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The Snarling Logician presents the reflections of a free-thinker. It explains in what sense free-thinking is free, and also the sense in which it is not. Free-thinking, the author argues, essentially involves a commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and to accept the conclusions of rational inquiry, even if those conclusions initially displease us. The book contains three essays. The first explores the nature of the philosophic quest. It emphasizes the difficulty of doing philosophy, and the even greater difficulty of writing about it in plain language. The second essay defends the philosophy of evidentialism, and shows why religious faith inevitably has a corrupting influence on the human mind. The final essay attempts to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no God. This is not the undecidable question many take it to be. There are in fact at least three cogent arguments for the atheistic position, any one of which would suffice to demonstrate the irrationality of traditional western monotheism, as found in the religions of Christianity, judaism, and Islam. Although the concept of evil appears in all three arguments, the famous argument from evil is not one of the three offered here. The common notion that the argument from evil is the best, or even the only serious, objection to theism, is simply false.
In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.
This book is designed to engage students' interest and promote their writing abilities while teaching them to think critically and creatively. Dowden takes an activist stance on critical thinking, asking students to create and revise arguments rather than simply recognizing and criticizing them. His book emphasizes inductive reasoning and the analysis of individual claims in the beginning, leaving deductive arguments for consideration later in the course.
The Snarling Logician presents the reflections of a free-thinker. It explains in what sense free-thinking is free, and also the sense in which it is not. Free-thinking, the author argues, essentially involves a commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and to accept the conclusions of rational inquiry, even if those conclusions initially displease us. The book contains three essays. The first explores the nature of the philosophic quest. It emphasizes the difficulty of doing philosophy, and the even greater difficulty of writing about it in plain language. The second essay defends the philosophy of evidentialism, and shows why religious faith inevitably has a corrupting influence on the human mind. The final essay attempts to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no God. This is not the undecidable question many take it to be. There are in fact at least three cogent arguments for the atheistic position, any one of which would suffice to demonstrate the irrationality of traditional western monotheism, as found in the religions of Christianity, judaism, and Islam. Although the concept of evil appears in all three arguments, the famous argument from evil is not one of the three offered here. The common notion that the argument from evil is the best, or even the only serious, objection to theism, is simply false.
"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.