We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others’ behavior and choices.

This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition. It considers basic questions about moral and ethical judgment: Is there such a thing as something that is really right or really wrong independent of time, place and perspective? What is the relationship between religion and ethics? How can we reconcile self-interest and ethics? Is it ever acceptable to harm one person in order to help others? What do recent discussions in evolutionary biology or have to say about human moral systems? What is the relation between gender and ethics? The authors invite you to participate in their exploration of these and many other questions in philosophical ethics.

If you are adopting or adapting this book for a course, please let us know on our adoption form for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwf2E7bRGvWefjhNZ07kgpgnNFxVxxp-iidPE5gfDBQNGBGg/viewform?usp=sf_link.

Introduction to Philosophy: Logic provides students with the concepts and skills necessary to identify and evaluate arguments effectively. The chapters, all written by experts in the field, provide an overview of what arguments are, the different types of arguments one can expect to encounter in both philosophy and everyday life, and how to recognise common argumentative mistakes.

Introduction to Philosophy: Logic provides students with the concepts and skills necessary to identify and evaluate arguments effectively. The chapters, all written by experts in the field, provide an overview of what arguments are, the different types of arguments one can expect to encounter in both philosophy and everyday life, and how to recognise common argumentative mistakes.

Table of Contents
1. What is Logic?
2. Evaluating Arguments
3. Formal Logic in Philosophy
4. Informal Fallacies
5. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Access also available here: https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-logic/

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind surveys the central themes in philosophy of mind and places them in a historical and contemporary context intended to engage first-time readers in the field. It focuses on debates about the status and character of the mind and its seemingly subjective nature in an apparently more objective world. Join the discussion for this and other books in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series!

1. Substance Dualism in Descartes
2. Materialism and Behaviorism
3. Functionalism
4. Property Dualism
5. Qualia and Raw Feels
6. Consciousness
7. Concepts and Content
8. Freedom of the Will

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind (edited by Heather Salazar) surveys the central themes in philosophy of mind and places them in a historical and contemporary context intended to engage first-time readers in the field. It focuses on debates about the status and character of the mind and its seemingly subjective nature in an apparently more objective world.

Written by experts and emerging researchers in their subject areas, each chapter brings clarity to complex material and involves the reader through a wealth of examples. Many chapters include applications of the concepts to film and literature that will stimulate readers to firmly grasp the significance of the philosophy of mind. Subjects covered are how the mind fits into the material world and how to analyze its properties. In that vein, substance dualism, materialism, behaviorism, functionalism, and property dualism are all explored.

In addition, it includes insightful contributions on how to explain seemingly subjective feelings, the mystery of consciousness, conceptual understanding of the world outside of the mind, and free will. The book is designed to be used alone or alongside a reader of historical and contemporary original sources.

If you are adopting or adapting this book for a course, please let us know on our adoption form for the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwf2E7bRGvWefjhNZ07kgpgnNFxVxxp-iidPE5gfDBQNGBGg/viewform?usp=sf_link.

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.

Table of Contents:
1. The Intertwining of Philosophy and Religion in the Western Tradition
2. Reasons to Believe – Theoretical Arguments
3. Non-Standard Arguments for God’s Existence
4. Reasons Not to Believe
5. Debunking Arguments against Theistic Belief
6. From Philosophy of (Mono)theism to Philosophy of Religions

Also available from https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-of-religion/

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.

This course explores the nature of meaning and truth, and their bearing on the use of language in communication. No knowledge of logic or linguistics is presupposed.

This is an introductory course to Philosophy, which is the study of general and fundamental problems such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Students will be introduced to the primary branches of Philosophy - ethics, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. The course considers philosophers and works of Western Philosophy, including Plato, Hebrew scripture, Schopenhauer, Swedenborg, Buber, Kant, Hume, Locke and Berkeley.

This course explains developments in science and technology in terms of their interactions with social, cultural, environmental, and other issues. This course will prepare you for the STS major by introducing its core components: the philosophy of science, history of science, history of technology, science and ethics, and science policy.

Political thought, otherwise known as political theory or philosophy, is the study of questions concerning power, justice, rights, law, and other issues pertaining to governance. This course examines major texts in the history of political thought and asks how different views on human nature inform the design of government. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: summarize the passage of political thought through the classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods and based on the works of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Marx; compare and contrast the differences between Plato and Aristotle with regard to their understandings of the nature of the person, ethics, society, citizenship, and governance; explain the historical and intellectual context in which the political thought that helped to develop the modern state came to be; compare and contrast the concepts of justice, freedom, equality, citizenship, and sovereignty in the works of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; explain the different versions of, and importance of, 'the state of nature' to political thought; identify the influences of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau on the development of the United States Constitution; summarize the thoughts of Alexis de Tocqueville on the American political landscape, particularly with regard to religion and equality, and why this has importance beyond the American context; explain Karl Marx's world view, with particular regard to his critique of democracy and the modern, politically liberal, state; how it came to be; and its fundamental link to capitalism. (Political Science 201)

In the decades following the Second World War, a cluster of extraordinary French thinkers were widely translated and read in American universities. Their works were soon labeled as "French Theory." Why would sharing the same nationality make authors such as Lacan, Cixous, Derrida, Foucault or Debord, ambassadors of a specifically "French" theory? The course will explore the maze of transatlantic intellectual debates since 1945 and the heyday of French existentialism. We will study the debates on communism, decolonization, neo_liberalism, gender, youth culture and mass media. This course is taught in English.

