The present text book is intended as an introduction to elementary logic. Its content, structure, and manner have been determined in large measure - perhaps 'caused' is the better word- by certain desiderata about which the reader should be informed at the outset. The leading idea is that even an introductory treatment of logic may profitably be fashioned around a rigorous framework.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

This book offers a critical account of the fundamental elements of Leibniz's philosophy, as they manifest themselves in his metaphysics and philosophy of language. Emphasis is placed upon his hitherto neglected doctrine of nominalism, which states that only concrete individuals exist and that there are no such things as abstract entities – no numbers, geometrical figures or other mathematical objects, nor any abstractions such as space, time, heat, light, justice, goodness, or beauty. Using this doctrine as a basis, the book (...) considers the core of Leibniz's metaphysics and philosophy of language, including the well‐known principles of Contradiction, Sufficient Reason, Continuity and Individuation, and the concepts of Possible World, Individual Substance, Truth, and Necessity. (shrink)

A study of Pyrrhonean scepticism, consisting of a new translation of Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism, accompanied by an analytic introduction and an in-depth, section-by-section commentary - the first of its kind available.

This article examines the implications of the transition to online or blended learning for first generation scholars (FGS) brought about by Covid-19. We present the findings of a mixed methods project that draws data from both in-depth qualitative interviews and a large quantitative survey of students at Durham University. We offer a comparative analysis of how FGS contrast to the general student body in relation to a range of key challenges that Covid-19 and the consequent ‘online pivot’ posed to university (...) life including technological, social and resource based issues. Our findings demonstrate that FGS were particularly affected by this shift to online or blended learning. The final substantive section discusses a range of potential mitigation strategies adopted by the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, with the assumption that some, at least, of these, and our data, will be of wider relevance in the sector. (shrink)

"In philosophy," the author writes in his preface, "we have learned to get our satisfaction from showing that the other fellow is mistaken rather than from establishing the truth of our own positive tenets." The impeccably professional work of a mature and distinguished logician and scholar, Skeptical Essays propounds the view that the principal traditional problems of philosophy are genuine intellectual knots; they are intelligible enough, but at the same time the are absolutely insoluble. The problems Mates discusses are: the (...) Liar paradox and Russell's Antinomy of the class of all nonself-membered classes; the problem of determinism and moral responsibility; and the existence of the external world. Clearly written and effectively organized, the book will be an excellent text for advanced students. (shrink)

Philosophers have given various reasons for denying the existence of sense data. A number of these reasons are examined in the present paper. The claim that ?no sufficient purpose is served by positing such objects? is deemed irrelevant to the issue; the complaint that ?we do not know what it would be like to find that there were no such objects? is found to be confusedly formulated, mistaken, and irrelevant; and the charge that there is something improper, extraordinary, or defective (...) about the way in which philosophers have introduced the term ?sense datum? into their discourse is pronounced false. (shrink)

R. G. Bury’s translations of Sextus Empiricus for the Loeb Library have served English language readers well, but new translations, taking account of advances in scholarship since Bury’s day, have long been needed. We now have two new English versions of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism. They take different and in some ways complementary approaches to the task.