Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

A central theme throughout the impressive series of philosophical books and articles Stephen Toulmin has published since 1948 is the way in which assertions and opinions concerning all sorts of topics, brought up in everyday life or in academic research, can be rationally justified. Is there one universal system of norms, by which all sorts of arguments in all sorts of fields must be judged, or must each sort of argument be judged according to its own norms? In The Uses (...) of Argument Toulmin sets out his views on these questions for the first time. In spite of initial criticisms from logicians and fellow philosophers, The Uses of Argument has been an enduring source of inspiration and discussion to students of argumentation from all kinds of disciplinary background for more than forty years. (shrink)

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

Bertrand Russell's 1903 masterpiece "The Principles of Mathematics" places great emphasis on the need to separate propositions from psychological items such as thoughts. In 1919 Russell explicitly retracts this view, however, and defines propositions as "psychological occurrences". These psychological occurrences are held by Russell to be mental images. In this paper, I seek to explain this radical change of heart. I argue that Russell's re-psychologising of the proposition in 1919 can only be understood against the background of his struggle with (...) the problem of the unity of the proposition in earlier work. Once this is recognized, and the solution to the problem offered by the 1919 theory is appreciated, new light is also shed on Russell's naturalism. I go on to compare Russell's psychological "picture theory" with the vehemently anti-psychological picture theory of Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and suggest that, once the background of the dispute is brought into clearer focus, Russell's position can be seen to have many advantages over its more celebrated rival. (shrink)

The end of the nineteenth century is remembered as a time when psychology freed itself from philosophy and carved out an autonomous subject matter for itself. In fact, this time of emancipation was also a time of exile: while the psychologists were leaving, philosophers were slamming the door behind them. Frege is celebrated for having demonstrated the irrelevance of psychological considerations to philosophy. Some of Frege’s reasons for distinguishing psychological questions from philosophical ones were sound, but one of Frege’s most (...) influential arguments, which was elaborated upon and advocated by the positivists, vastly overestimated the gap separating the two disciplines. (shrink)

Logical psychologism is the position that logic is a special branch of psychology, that logical laws are descriptíons of experience to be arrived at through observation, and are a posteriori.The accepted arguments against logical psychologism are effective only when directed against this extreme version. However, the clauses in the above characterization are independent and ambiguous, and may be considered separately. This separation permits a reconsideration of less extreme attempts to tie logic to psychology, such as those defended by Mill and (...) Boole. It also provides the basis for a reexamination of the relationship between logic and psychology, and raises the possibility of a deeper investigation into the nature of logic itself. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy has become the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. This book illuminates that tradition through a historical examination of a crucial period in its formation: the rejection of Idealism by Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the subsequent development of Russell's thought in the period before the First World War.

In section 1 I offer a definition of psychologism which applies to many of the apparently quite disparate uses that philosophers have made of the term. In section 2 I map out some distinct varieties of psychologism. In a short section 3 I indicate how the changing academic climate has injected a new urgency into the debate on psychologism. In section 4 I offer an argument for a variety of psychologism which has important consequences for cognitive science, and in section (...) 5 I consider some objections to the argument. (shrink)

In this incisive new book one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or what they voluntarily accept? And (...) should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

One of Hume's most well-known works and a masterpiece of philosophy, A Treatise of Human Nature is indubitably worth taking the time to read.

_Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundations of AI_ is a valuable contribution to the study of Wittgenstein's theories and his controversial attack on artifical intelligence, which successfully crosses a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, logic, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, to provide a stimulating and searching analysis.

_Theory of Knowledge_ gives us a picture of one of the great minds of the twentieth century at work. It is possible to see the unsolved problems left without disguise or evasion. Historically, it is invaluable to our understanding of both Russell's own thought and his relationship with Wittgenstein.

This volume contains all of Frege's extant unpublished writings on philosophy and logic other than his correspondence, written at various stages of his career.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's surviving notebooks serve to show what problems were occupying him in connection with many of the paragraphs of the Tractatus which are found in them as a first draft. They serve as a testimony to the thought processes of the Austrian philosopher.

Based mainly on unpublished papers this is the first detailed study of the early, neo-Hegelian period of Bertrand Russell's career. It covers his philosophical education at Cambridge, his conversion to neo-Hegelianism, his ambitious plans for a neo-Hegelian dialectic of the sciences and the problems which ultimately led him to reject it.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

F. H. Bradley was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bradley, who was a life fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was influenced by Hegel, and also reacted against utilitarianism. He was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation and was the first philosopher to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. His work is considered to have been important to the (...) formation of analytic philosophy. In metaphysics, he rejected pluralism and realism, and believed that English philosophy needed to deal systematically with first principles. This work, first published in 1893, is divided into two parts: 'Appearance' deals with exposing the contradictions that Bradley believed are hidden in our everyday conceptions of the world; and in 'Reality', he builds his positive account of reality and considers possible objections to it. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundations of AI_ is a valuable contribution to the study of Wittgenstein's theories and his controversial attack on artifical intelligence, which successfully crosses a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, logic, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, to provide a stimulating and searching analysis.

The first systematic exposition of all the central topics in the philosophy of logic, Susan Haack's book has established an international reputation for its accessibility, clarity, conciseness, orderliness, and range as well as for its thorough scholarship and careful analyses. Haack discusses the scope and purpose of logic, validity, truth-functions, quantification and ontology, names, descriptions, truth, truth-bearers, the set-theoretical and semantic paradoxes, and modality. She also explores the motivations for a whole range of non-classical systems of logic, including many-valued logics, (...) fuzzy logic, moddal and tense logics, and relevance logics. Persupposing only an elementary knowledge of formal logic, this book includes many useful summary tables and diagrams, as well as a helpful glossary of technical terms. Wide-ranging, informative, and eminently readable, this book has proven a valuable resource for generations of students and scholars in a variety of disciplines outside philosophy needing guidance on the philosophy of logic. (shrink)