The Philosopher's Toolkit A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods

by Baggini, Julian; Fosl, Peter S.

• ISBN13: 9781405190183
• ISBN10: 1405190183
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-26
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The second edition of this popular compendium provides the necessary intellectual equipment to engage with and participate in effective philosophical argument, reading, and reflection Features significantly revised, updated and expanded entries, and an entirely new section drawn from methods in the history of philosophy This edition has a broad, pluralistic approach--appealing to readers in both continental philosophy and the history of philosophy, as well as analytic philosophy Explains difficult concepts in an easily accessible manner, and addresses the use and application of these concepts Proven useful to philosophy students at both beginning and advanced levels

Author Biography

Peter Fosi is Professor of Philosophy at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Julian Baggini (www.julianbaggini.com) is a freelance writer and co-founding editor of The Philosophers' Magazine.

Table of Contents

Alphabetical Table of Contents	p. xi
Preface	p. xiv
Acknowledgements	p. xvi
Basic Tools for Argument	p. 1
Arguments, premises and conclusions	p. 1
Deduction	p. 6
Induction	p. 8
Validity and soundness	p. 13
Invalidity	p. 17
Consistency	p. 19
Fallacies	p. 23
Refutation	p. 26
Axioms	p. 28
Definitions	p. 31
Certainty and probability	p. 34
Tautologies, self-contradictions and the law of non-contradiction	p. 38
More Advanced Tools	p. 42
Abduction	p. 42
Hypothetico-deductive method	p. 46
Dialectic	p. 49
Analogies	p. 52
Anomalies and exceptions that prove the rule	p. 55
Intuition pumps	p. 58
Logical constructions	p. 60
Reduction	p. 62
Thought experiments	p. 65
Useful fictions	p. 68
Tools for Assessment	p. 71
Alternative explanations	p. 72
Ambiguity	p. 74
Bivalence and the excluded middle	p. 77
Category mistakes	p. 79
Ceteris paribus	p. 81
Circularity	p. 84
Conceptual incoherence	p. 87
Counterexamples	p. 90
Criteria	p. 93
Error theory	p. 95
False dichotomy	p. 97
False cause	p. 99
Genetic fallacy	p. 101
Horned dilemmas	p. 105
Is/ought gap	p. 108
Masked man fallacy	p. 110
Partners in guilt	p. 113
Principle of charity	p. 114
Question-begging	p. 118
Reductios	p. 121
Redundancy	p. 123
Regresses	p. 125
Saving the phenomena	p. 127
Self-defeating arguments	p. 130
Sufficient reason	p. 133
Testability	p. 136
Tools for Conceptual Distinctions	p. 140
A priori/a posteriori	p. 141
Absolute/relative	p. 144
Analytic/synthetic	p. 147
Categorical/modal	p. 150
Conditional/biconditional	p. 151
De re/de dicto	p. 153
Defeasible/indefeasible	p. 156
Entailment/implication	p. 158
Essence/accident	p. 161
Internalism/externalism	p. 164
Knowledge by acquaintance/description	p. 167
Necessary/contingent	p. 170
Necessary/sufficient	p. 173
Objective/subjective	p. 176
Realist/non-realist	p. 178
Sense/reference	p. 181
Syntax/semantics	p. 182
Thick/thin concepts	p. 185
Types/tokens	p. 187
Tools of Historical Schools and Philosophers	p. 190
Aphorism, fragment, remark	p. 190
Categories and specific differences	p. 193
Elenchus and aporia	p. 196
Hume's fork	p. 199
Indirect discourse	p. 202
Leibniz's law of identity	p. 204
Ockham's razor	p. 209
Phenomenological method(s)	p. 211
Signs and signifiers	p. 214
Transcendental argument	p. 218
Tools for Radical Critique	p. 222
Class critique	p. 222
Deconstruction and the critique of presence	p. 225
Empiricist critique of metaphysics	p. 227
Feminist critique	p. 229
Foucaultion critique of power	p. 231
Heideggerian critique of metaphysics	p. 234
Lacanian critique	p. 237
Critiques of naturalism	p. 239
Nietzschean critique of Christian-Platonic culture	p. 241
Pragmatist critique	p. 244
Sartrean critique of 'bad faith'	p. 246
Tools at the Limit	p. 249
Basic beliefs	p. 249
Gödel and incompleteness	p. 252
Philosophy and/as art	p. 254
Mystical experience and revelation	p. 257
Paradoxes	p. 259
Possibility and impossibility	p. 262
Primitives	p. 265
Self-evident truths	p. 267
Scepticism	p. 270
Underdetermination	p. 273
Internet Resources for Philosophers	p. 276
Index	p. 277
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