions
9.4 A formal picture
9.5 Summary and looking ahead.
10 First-Order Language with Any-Arity Innards
10.1 Truth and falsity conditions for atomics
10.2 Cases, domains, and interpretation functions
10.3 Classicality
10.4 A formal picture
10.5 Summary and looking ahead
11 Identity
11.1 Logical expressions, forms, sentential forms
11.2 Validity involving identity
11.3 Identity: informal sketch
11.4 Truth conditions: informal sketch
11.5 Formal picture
11.6 Summary and looking ahead
12 Tableaux for First-Order Logic with Identity
12.1 A Few Reminders
12.2 Tableaux for Polyadic First-Order Logic
12.3 Summary and looking ahead
13 First-Order Translations
13.1 Basic Classical Theory with Innards
13.2 First-Order Classical Theory
13.3 Polyadic Innards
13.4 Examples in the polyadic language
13.5 Adding Identity
13.6 Summary and Looking Ahead
IV NONCLASSICAL THEORIES
14 Alternative Logical Theories
14.1 Apparent unsettledness
14.2 Apparent overdeterminacy
14.3 Options
14.4 Cases
14.5 Truth and falsity conditions
14.6 Logical Consequence
14.7 Summary, looking ahead, and reading
15 Nonclassical Sentential Logics
15.1 Syntax
15.2 Semantics, Broadly
15.3 Defined connectives
15.4 Some notable forms
15.5 Summary and looking ahead
16 Nonclassical First-order Theories
16.1 An Informal Gloss
16.2 A formal picture
16.3 Summary and looking ahead
17 Nonclassical Tableaux
17.1 Closure Conditions
17.2 Tableaux for Nonclassical First-Order Logics
17.3 Summary and looking ahead
18 Nonclassical Translations
18.1 Syntax and Semantics
18.2 Consequence
18.3 Summary and looking ahead
V FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND BEYOND
19 Speaking Freely
19.1 Speaking of non-existent ‘things’
19.2 Existential import
19.3 Freeing our terms, expanding our domains
19.4 Truth conditions: an informal sketch
19.5 Formal picture
19.6 Summary and looking ahead
20 Possibilities
20.1 Possibility and necessity
20.2 Towards truth and falsity conditions
20.3 Cases and consequence
20.4 Formal picture
20.5 Remark on going beyond possibility
20.6 Summary and looking ahead
21 Free and Modal Tableaux
21.1 Free Tableaux
21.2 Modal Tableaux
21.3 Summary and looking ahead
22 Glimpsing Different Logical Roads
22.1 Other conditionals
22.2 Other negations
22.3 Other alethic modalities: actuality
22.4 Same connectives, different truth conditions
22.5 Another road to difference: consequence
22.6 Summary and looking behind and ahead
References
On its publication in 1957, The Poverty of Historicism was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.' A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.
"Sartre is a true post-colonial pioneer. His ethical and political
struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation speak to
the problems of our own times with a rare courage and
cogency."
Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and
American Literature Harvard University
Nearly forty years after its first publication in French, this
collection of Sartre's writings on colonialism remains a supremely
powerful, and relevant, polemical work. Over a series of thirteen
essays Sartre brings the full force of his remarkable intellect
relentlessly to bear on his own country's conduct in Algeria, and
by extension, the West's conduct in the Third World in general. The
tussle is not equal, and the western imperialists emerge at the
end, bloody, bruised and thoroughly chastened. Most startling of
all is Sartre's advocacy of violence as a legitimate response to
repression, motivated by his belief that freedom was the central
characteristic of being human. Whether one agrees with his every
conclusion or not, "Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism" shows a
philosopher passionately engaged in using philosophy as a force for
change in the world. An important influence on postcolonial thought
ever since, this book takes on added resonance in the light of the
West's most recent bout of interference in the non-Western world.
Commissions of experts regularly meet to reply to questions such as: What will be the population of the country, or even of our planet, in ten, fifteen or twenty-five years? In what proportion will production have increased, what modifications will its composition and utilizations have undergone? The attraction of efforts to forecast the future continues. That is a fact. How does it proceed? That is a problem, one on which de Jouvenel focuses on in this book.
