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Modern Branches of PhilosophyPhilosophy Branches
November 14, 2023

PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS

The philosophy of mathematics is traditionally concerned with the ontological and epistemological foundations of mathematics. The two questions, of ontology and epistemology, are intimately related, as a satisfactory account of…
THE EARLY MODERN PERIODHistory Of Philosophy
November 15, 2023

LIBERALISM

A political philosophy whose central claim is that a government’s authority is justified only insofar as it secures the liberty of its subjects, Liberalism is generally traced to John Locke…
History Of Philosophy
November 15, 2023

ATOMISM

Atomism was founded by Leucippus (who flourished around 440 BC) but was primarily elaborated by Democritus (c. 460-370 BC) as a way of reconciling the Eleatic doctrine of the impossibility…
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHYHistory Of Philosophy
November 15, 2023

PHENOMENOLOGY

As originally developed by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), phenomenology seeks to provide a detailed description of the way in which things are presented to us—that is to say, phenomena —in an…
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING
November 20, 2023

THE PERSONAL ESSAY

The personal essay is a self-reflective search for meaning. Unlike most philosophical writing, it is not argumentative. Instead, it is exploratory and speculative, often even somewhat confessional. It is typically…
CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHYHistory Of Philosophy
November 15, 2023

STOICISM

Founded by Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC), early Stoicism shared many similarities with Epicureanism, including the belief that the world was largely deterministic and that the overall goal of the…
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
November 12, 2023

PHILOSOPHY AS METHOD

Our digital age suggests a useful analogy to further explain the role of philosophy in intellectual life. Philosophy is analogous to an operating system (OS), a software platform that enables…
CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHYHistory Of Philosophy
November 15, 2023

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL

A group of philosophers, cultural critics, and social scientists based around the Frankfurt (Germany) Institute for Social Research were primarily concerned with integrating philosophical analysis with then-recent results in the…
Logic
November 15, 2023

MANY-VALUE LOGICS

In the classical logics already discussed, the logical connectives are taken to be bivalent—that is, they allow of only two different truth values: true and false. One natural extension to…
CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHYHistory Of Philosophy
November 15, 2023

EPICUREANISM

Founded by Epicurus (341–271 BC), this eponymous philosophy is best known through the Roman poet Lucretius (mid first century BC). Like the Atomists, the Epicureans maintained that everything is made…
Writing Philosophy
November 22, 2023

THE PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING PROCESS

Writing is work, and for many of us, writing is hard work. Writing philosophy adds to this labor an element of intimidation. Whether you are writing an expository—explanatory and descriptive—essay…
Logic
November 15, 2023

MODAL LOGIC

A common extension to the standard formal languages outlined above is to introduce the technical machinery required to evaluate natural language arguments containing modal terminology (that is, talk of possibility…
FORMS OF PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING
November 20, 2023

THE ESSAY OF ASSERTION

The essay of assertion takes the position I believe. It is an argumentative essay in which you convey to the reader some belief or beliefs that you hold. If you…
Philosophy BranchesTraditional Branches of Philosophy
December 12, 2023

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

The philosophy of law is concerned with all aspects of theoretical reflection on laws and legal systems and therefore encompasses historical and sociological studies in addition to the philosophical questions…
PHILOSOPHICAL BOOKS AND TEXT
November 27, 2023

INTRODUCTORY LOGIC TEXTS

There are some fairly firm distinctions between critical thinking and formal (symbolic) logic texts. Whereas critical thinking focuses broadly on argumentation, formal logic is the study of the principles of…

Books

  • Aquinas and Modern Science: A New Synthesis of Faith and Reason

    $30.00
  • Socrates: Introduction to the Philosophy of Socrates (Introduction to Philosophy)

    $7.99
  • Meditations

    $12.01
  • Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation

    $14.95
  • Confessions (Penguin Classics)

    $8.99
  • Montaigne: A Very Short Introduction

    $11.83
  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

    $15.98
  • Meditations

    $15.99
  • Collected Studies (Volume 3): Maimonidean Argument in France

    $85.00
  • Masterpieces of World Philosophy

    $22.04
  • Walden: or, Life in the Woods

    $3.95
  • Living Like a Stoic: Cultivating Wisdom, Emotional Resilience, Positivity, Confidence, Calmness, and Meditations for Perseverance in Today’s Modern Life

    $9.99
  • The Couple’S Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Lovers

    $15.00

Terms & Concepts

I

Inference to the best explanation

Ampliative method of inference concluding that the explanation that best explains the available evidence is likely to be true. https://youtube.com/shorts/K2LhdmvK-3g?feature=share
P

Principle of induction

The rule that nature is uniform—that is, that the future will resemble the past. https://youtube.com/shorts/3H8Pk0Gkit0?feature=share
A

Argument from design

An argument that attempts to prove God’s existence from the uniformity, or apparent design, of nature. Since the universe looks as if it has been designed, and that which is…
C
Contraposition by limitation
U
Universal introduction
E
Exclusive disjunction
B
Bayes’s Theorem
S
Subcontraries
S
Synthetic
C
Cogito, ergo sum
A
Ahimsa
A
Axiology
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