Rational Episodes
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| Author | : Keith M. Parsons |
| Publisher | : Prometheus Books |
| Total Pages | : 373 |
| Release | : 2018-03-21 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1615928847 |
Logic is the skill that enables humans to think clearly, accurately, and rigorously and so to draw only the inferences that the evidence warrants. Some people, like scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and computer programmers, get plenty of on-the-job practice in thinking logically. The rest of us generally don’t. In this accessible, concise yet comprehensive introduction to a sometimes-formidable subject, philosopher Keith Parsons presents elementary topics in logic for people who have little background in mathematics or science and have no career goals in those fields. Parsons presupposes no specialized background and strives to introduce even abstract concepts in an intuitive and unintimidating way. His informal, conversational style leads the reader painlessly, even entertainingly, through three essential areas of logic. The first part of the book deals with sentential and predicate logic, as well as inductive and scientific reasoning, including inference to the best explanation. The second part explains basic probability, Bayes’ Theorem, and why thinking about probability is so prone to error and illusion. The third part considers informal reasoning and critical thinking, including such topics as rhetoric, fallacies, political spin, and the detection of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Why be logical? Even if you’re a poet, an artist, or just a free spirit, logic can help you determine the facts behind the political propaganda, religious claims, advertising, and sales talk that we are all subjected to. As a logically literate person, you will be a better-informed citizen, wiser consumer, and a clearer thinker.
| Author | : F. D'Agostino |
| Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
| Total Pages | : 268 |
| Release | : 1989-08-31 |
| Genre | : Gardening |
| ISBN | : 9780792302643 |
x philosophy when he inaugurated a debate about the principle of methodologi cal individualism, a debate which continues to this day, and which has inspired a literature as great as any in contemporary philosophy. Few collections of material in the general area of philosophy of social science would be considered complete unless they contained at least one of Watkins's many contributions to the discussion of this issue. In 1957 Watkins published the flrst of a series of three papers (1957b, 1958d and 196Oa) in which he tried to codify and rehabilitate metaphysics within the Popperian philosophy, placing it somewhere between the analytic and the empirical. He thus signalled the emergence of an important implica tion of Popper's thought that had not to that point been stressed by Sir Karl himself, and which marked off his followers from the antimetaphysical ideas of the regnant logical positivists. In 1965 years of work in political philosophy and in the history of philosophy in the seventeenth century were brought to fruition in Watkins's widely cited and admired Hobbes's System of Ideas (1965a, second edition 1973d). This book is an important contribution not just to our understanding of Hobbes's political thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, to our understanding of the way in which a system of ideas is constituted and applied. Watkins built on earlier work in developing an account of Hobbes's ideas in which was revealed and clarifled the unity of Hobbes's metaphysical, epistemological and political ideas.
| Author | : John A. Stewart |
| Publisher | : Indiana University Press |
| Total Pages | : 310 |
| Release | : 1990-05-22 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 9780253354051 |
"The book provides an excellent historical summary of the debates over continental drift theory in this century." —Contemporary Sociology "This is a useful discussion of the way that science works. The book will be of value to philosophers of science . . . " —Choice " . . . will find an important place in university and department libraries, and will interest afficionados of the factual and intellectual history of the earth sciences." —Terra Nova " . . . an excellent core analysis . . . " —The Times Higher Education Supplement " . . . an ambitious and important contribution to the new sociology of science." —American Journal of Sociology " . . . Stewart's book is a noble effort, an interesting and readable discussion, and another higher notch on the scoreboard of critical scholarship that deserves wide examination and close attention." —Geophysics This fascinating book describes the rise and fall and rebirth of continental drift theory in this century. It uses the recent revolution in geoscientinsts' beliefs about the earth to examine questions such as, How does scientific knowledge develop and change? The book also explores how well different perspectives help us to understand revolutionary change in science.
