Thinking Things Through: An Introduction to Philosophical Issues and Achievements

Front Cover
MIT Press, 1997 - Philosophy - 382 pages

Thinking Things Through provides a broad, historical, and rigorous introduction to the logical tradition in philosophy and to its contemporary significance. The presentation is centered around three of the most fruitful issues in Western thought: What are proofs, and why do they provide knowledge? How can experience be used to gain knowledge or to alter beliefs in a rational way? What is the nature of mind and of mental events and mental states? In a clear and lively style, Glymour describes these key philosophical problems and traces attempts to solve them, from ancient Greece to the present.

Thinking Things Through reveals the philosophical sources of modern work in logic, the theory of computation, Bayesian statistics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence, and it connects these subjects with contemporary problems in epistemology and metaphysics. The text is full of examples and problems, and an instructor's manual is available.Clark Glymour is Alumni Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University and Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Contents

Chapter
8
Chapter
14
ARISTOTLES THEORY OF DEMONSTRATION AND PROOF
35
Chapter 3
65
Chapter 4
95
Chapter 5
115
Chapter 6
141
Chapter 7
167
Chapter 9
221
Chapter 10
249
Chapter 11
275
Chapter 12
301
Chapter 13
339
Chapter 14
369
Index
377
Copyright

BAYESIAN SOLUTIONS
191

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