This course explores the ideal of social justice. What makes a society just? We will approach this question by studying three opposing theories of justice - utilitarianism, libertarianism, and egalitarian liberalism - each foundational to contemporary political thought and discourse.

24.901 is designed to give you a preliminary understanding of how the sound systems of different languages are structured, how and why they may differ from each other. The course also aims to provide you with analytical tools in phonology, enough to allow you to sketch the analysis of an entire phonological system by the end of the term. On a non-linguistic level, the course aims to teach you by example the virtues of formulating precise and explicit descriptive statements; and to develop your skills in making and evaluating arguments.

Introduction to fundamental concepts in syntactic theory and its relation to issues in philosophy and cognitive psychology. Examples and exercises from a variety of languages. This course will acquaint you with some of the important results and ideas of the last half - century of research in syntax. We will explore a large number of issues and a large amount of data so that you can learn something of what this field is all about. From time to time, we will discuss related work in language acquisition and processing. The class will emphasize ideas and arguments for these ideas in addition to the the details of particular analyses. At the same time, you will learn the mechanics of one particular approach (sometimes called Principles and Parameters syntax). Most of all, the course tries to show why the study of syntax is exciting, and why its results are important to researchers in other language sciences. The class assumes some familiarity with basic concepts of theoretical linguistics, of the sort you could acquire in 24.900.

This seminar explores experiments in education and discusses how education and learning might be done, through reading and discussion. This seminar is not a survey of experiments in education, but rather, its goal is to determine how learning should happen and what kinds of contexts allow it to happen.

Learning from Arguments offers a novel approach to teaching Introduction to Philosophy. It advances accessible versions of key philosophical arguments, in a form that students can emulate in their own writing, and with the primary aim of cultivating an understanding of the dynamics of philosophical argumentation.

The book contains ten core chapters, covering the problem of evil, Pascal’s wager, personal identity, the irrationality of fearing death, free will and determinism, Cartesian skepticism, the problem of induction, the problem of political authority, the violinist argument, the future-like-ours argument, the ethics of eating meat, utilitarianism (both act and rule), and the trolley problem. Additionally, there is an introductory chapter explaining what arguments are and surveying some common argumentative strategies, an appendix on logic explaining the mechanics and varieties of valid arguments, and an appendix providing detailed advice for writing philosophy papers.

Each of the ten core chapters offers a sustained argument for some controversial thesis, specifically written for an audience of beginners. The aim is to introduce newcomers to the dynamics of philosophical argumentation, using some of the arguments standardly covered in an introductory philosophy course, but without the additional hurdles one encounters when reading the primary sources of the arguments: challenging writing, specialized jargon, and references to unfamiliar books, philosophers, or schools of thought.

" This class explores the creation (and creativity) of the modern scientific and cultural world through study of western Europe in the 17th century, the age of Descartes and Newton, Shakespeare, Milton and Ford. It compares period thinking to present-day debates about the scientific method, art, religion, and society. This team-taught, interdisciplinary subject draws on a wide range of literary, dramatic, historical, and scientific texts and images, and involves theatrical experimentation as well as reading, writing, researching and conversing. The primary theme of the class is to explore how England in the mid-seventeenth century became "a world turned upside down" by the new ideas and upheavals in religion, politics, and philosophy, ideas that would shape our modern world. Paying special attention to the "theatricality" of the new models and perspectives afforded by scientific experimentation, the class will read plays by Shakespeare, Tate, Brecht, Ford, Churchill, and Kushner, as well as primary and secondary texts from a wide range of disciplines. Students will also compose and perform in scenes based on that material."

In this course we will cover central aspects of modern formal logic, beginning with an explanation of what constitutes good reasoning. Topics will include validity and soundness of arguments, formal derivations, truth-functions, translations to and from a formal language, and truth-tables. We will thoroughly cover sentential calculus and predicate logic, including soundness and completeness results.

This course begins with an introduction to the theory of computability, then proceeds to a detailed study of its most illustrious result: Kurt GĚŚdel's theorem that, for any system of true arithmetical statements we might propose as an axiomatic basis for proving truths of arithmetic, there will be some arithmetical statements that we can recognize as true even though they don't follow from the system of axioms. In my opinion, which is widely shared, this is the most important single result in the entire history of logic, important not only on its own right but for the many applications of the technique by which it's proved. We'll discuss some of these applications, among them: Church's theorem that there is no algorithm for deciding when a formula is valid in the predicate calculus; Tarski's theorem that the set of true sentence of a language isn't definable within that language; and GĚŚdel's second incompleteness theorem, which says that no consistent system of axioms can prove its own consistency.