Introducing Philosophy: God, Mind, World, and Logic

by Neil Tennant

Written for any readers interested in better harnessing philosophy’s real value, this book covers a broad range of fundamental philosophical problems and certain intellectual techniques for addressing those problems. In Introducing God, Mind, World, and Logic , Neil Tennant helps any student in pursuit of a ‘big picture’ to think independently, question received dogma, and analyse problems incisively. It also connects philosophy to other areas of study at the university, enabling all students to employ the concepts and techniques of this millennia-old discipline throughout their college careers – and beyond.　

KEY FEATURES AND
-- Investigates the philosophy of various subjects (psychology, language, biology, math), helping students contextualize philosophy and view it as an interdisciplinary pursuit; also helps students with majors outside of philosophy to see the relationship between philosophy and their own focused academic pursuits
-- Author comes from a distinguished background in Logic and Philosophy of Language, which gives the book a level of rigor, balance, and analytic focus sometimes missing from primers to philosophy
-- Introduces students to various important philosophical distinctions (e.g. fact vs. value, descriptive vs. prescriptive, norms vs. laws of nature, analytic vs. synthetic, inductive vs. deductive, a priori vs. a posteriori ) providing skills that are important for undergraduates to develop in order to inform their study at higher levels. They are essential for further work in philosophy but they are also very beneficial for students pursuing most other disciplines
-- Is much more methodologically comprehensive than competing introductions, giving the student the ability to address a wide range of philosophical problems – and not just the ones reviewed in the book

-- Offers a companion website with links to apt primary sources, organized chapter-by-chapter, making unnecessary a separate Reader/Anthology of primary sources – thus providing students with all reading material necessary for the course

-- Provides five to ten discussion questions for each chapter, helping instructors and students better interact with the ideas and concepts in the text

Genres: Philosophy

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Neil Tennant is an American philosopher. He is Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University; and, before taking up his appointment at the Ohio State University he held positions at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Stirling, and the Australian National University.

Along with Michael Dummett, Crispin Wright, Tennant is one of the most notable figures who have attempted to extend the project of providing anti-realist semantics for empirical language. He has also written extensively on intuitionistic logic and other non-classical logics. [wikipedia]

Reviews

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually a very interesting introduction in philosophy with some shortcomings. Good points: the author uses rather "casual" language in the best way, making it an enjoyable read while all topics are laid out in an easily accessible manner (although understanding is of course depending on the reader). Also the inclusion of central problems pertaining to a chapter at the end of each one is a good way of engaging the reader in immediate exercise. The heavy focus on formal logic is welcomed, too. However, being written from a philosopher of mathematics, so to speak, it has some rather unfortunate charakteristics. 1) Several sign which should be introduced at the beginning are only introduced in the last chapters. I don't quite understand, why chapters 26-28 are not in the beginning somewhere in second part, "Philosophy and Method". More troubling for me were the quite complete omission of epistemological issues and a completely partial (although clearly discussed), naturalist presentation of the "issue of god" and especially mind/body and free will.

[Arievanderbruggen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb introduction to Analytic Philosophy; both comprehensive and concise.