The Art of Conjecture clearly explains what the "study of the future" can mean. De Jouvenel emphasizes the logical and political problems of forecasting and discusses methods in economics, sociology, and political science by which the future can be studied. More importantly, he discusses the fallacies to which the "study of the future" is peculiarly likely to give rise. The author argues that it is natural and necessary for the population to have visions of the future. Without this, he states, we would only be able to set one opinion of the future against another. If the origins and meanings of these predictions remained obscure, only the event could decide among the opinions.
If any man can be said to have created the serious "study of the future" in our time, it is Bertrand de Jouvenel. Futuribles, a periodical he created,continues to represent a major turning point in contemporary social science. Jouvenel aimed to show how "the art of conjecture" could inform prudential judgment and allow citizens and statesmen to detect troubles before they arise.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 On the Nature of the Future 2 A Need of Our Species 3 Terminology Part I Personal Destiny 4 The Project 5 The Conditional 6 The Future as an Object of Knowledge 7 The Principle of Uncertainty Part II Of Predictions 8 Predictions: I 9 Predictions: II 10 Historical Prediction and Scientific Prediction Part III Ways of Conceiving the Future 11 Process and Action 12 The Changing Scene 13 Conjectures and Decisions 14 The Pragmatism of Conjecture and a Few Consequences Part IV Quantitative Predictions 15 On Quantification 16 Short-Term Economic Forecasting 17 Long-Term Economic Forecasting and Its Social Aspects Part V Toward the Surmising Forum 18 The Political Order and Foreseeability 19 The Forecasting of Ideas 20 The Surmising Forum
When Ernest Gellner was his early thirties, he took it upon himself to challenge the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy of the day, Linguistic Philosophy. Finding a powerful ally in Bertrand Russell, who provided the foreword for this book, Gellner embarked on the project that was to put him on the intellectual map.
The first determined attempt to state the premises and operational rules of the movement, Words and Things remains philosophy's most devastating attack on a conventional wisdom to this day.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Bertrand Russell Introduction: The Saltmines of Salzburg or Wittgensteinianism Reconsidered in Historical Context I Of Linguistic Philosophy 1 Introductory 2 First Approaches 3 A Theory of Philosophy 4 A Theory of the World and of Language 5 A Theory of Mind II Of Language 1 The Theory of Language Expanded 2 Language Games 3 The Four Pillars 4 The Argument from Paradigm Cases 5 From Fact to Norm 6 The Contrast Theory of Meaning 7 General Comments on the Three Fallacies 8 The Cult of the Fox 9 Everything is Unlike Everything Else 10 The Best of all Possible Languages III Of Philosophy 1 Activity not Doctrine 2 The Imperturbable Universe 3 Flashback 4 Logical Atomism 5 Logical Positivism 6 Logical Constructions 7 Common Sense 8 Transition 9 Appearance and Reality, or Monsieur Jourdain’s Revolt IV Of the World 1 The Secret of the Universe 2 Naturalism 3 A Special Kind of Naturalism 4 The Bait and the Trap 5 The Turn of the Screw 6 Triple Star 7 De Luxe V Of Knowledge VI Structure and Strategy Explanation of the Diagram and Instructions for Use VII Assessment VIII Implications IX Sociology X Conclusion
Also published under the title of Principals of Social Reconstruction, and written in response to the devastation of World War I, Why Men Fight lays out Bertrand Russell's ideas on war, pacifism, reason, impulse, and personal liberty. He argues that the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism has reached its limits and that when individuals live passionately, they will have no desire for war or killing. Conversely, excessive restraint or reason causes us to live unnaturally and with hostility toward those who are unlike ourselves. This formidable work greatly contributed to Russell’s fame as a formidable social critic and anti-war activist.
Table of Contents
Introduction Preface 1. The Principle of Growth 2. The State 3. War as Institution 4. Property 5. Education 6. Marriage and the Population Question 7. Religion and the Churches 8. What can we Do Index
Environmental disasters, from wildfires and vanishing species to flooding and drought, have increased dramatically in recent years and debates about the environment are rarely far from the headlines. There is growing awareness that these disasters are connected – indeed, that in the fabric of nature everything is interconnected. However, until the publication of Freya Mathews' The Ecological Self, there had been remarkably few attempts to provide a conceptual foundation for such interconnectedness that brought together philosophy and science.
