World And Logic

How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth world In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can't be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic -- for example, emotion -- is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.

While logical principles seem timeless, placeless, and eternal, their discovery is a story of personal accidents, political tragedies, and broad social change. If A, Then B begins with logic's emergence twenty-three centuries ago and tracks its expansion as a discipline ever since. It explores where our sense of logic comes from and what it really is a sense of. It also explains what drove human beings to start studying logic in the first place. Logic is more than the work of logicians alone. Its discoveries have survived only because logicians have also been able to find a willing audience, and audiences are a consequence of social forces affecting large numbers of people, quite apart from individual will. This study therefore treats politics, economics, technology, and geography as fundamental factors in generating an audience for logic--grounding the discipline's abstract principles in a compelling material narrative. The authors explain the turbulent times of the enigmatic Aristotle, the ancient Stoic Chrysippus, the medieval theologian Peter Abelard, and the modern thinkers René Descartes, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, John Stuart Mill, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Alan Turing. Examining a variety of mysteries, such as why so many branches of logic (syllogistic, Stoic, inductive, and symbolic) have arisen only in particular places and periods, If A, Then B is the first book to situate the history of logic within the movements of a larger social world. If A, Then B is the 2013 Gold Medal winner of Foreword Reviews' IndieFab Book of the Year Award for Philosophy.

In our everyday thought and talk, we put things into categories in order to generalize about them: 'Lions have manes', 'Ravens are black'. Bernhard Nickel presents a theory of generic sentences and the modes of thought they express, integrating compositional semantics with metaphysics to solve the problems of what they mean and how they work.

The second book in the Elemental Logic series, Earth Logic continues the story from the perspective of Karis, a complex character born of magic and now ruler for the country of Shaftal. Karis is a woman who can heal the war-torn land and expel the invaders, but she lives in obscurity with her fractious found family. With war and disease spreading, Karis must act quickly. And when Karis acts, the very stones of the earth sit up and take notice. “Another stunner of a book. The powerful but subtle writing glows with intelligence.” —Booklist

The only book to investigate the parallel between what happens at other times and what happens in other possible worlds.

Sermons by a noted German theologian discuss what the Bible says about freedom, political power, fear, unity, and human rights

What a bargain! At more than 700 puzzle-packed pages, this huge, value-priced collection should keep any solver happy...and busy for a very long time. It contains brain-busting challenges of almost every type: math logic problems for the numerically inclined; absolutely amazing lateral thinking conundrums; really great critical thinking bafflers; and mind-boggling word puzzles. Here's just a small sample of what's inside: The 22nd and 24th presidents of the United States had the same mother and the same father, but were not brothers. How could this be so? Stumped? That's because it's one man--Grover Cleveland--who was reelected after skipping a term. And that's just an easy warm-up!

Written for any readers interested in better harnessing philosophy’s real value, this book covers a broad range of fundamental philosophical problems and certain intellectual techniques for addressing those problems. In Introducing Philosophy: God, Mind, World, and Logic, Neil Tennant helps any student in pursuit of a ‘big picture’ to think independently, question received dogma, and analyse problems incisively. It also connects philosophy to other areas of study at the university, enabling all students to employ the concepts and techniques of this millennia-old discipline throughout their college careers – and beyond. KEY FEATURES AND BENEFITS: -- Investigates the philosophy of various subjects (psychology, language, biology, math), helping students contextualize philosophy and view it as an interdisciplinary pursuit; also helps students with majors outside of philosophy to see the relationship between philosophy and their own focused academic pursuits -- Author comes from a distinguished background in Logic and Philosophy of Language, which gives the book a level of rigor, balance, and analytic focus sometimes missing from primers to philosophy -- Introduces students to various important philosophical distinctions (e.g. fact vs. value, descriptive vs. prescriptive, norms vs. laws of nature, analytic vs. synthetic, inductive vs. deductive, a priori vs. a posteriori) providing skills that are important for undergraduates to develop in order to inform their study at higher levels. They are essential for further work in philosophy but they are also very beneficial for students pursuing most other disciplines -- Is much more methodologically comprehensive than competing introductions, giving the student the ability to address a wide range of philosophical problems – and not just the ones reviewed in the book -- Offers a companion website with links to apt primary sources, organized chapter-by-chapter, making unnecessary a separate Reader/Anthology of primary sources – thus providing students with all reading material necessary for the course -- Provides five to ten discussion questions for each chapter, helping instructors and students better interact with the ideas and concepts in the text

In The Logic of Life, bestselling author Tim Harford quite simply makes sense of this world. Life often seems to defy logic. The receptionist is clearly smarter than the boss who earns fifty times her salary. Arbitrary lines starkly divide the desirable districts of the city from the dangerous ones. Voters flock to the polling booths to elect candidates who’ll rip them off to favour special interests. None of it makes logical sense — or does it? Economist and acclaimed author Tim Harford thinks it does. By weaving stories from locations as diverse as a Vegas casino to a barroom speed date, Harford aims to persuade you that people are, in fact, surprisingly logical. When a street prostitute agrees to unprotected sex, or a teenage criminal embarks on a burglary — perhaps especially when a racist employer disregards a black job applicant — we would seem to be a million miles from rational behaviour. Harford shows that, discomfitingly, we are not. It turns out that the unlikeliest of people are complying with the logic of economics and responding to future costs and benefits, often without realizing it; and socially tragic outcomes can have their roots in individually rational decisions. Brilliantly reasoned, always entertaining and often provocative, The Logic of Life is a book to help you understand yourself and the world around you.