| Author | : James Robert Brown |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 196 |
| Release | : 2014-08-21 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317651294 |
To paraphrase Marx, sociologists have only interpreted science; the point is to improve it. The Rational and the Social attempts both. It begins by sketching recent sociological approaches to science, notably the strong programme – Bloor’s ‘science of science’ and Barnes’s ‘finitism’ – and that of the ‘anthropologists in the lab’, Collins and Latour and Woolgar. The author argues that although sociological accounts are valuable in many respects, when morals are drawn about the structure and epistemology of science, they are badly flawed. In rejecting the sociological theory of science, it is not necessary to conclude that science develops without reference to the social. James Robert Brown argues for an alternative account. He proposes a novel way of viewing the history of science as a source of evidence for how to do good science and argues that the most important aspect of methodology is that it is comparative. Rival theories are evaluated by comparison and the contribution of the social to this process is inevitable and should be acknowledged. This is the challenge to science.
| Author | : Carol Rovane |
| Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
| Total Pages | : 271 |
| Release | : 1997-12-22 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1400822424 |
The subject of personal identity is one of the most central and most contested and exciting in philosophy. Ever since Locke, psychological and bodily criteria have vied with one another in conflicting accounts of personal identity. Carol Rovane argues that, as things stand, the debate is unresolvable since both sides hold coherent positions that our common sense, she maintains, is conflicted; so any resolution to the debate is bound to be revisionary. She boldly offers such a revisionary theory of personal identity by first inquiring into the nature of persons. Rovane begins with a premise about the distinctive ethical nature of persons to which all substantive ethical doctrines, ranging from Kantian to egoist, can subscribe. From this starting point, she derives two startling metaphysical possibilities: there could be group persons composed of many human beings and muliple persons within a single human being. Her conclusions supports Locke's distinction between persons and human beings, but on altogether new grounds. These grounds lie in her radically normative analysis of the condition of personal identity, as the condition in which a certain normative commitment arises, namely, the commitment to achieve overall rational unity within a rational point of view. It is by virtue of this normative commitment that individual agents can engage one another specifically as persons, and possess the distinctive ethical status of persons. Carol Rovan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
| Author | : Robert Nola |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 343 |
| Release | : 2014-12-18 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1317493486 |
What is it to be scientific? Is there such a thing as scientific method? And if so, how might such methods be justified? Robert Nola and Howard Sankey seek to provide answers to these fundamental questions in their exploration of the major recent theories of scientific method. Although for many scientists their understanding of method is something they just pick up in the course of being trained, Nola and Sankey argue that it is possible to be explicit about what this tacit understanding of method is, rather than leave it as some unfathomable mystery. They robustly defend the idea that there is such a thing as scientific method and show how this might be legitimated. This book begins with the question of what methodology might mean and explores the notions of values, rules and principles, before investigating how methodologists have sought to show that our scientific methods are rational. Part 2 of this book sets out some principles of inductive method and examines its alternatives including abduction, IBE, and hypothetico-deductivism. Part 3 introduces probabilistic modes of reasoning, particularly Bayesianism in its various guises, and shows how it is able to give an account of many of the values and rules of method. Part 4 considers the ideas of philosophers who have proposed distinctive theories of method such as Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend and Part 5 continues this theme by considering philosophers who have proposed naturalised theories of method such as Quine, Laudan and Rescher. This book offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the idea of scientific method and a wide-ranging discussion of how historians of science, philosophers of science and scientists have grappled with the question over the last fifty years.
| Author | : Casey Doyle |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 383 |
| Release | : 2019-04-29 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1351603558 |
This is the first volume dedicated solely to the topic of epistemological disjunctivism. The original essays in this volume, written by leading and up-and-coming scholars on the topic, are divided into three thematic sections. The first set of chapters addresses the historical background of epistemological disjunctivism. It features essays on ancient epistemology, Immanuel Kant, J.L. Austin, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second section tackles a number contemporary issues related to epistemological disjunctivism, including its relationship with perceptual disjunctivism, radical skepticism, and reasons for belief. Finally, the third group of essays extends the framework of epistemological disjunctivism to other forms of knowledge, such as testimonial knowledge, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge. Epistemological Disjunctivism is a timely collection that engages with an increasingly important topic in philosophy. It will appeal to researches and graduate students working in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of perception.