In this acclaimed book, Mathews skilfully weaves together a thought-provoking metaphysics of the environment. She connects the ideas of the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza with twentieth-century systems theory and Einstein’s physics to argue that the atomistic cosmology inherited from Newton gave credence to a picture of the universe as fragmented, rather than as whole. Furthermore, it is such faulty thinking that presents human beings as similarly disconnected and individualistic, with the dire consequence that they regard nature as of purely instrumental rather than intrinsic value. She concludes by arguing for an ethics of ecological interdependence and for a basic egalitarianism among living species.
A compelling and fascinating account of how we must change our thinking about the environment, The Ecological Self is a classic of ecological and environmental thinking.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a substantial new Introduction by the author.
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition
1. Atomism and its Ideological Implications
2. Geometrodynamics: A Monistic Metaphysic
3. System and Substance: Alternative Principles of Individuation
4. Value in Nature and Meaning in Life.
Notes
Bibliography
Index
In An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, Bertrand Russell returns to philosophy after a long period of writing about education, religion and marriage. Investigating how we can be justified in what we know and how we can reconcile knowledge of the physical world with immediate sensory knowledge, Russell sets out to reconcile the various aspects of his thought since his early logicist period—the view that mathematical truths are ultimately logical truths.
Russell's goal is to stress-test empiricism in light of contemporary developments in logic and language or, as Russell himself succinctly puts it, "to combine a general outlook akin to Hume's with the methods that have grown out of modern logic". His quest combines three strands: metaphysical, epistemological and linguistic.
Both a fascinating insight into Russell’s evolving views and the continuity of his thinking over the years, it also foreshadows many future debates which came to occupy centre stage within English-speaking philosophy: debates about realism and anti-realism, the viability of pragmatism as a philosophical theory and the perennial opposition between holism and atomism.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Pascal Engel, placing Russell's book in helpful philosophical context.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Pascal Engel
Preface
Introduction
1. What is a Word?
2. Sentences, Syntax, and Parts of Speech
3. Sentences Describing Experiences
4. The Object-Language
5. Logical Words
6. Proper Names
7. Egocentric Particulars
8. Perception and Knowledge
9. Epistemological Premisses
10. Basic Propositions
11. Factual Premisses
12. An Analysis of Problems Concerning Propositions
13. The Significance of Sentences: A. General. B. Psychological. C. Syntactical
14. Language as an Expression
15. What Sentences "Indicate"
16. Truth and Falsehood, Preliminary Discussion
17. Truth and Experience
18. General Beliefs
19. Extensionality and Atomicity
20. The Law of Excluded Middle
21. Truth and Verification
22. Significance and Verification
23. Warranted Assertibility
24. Analysis
25. Language and Metaphysics.
Index
Iris Murdoch once observed: 'philosophy is often a matter of finding occasions on which to say the obvious'. What was obvious to Murdoch, and to all those who read her work, is that Good transcends everything - even God. Throughout her distinguished and prolific writing career, she explored questions of good and bad, myth and morality. The framework for Murdoch's questions - and her own conclusions - can be found in the Sovereignty of Good. The Boston Review hailed these essays as 'her most influential pieces of philosophy'.
D. M. Armstrong's A Materialist Theory of the Mind is widely known as one of the most important defences of the view that mental states are nothing but physical states of the brain. A landmark of twentieth-century philosophy of mind, it launched the physicalist revolution in approaches to the mind and has been engaged with, debated and puzzled over ever since its first publication over fifty years ago.
Ranging over a remarkable number of topics, from behaviourism, the will and knowledge to perception, bodily sensation and introspection, Armstrong argues that mental states play a causally intermediate role between stimuli, other mental states and behavioural responses. He uses several illuminating examples to illustrate this, such as the classic case of pain.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Peter Anstey, placing Armstrong's book in helpful philosophical and historical context.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Peter Anstey
Acknowledgements
Preface to the 1993 Edition
Introduction
Part 1: Theories of Mind
1. A Classification of Theories of Mind
2. Dualism
3. The Attribute Theory
4. A Difficulty for any Non-Materialist Theory of Mind
5. Behaviourism
6. The Central-State Theory
Part 2: The Concept of Mind
7. The Will (1)
8. The Will (2)
9. Knowledge and Inference
10. Perception and Belief
11. Perception and Behaviour
12. The Secondary Qualities
13. Mental Images
14. Bodily Sensations
15. Introspection
16. Belief and Thought
Part 3: The Nature of Mind
17. Identification of the Mental with the Physical
Bibliography
Index
Intolerance and bigotry lie at the heart of all human suffering. So claims Bertrand Russell at the outset of In Praise of Idleness, a collection of essays in which he espouses the virtues of cool reflection and free enquiry; a voice of calm in a world of maddening unreason. From a devastating critique of the ancestry of fascism to a vehement defence of 'useless' knowledge, with consideration given to everything from insect pests to the human soul, this is a tour de force that only Bertrand Russell could perform.
