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Author: Roy A. Sorensen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 019982956X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities is a collection of puzzles, paradoxes, riddles, and miscellaneous logic problems. Depending on taste, one can partake of a puzzle, a poem, a proof, or a pun.
Author: Roy Sorensen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-04-07
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 0190468637
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWill you answer this question in the same way that you will answer my next question? Done? Good! Will you buy this book?. Inside you will discover that your only truthful answer to this second question is affirmative. Logic has made some men rich. Inside this book you will learn of John Eck (who debated Luther in 1519). He Will you answer this question in the same way that you will answer my next question? Done? Good! Will you buy this book? Inside you will discover that your only truthful answer to this second question is affirmative. A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities is a colorful collection of puzzles and paradoxes, both historical and contemporary, by philosopher Roy Sorensen. Taking inspiration from Ian Stewart's Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, which assembled interesting "maths" from outside the classroom into a miscellany of marvels, these puzzles are ready to be enjoyed independently but gain mutual support when read in clusters. The volume ranges from simple examples to anomalous anomalies, considers data that seems to confirm a generalization while lowering its probability, and argues that we are doomed to believe infinitely many contradictions-and that the pain of contradictions can be profoundly stimulating.Inside this book you will learn of John Eck, who debated Luther in 1519. He devised a sequence of contracts that sidestepped usury laws, and German bankers made a fortune from this Triple Contract. Sorensen also recounts how Voltaire set himself up for life by exploiting a fallacy in the construction of a Parisian lottery. There is logic for altruists, too. You will discover how General Benjamin Butler used other-centric reasoning to protect runaway slaves. There are historical snapshots of logic in action, and the book contains tributes to Lewis Carroll, Arthur Prior, and Peter Geach. In addition to short essays, there are dialogues, cures and insults.
Author: Roy Sorensen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-01-27
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 0199742839
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAbout the fifth century BC, three civilizations independently and simultaneously began to philosophize about nothing: China (chapter 3), India (chapters 4 and 5), and Greece (chapters 6-10). They had previously focused on what is the case. Light poured on nature, architecture, and society. But then, in a cross-civilizational black-out, emerged disparate nay-sayers who shifted attention to what is not the case. Behold, the holes in a sponge are absences of sponge! Holes are what make the sponge useful for absorbing liquid. The sponge can exist without the holes. But the holes cannot "exist" without the sponge. They are parasites that depend on their host. Yet the two get along well. Without holes, there would not be so many sponges in your house. Your shadow is a more complex parasite. It is a hole you bore into the light. Your shadow depends on both you and the light. You and light are rather mysterious. Your shadow partakes of both mysteries. .
Author: J. C. McKeown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 303
ISBN-13: 0199982104
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA miscellany of odd stories and facts about the ancient Greeks, demonstrating how much they were--and were not--like us.
Author: Roy Sorensen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-12-04
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 0190289317
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCan God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before He made the world, he was told: "Preparing hell for people who ask questions like that." A Brief History of the Paradox takes a close look at "questions like that" and the philosophers who have asked them, beginning with the folk riddles that inspired Anaximander to erect the first metaphysical system and ending with such thinkers as Lewis Carroll, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and W.V. Quine. Organized chronologically, the book is divided into twenty-four chapters, each of which pairs a philosopher with a major paradox, allowing for extended consideration and putting a human face on the strategies that have been taken toward these puzzles. Readers get to follow the minds of Zeno, Socrates, Aquinas, Ockham, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, and many other major philosophers deep inside the tangles of paradox, looking for, and sometimes finding, a way out. Filled with illuminating anecdotes and vividly written, A Brief History of the Paradox will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable questions a paradoxically pleasant endeavor.
Author: Murphy D. Smith
Publisher:
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 236
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Julia Annas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 275
ISBN-13: 1107074835
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book opens up Cicero's work philosophically, taking us deeper into ancient ethical debates and into Cicero's own sceptical stance.
Author: Roy A. Sorensen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-06-09
Total Pages: 325
ISBN-13: 0199797137
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRoy Sorensen here defends the causal theory of perception by treating absences as causes. He draws heavily on common sense and psychology to vindicate the assumption that we directly perceive absences.
Author: Thomas Belden Butler
Publisher:
Published: 1856
Total Pages: 446
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat are the consequences of being able to predict with relative certainty a day's weather? This text explores why we care so much about weather and what we can do with our growing knowledge.
Author: R.J.W. Evans
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-02
Total Pages: 449
ISBN-13: 1351946668
DOWNLOAD EBOOK'Curiosity' and 'wonder' are topics of increasing interest and importance to Renaissance and Enlightenment historians. Conspicuous in a host of disciplines from history of science and technology to history of art, literature, and society, both have assumed a prominent place in studies of the Early Modern period. This volume brings together an international group of scholars to investigate the various manifestations of, and relationships between, 'curiosity' and 'wonder' from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Focused case studies on texts, objects and individuals explore the multifaceted natures of these themes, highlighting the intense fascination and continuing scrutiny to which each has been subjected over three centuries. From instances of curiosity in New World exploration to the natural wonders of 18th-century Italy, Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment locates its subjects in a broad geographical and disciplinary terrain. Taken together, the essays presented here construct a detailed picture of two complex themes, demonstrating the extent to which both have been transformed and reconstituted, often with dramatic results.
