Thinking Things Through – An Introduction to Philosophical Issues & Achievements: Introduction to Philosophical Issues and Achievements - Hardcover

Glymour, Clark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 026207141X ISBN 13: 9780262071413

Publisher: MIT Press, 1992

Synopsis

"Thinking things through" provides a broad, historical introduction to the logical tradition in philosophy and to its contemporary significance. The presentation is centred around three 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? 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.

About this title

Review

I have never encountered an introductory text like this one. As far as textbooks go, it is distinctive. It attempts to present a side of philosophy that has been hidden from the view of all but its practitioners. Real philosophy can be formal and rigorous in the very same ways in which mathematics and physical science are formal and rigorous. Glymour's book should make a good many people proud to be philosophers in the twentieth century."- Douglas Stalker, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware

About the Author

Clark Glymour is Senior Research Scientist at IHMC and Alumni University Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 026207141X
• ISBN 13: 9780262071413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 394