Table of Contents
1. In Praise of Idleness 2. 'Useless' Knowledge 3. Architecture and Social Questions 4. The Modern Midas 5. The Ancestry of Fascism 6. Scylla and Charybdis, or Communism and Fascism 7. The Case for Socialism 8. Western Civilisation 9. On Youthful Cynicism 10. Modern Homogeneity 11. Men versus Insects 12. Education and Discipline 13. Stoicism and Mental Health 14. On Comets 15. What is the Soul?
Few philosophers have had more influence on the shape of western philosophy after 1900 than Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings offers a full range of this profound and controversial thinker’s writings in one volume, including:
The Origin of the Work of Art
The introduction to Being and Time
What Is Metaphysics?
Letter on Humanism
The Question Concerning Technology
The Way to Language
The End of Philosophy
Featuring a foreword by Heidegger scholar Taylor Carman, this essential collection provides readers with a concise introduction to the groundbreaking philosophy of this brilliant and essential thinker.
Table of Contents
Being and Time: Introduction. What is Metaphysics? On the Essence of Truth. The Origin of the Work of Art. Letter on Humanism. Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics. The Question Concerning Technology. Building Dwelling Thinking. What Calls for Thinking? The Way to Language. The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.
Bertrand Russell wrote The Analysis of Mind during one of the most turbulent periods of his life. He began it in 1918 whilst in in prison in London for his opposition to the First World War, and completed it in Peking (now Beijing) in 1921, where he had been giving lectures at the National University.
It is a vital book for understanding Russell's philosophy. He argues for a fresh conception of the mind, provided by his eclectic fusion of William James’s 'neutral monism'; the emerging theory of behaviourism, to which Russell was strongly drawn; and his own new causal theory of meaning. As such, The Analysis of Mind built a foundation for the distinctive brand of much of his later philosophical writing. In his customary sharp prose, Russell explores fundamental questions about the mind, including desire and feeling; the vexed relationship between psychological and physical laws; sensations and mental images; memory; belief; and emotions and the will.
This Routledge Classics edition includes an Introduction by Thomas Baldwin.
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition Thomas Baldwin
Preface
1. Recent Criticisms of “Consciousness”
2. Instinct and Habit
3. Desire and Feeling
4. Influence of Past History on Present Occurrences in Living Organisms
5. Psychological and Physical Causal Laws
6. Introspection
7. The Definition of Perception
8. Sensations and Images
9. Memory
10. Words and Meaning
11. General Ideas and Thought
12. Belief
13. Truth and Falsehood
14. Emotions and Will
15.Characteristics of Mental Phenomena.
Index
The Analysis of Matter is the product of thirty years of thinking by one of the twentieth century's best-known philosophers. An inquiry into the philosophical foundations of physics, it was written against the background of stunning new developments in physics earlier in the century, above all relativity, as well as the excitement around quantum theory, which was just being developed.
Concerned to place physics on a stable footing at a time of great theoretical change, Russell argues that the concept of matter itself can be replaced by a logical construction whose basic foundations are events. He is careful to point out that this does not prove that matter does not exist, but it does show that physicists can get on with their work without assuming that matter does exist. Russell argues that fundamental bits of ''matter'', such as electrons and protons, are simply groups of events connected in a certain way and their properties are all that are required for physics.
This Routledge Classics edition includes the 1992 Introduction by John G. Slater.