| Author | : Richard Buck |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 196 |
| Release | : 2020-11-12 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9781736119600 |
Understanding how to invest wisely for your future can be daunting. Many people never get started for fear of making mistakes. Others make choices based on hearsay and hope, sold on hype or risk aversion. In "We're Talking Millions!" you will learn why and how to make a handful of smart choices that can turn modest regular savings into a secure future. You'll discover "12 Small Steps with Big Payoffs," each of which can add $1 million or more to your retirement nest egg if you start in your 20s or 30s. These steps are well known. Now for the first time, "We're Talking Millions!" combines them into a single action plan you can implement in less than one hour a year. That could be the most valuable time you'll ever spend. Get started now!Long-time financial educator/retired advisor Paul Merriman and co-author Richard Buck have boiled down decades of academic-based knowledge and experience to help Millennials and Gen Y'ers get started and stay on the right track of saving and investing for life using 401ks, IRAs and other simple investments like target date funds. "This is an exciting new fact based investment approach, coming from authors who have earned the trust and respect of a couple of generations of investors. I wish I had had this knowledge when I was in my 20s." - Larry Swedroe, Director of Research at Buckingham Family of Financial Services and author of "Your Complete Guide to a Successful and Secure Retirement" "There is beauty in simplicity and in this new book, We're Talking Millions! 12 Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement. Paul Merriman and Rich Buck have taken the complex world of investing and distilled it down to core principles that both novice and experienced investors alike will benefit from." - Tim Ranzetta, co-founder Next Gen Personal Finance (ngpf.org) "The combination of financial literacy and discipline is so rare these days that it should be considered a superpower. This book provides a shortcut to obtaining both!" - James M. Dahle, MD, Founder of The White Coat InvestorI have always said that investing is too easy to seem so complex. Paul Merriman and Rich Buck have managed to prove that point in this powerful and easily understood guide to building wealth. Their approach is so straightforward and simple that anyone can build a sensible, science-based portfolio almost immediately. Follow this advice and you could be "talking millions" in your pocket. -Don McDonald, co-host "Talking Real Money", author "Financial Fysics""Whether millennial or boomer, understanding these 12 concepts can have a big financial payoff... We're Talking Millions! Paul Merriman and Richard Buck team up again to educate and motivate." - David Baughier, curator of Fiology"Paul and Richard reduce the complexity of saving for retirement into strategies anyone can follow. Regardless if you are new to investing or have been investing for years, you'll find suggestions for boosting your wealth with minimal effort required." - Charles Rotblut, CFA, AAII Journal Editor and VP, American Association of Individual Investors"Merriman and Buck have done a great job of giving a playbook for financial success that anyone can read and understand!" - George Grombacher, Host of the Money Savage podcast"We're Talking Millions! could be a young person's Most Valuable Read (MVR) of their life, if they take action!" - Ed Fulbright, CPA, PFS, Host of Masteringyourmoney.com"Paul & Rich have done it again! For the last few decades they have shown investors how to create long-term portfolios for retirement, how to generate retirement income, and how to avoid costly mistakes. In their new book, We're Talking Millions! 12 Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement, they help people of all ages with huge money decisions. Written in plain English with critical charts, this book will help anyone who wants to create wealth in simple, low cost ways." - Tom Cock, co-host "Talking Real Money"
| Author | : George Santayana |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 306 |
| Release | : 1921 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : |
| Author | : Michael Martin |
| Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
| Total Pages | : 709 |
| Release | : 2015-03-12 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0810886782 |
Because every single one of us will die, most of us would like to know what—if anything—awaits us afterward, not to mention the fate of lost loved ones. Given the nearly universal vested interest in deciding this question in favor of an afterlife, it is no surprise that the vast majority of books on the topic affirm the reality of life after death without a backward glance. But the evidence of our senses and the ever-gaining strength of scientific evidence strongly suggest otherwise. In The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Michael Martin and Keith Augustine collect a series of contributions that redress this imbalance in the literature by providing a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife. Divided into four separate sections, this collection opens with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest evidence of whether or not we survive death—in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next, contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of “surviving” death—from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Then essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife—heaven, hell, karmic rebirth—and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems supporting those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife. Fully interdisciplinary, The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death brings together a variety of fields of research to make that case, including cognitiveneuroscience, philosophy of mind, personal identity, philosophy of religion, moralphilosophy, psychical research, and anomalistic psychology. As the definitive casebookof arguments against life after death, this collection is required reading for anyinstructor, researcher, and student of philosophy, religious studies, or theology. It issure to raise provocative issues new to readers, regardless of background, from thosewho believe fervently in the reality of an afterlife to those who do not or are undecidedon the matter.
