Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

Product Information

Think is by far the best introduction to philosophy that I know. Compact but hugely readable, this delightful book would be an excellent basis for an introductory course, as a text or as preliminary reading. You could also give it to family and friends, and all those annoying people who ask you what philosophers do. If Think doesn't explain it to them, nothing will!"--Huw Price, author of Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point This book reads like a supplementary textbook for an introductory philosophy class, in that it's not detailed or deep enough to be a primary textbook but also not casual or light enough to be a popular introduction to philosophy. It is a bit too heavy for the layman, for whom this book was intended, but too shallow for those with a decent understanding of the subject. Essays in Quasi-realism (1993). – a defence of quasi-realism as applied to ethicsISBN 0-19-508041-6 and ISBN 0-19-508224-9. Timothy Havener (27 April 2012). "The Great Debate - Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong? (FULL)". Archived from the original on 15 March 2013 . Retrieved 10 February 2018– via YouTube.

Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon

SB, to his credit, has managed to keep the reader sufficiently engaged by keeping the difficulty of the content just out of reach. This can be frustrating for casual readers but if you're interested in the subject, it pushes you to actively think about what you are reading even though you don't quite get it eight times out of ten. What do we really know? -The Big Questions of Philosophy" – (2009) from Quercus. ISBN 978-1-78087-587-3. He was one of 240 academics to sign a letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission opposing 'radical gender orthodoxy', published in The Sunday Times. [10] considerations that are supposed to add up to a fairly convincing case. Whether the case is convincing is Are you pessimistic about that as well? No, I’m not pessimistic about philosophy in general. I think I am just pessimistic about metaphysics and in particular about some bits of metaphysics. Other parts I think may have gone along much better; philosophy of modality, for example. I think interesting work has been done on time by people like Hugh Price and Hugh Mellor. So, I think there are places where metaphysics can progress. I suspect that what people are going to want from philosophy over the next certainly 30 years is much more in the social, political and moral sphere than in metaphysics. I think the events of September 11th will just accelerate that process.

Follow us on Twitter

Finally finished Think. It’s a book to read a bit about a theme or question and then ponder what on it. The book covers the big questions in life over 8 chapters: knowledge, Mind, Free Will, The Self, God, Reasoning, The World ld and What to do. Topics covered include the ontological argument, the cosmological argument and the design argument. Do things actually exist? Is something blue or do I only perceive it as blue? The chapter "The World" tries to point out traditional answers to questions like these. Some people say we should reduce matter to forces because forces are the only way we can study the world - our experience of matter is only deduced from forces acting upon it and therefore we don't really have any knowledge about matter. Does anything exist without somebody being conceiving it? He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. [2] He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 [3] and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008. [4] doesn’t that have to include mental events like deciding and choosing? And if my choices are caused, then aren’t

Think A compelling introduction to philosophy - Academia.edu Think A compelling introduction to philosophy - Academia.edu

Before continuing with a more detailed description of the book's contents, let me warn those of you who want to read this book passively, consuming its contents like the superficial plot of a bad work of fiction: This will simply not do. There is a reason the book's title is "Think". You really have to! So, that whole chapter is devoted to semi-dismissing some of the weaker arguments FOR the existence of God. Some people will be delighted and encouraged by the conclusions that the author shepherds us towards, but religious people, agnostics, free-thinking philosophers and even open-minded atheists (I know there are some) will be disappointed. Whoever you are, whatever you believe, you have to admit that there are zero bomb-proof arguments for or against the existence of God. From a religious point of view, that can only be a good thing. Evidence of God's existence would remove the need for faith, and with it all those meritorious benefits of faith-based belief. If there were any bomb-proof arguments against God, then we wouldn't keep getting fed with all the weaker arguments.

More on this topic

Superb. A helpful and/or enlightening book that is extremely well rounded, has many strengths and no shortcomings worth mentioning. would solve the problem of personal identity. We can say that what makes me the same person through all the changes I All in all, I think this book does a very good job of showing you what doing philosophy entails and the nature of the work required in reading philosophical works. I found this exercise painful but ultimately rewarding.

Blackburn, Chapters 2-4 - woldww.net Some notes on the Blackburn, Chapters 2-4 - woldww.net

When I was given a book called Think just before I came to Oxford, I was a little offended. Philosophy, I had figured, was one area where I could confidently claim to know the basics, and I felt that an introductory book would have been too simple and not interesting enough for me. But since Think had the advantage of being a small book with large words, I gave it a shot. mental side as something quite separate from the physical. At first it seems to make sense to suppose Well, in the course of my career I have found them successively the most interesting, I suppose. As you say, I started in philosophy of science and epistemology, and moved onto philosophy of language and then ethics. At those different times I have been obsessed by the particular things I had been doing. Just at the present time I have been fascinated by the philosophy of truth and that is what I am trying to work on just now.Philosophy is often dismissed as a purely academic discipline with no relation to the "real" world non-philosophers are compelled to inhabit. Think dispels this myth and offers a springboard for all those who want Tl;dr This book does a few things very well but sadly, its flaws outnumber its merits marring what would otherwise be a great introduction to philosophy. I still recommend it but with caveats. In your writings you often deal (as you mentioned yourself earlier) with an important philosophical concept, namely ‘truth’. What is your definition of ‘truth’? Many of our readers would be interested in hearing your opinion on whether there is such a thing as ‘absolute truth’? The examples or analogies that SB employs to explain involved ideas or difficult concepts are not always helpful and in a couple of instances, they even compounded my confusion. On the whole, a lot of the chapters didn't seem coherent enough for you to be sufficiently confident about your understanding of the different topics. I often found it hard to explain what I had just read to someone else. I think all of these reasons make this book a rather dull reading for those that aren't deeply interested in philosophy.