Table of Contents
Introduction to the Routledge Classics edition John G. Slater
Preface
1. The Nature of the Problem
Part 1: The Logical Analysis of Physics
2. Pre-Relativity Physics
3. Electrons and Protons
4. The Theory of Quanta
5. The Special Theory of Relativity
6. The General Theory of Relativity
7. The Method of Tensors
8. Geodesics
9. Invariants and Their Physical Interpretation
10. Weyl’s Theory
11. The Principle of Differential Laws
12. Measurement
13. Matter and Space
14. The Abstractness of Physics
Part 2: Physics and Perception
15. From Primitive Perception to Common Sense
16. From Common Sense to Physics
17. What is an Empirical Science
18. Our Knowledge of Particular Matters of Fact
19. Data, Inferences, Hypotheses, and Theories
20. The Causal Theory of Perception
21. Perception and Objectivity
22. The Belief in General Laws
23. Substance
24. Importance of Structure in Scientific Inference
25. Perception From the Standpoint of Physics
26. Non-Mental Analogues to Perception
Part 3: The Structure of the Physical World
27. Particulars and Events
28. The Construction of Points
29. Space-Time Order
30. Causal Lines
31. Extrinsic Causal Laws
32. Physical and Perceptual Space-Time
33. Periodicity and Qualitative Series
34. Types of Physical Occurrences
35. Causality and Interval
36. The Genesis of Space-Time
37. Physics and Neutral Monism
38. Summary and Conclusion.
Index
‘When we claim to have been injured by language, what kind of claim do we make?’ - Judith Butler, Excitable Speech
Excitable Speech is widely hailed as a tour de force and one of Judith Butler’s most important books. Examining in turn debates about hate speech, pornography and gayness within the US military, Butler argues that words can wound and linguistic violence is its own kind of violence. Yet she also argues that speech is ‘excitable’ and fluid, because its effects often are beyond the control of the speaker, shaped by fantasy, context and power structures.
In a novel and courageous move, she urges caution concerning the use of legislation to restrict and censor speech, especially in cases where injurious language is taken up by aesthetic practices to diminish and oppose the injury, such as in rap and popular music. Although speech can insult and demean, it is also a form of recognition and may be used to talk back; injurious speech can reinforce power structures, but it can also repeat power in ways that separate language from its injurious power. Skillfully showing how language’s oppositional power resides in its insubordinate and dynamic nature and its capacity to appropriate and defuse words that usually wound, Butler also seeks to account for why some clearly hateful speech is taken to be iconic of free speech, while other forms are more easily submitted to censorship.
In light of current debates between advocates of freedom of speech and ‘no platform’ and cancel culture, the message of Excitable Speech remains more relevant now than ever.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author, where she considers speech and languagein the context contemporary forms of political polarization.
Table of Contents
Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition
Introduction: On Linguistic Vulnerability
1. Burning Acts, Injurious Speech
2. Sovereign Performatives
3. Contagious Word: Paranoia and "Homosexuality" in the Military
4. Implicit Censorship and Discursive Agency.
Notes
Index
Bertrand Russell remains one of the greatest philosophers and most complex and controversial figures of the twentieth century. Here, in this frank, humorous and decidedly charming autobiography, Russell offers readers the story of his life – introducing the people, events and influences that shaped the man he was to become. Originally published in three volumes in the late 1960s, Autobiography by Bertrand Russell is a revealing recollection of a truly extraordinary life written with the vivid freshness and clarity that has made Bertrand Russell’s writings so distinctively his own.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction 1872-1914 Prologue: What I have Lived for 1. Childhood 2. Adolescence 3. Cambridge 4. Engagement 5. First Marriage 6. ‘Principia Mathematica’ 7. Cambridge again 1914-1944 8. The First World War 9. Russia 10. China 11. Second Marriage 12. Later Years of Telegraph House 13. In America 1944-1967 Preface 14. Return to England 15. At Home and Abroad 16. Trafalgar Square 17. The Foundation Postscript Index
Bertrand Russell's writings on logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language and epistemology are among the most influential of the twentieth century. Logic and Knowledge presents Russell's very best and most important work on these topics in a single volume, which by placing philosophical logic at its core was of monumental importance in shaping the path of analytical philosophy.
It includes classics such as 'On Denoting', one of the founding pieces of philosophy of the twentieth century as well as chapters on logical atomism, a term coined by Russell himself to describe his view that the world consists in a plurality of independent entities, which by coming together form facts.
Along with other essays on fundamental philosophical problems including the logic of relations, universals and particulars, and propositions, Logic and Knowledge shows why Russell remains one of the most important philosophers of the last century.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Graham Stevens.
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Graham Stevens
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. On Denoting
2. Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types
3. On the Relations of Universals and Particulars
4. On the Nature of Acquaintance
5. The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
6. On Propositions: what they are and how they mean
7. Logical Atomism
8. On Order in Time
9. Logical Positivism.
Appendix: The Logic of Relations
Index
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