Language Philosophy

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop" - a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called "I". The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.

This is the strange story of how our society is questioning its own identity. We live in liquid times in which everything flows and nothing stays the same: not philosophy, not politics, not diet, not sex, not even death. It is literally “the end of everything”, but at the same time the beginning of a new era. How did we come to this? The book is full of real-life examples showing the diversity and complexity of a society straddling modernity and postmodernity. Through its pages we will encounter: adulterous presidents, jilted lovers, homophobes turned transsexuals, artists smearing ...

Ellenberg chases mathematical threads through a vast range of time and space, from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering, among other things, baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, the replicability crisis in psychology, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, the coming obesity apocalypse, Antonin Scalia's views on crime and punishment, the psychology of slime molds, what Facebook can and can't figure out about you, and the existence of God.

“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”

Written in a conversational, easy-to-follow format that makes the concepts easy to understand, Western Philosophy in Simple German explores the main traditions of Western philosophers from Aristotle to Descartes, and from Kant to Nietzsche.

Upon the death of his beloved father and mentor, the originator of the burgeoning global Socrates Cafe movement had little choice but to confront the inescapable truth: that there are some things we cannot know for sure. This moving, insightful and ultimately hopeful and helpful blend of memoir and philosophical exploration begins in Phillips' native stomping grounds of the island of Nisyros, Greece, and unfurls through space and time as the author explores the connections between his immediate circumstances and the eternal wisdom of popular philosophers.

This book is a contemplation of the meaning of the universal "law" in its modern sense of nonscientific law: in the universe of language discourse that results in decisions of legality and illegality. It further contemplates whether this universal can be naturalized to scientific law and seeks to determine whether such meaning and naturalization are or can be an existential philosophy of law. This contemplation will require contemplating the attributes of existentialism as they exist in plebeian lives that includes nihilism and not solely from the more popular academic patrician ...

Solve for Happy is a startlingly original book about creating and maintaining happiness, written by a top Google executive with an engineer's training and fondness for thoroughly analyzing a problem. In 2004 Mo Gawdat, a remarkable thinker whose gifts had landed him top positions in half a dozen companies and who - in his spare time - had created significant wealth, realized that he was desperately unhappy. A lifelong learner, he attacked the problem as an engineer would, examining all the provable facts and scrupulously following logic.

Described by the New York Times as "arguably the most important intellectual alive," Noam Chomsky is known throughout the world for his highly influential writings on language and politics. Featuring two of Chomsky's most popular and enduring books in one omnibus volume, On Language contains some of the noted linguist and political critic's most informal and accessible work to date, making it an ideal introduction to his thought.

If you are a beginner or seasoned professional in Information Technology this book explains the syntax and semantics of data model design. Models, Metaphor and Meaning looks at data modeling for information systems from the perspective of information theory, linguistics and semiotics in order to explain how models convey meaning. The book starts with a critique of William Kent’s classic Data and Reality and builds on contemporary themes in psycho-linguistics regarding metaphor as a key to our conceptual thinking. The book reviews Shannon’s Information Theory and analyzes the differences...

This book continues my series on 5 lessons from great thinkers where I choose five brief passages from one or more works of a great thinker to engage in critical reflection, discussion, and commentary enticing readers to further explore their writings. This short book on the Austrian philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who was associated with Cambridge University, explores five themes in his later philosophy: language games, meaning as use of a word, what is thinking, understanding a rule or series, and the nature of philosophy. Wittgenstein's writings are not easy to ...

Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around to writing anything down. His method of aggressive questioning, called dialectic, was the forerunner of logic; he used it to cut through the twaddle of his adversaries and arrive at the truth. Rather than questioning the world, he believed, we would be better off questioning ourselves.

With Hegel, philosophy became very difficult indeed. His dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Even Hegel conceded that "only one man understands me, and even he does not." Hegel's system included absolutely everything, but its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This method sprang from Hegel's ambition to overcome the deficiencies of logic and ascended toward mind as the ultimate reality.

Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge—are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of things aid and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now.

The Thinking Toolbox has been the best selling text for teaching critical thinking skills and introduction to logic for over 15 years. This book is like a toolbox, full of different kinds of tools you can use for different thinking tasks. Just as you use the wrench in a regular tool box to fix the sink, so you can use the tools we give you in this book to solve thinking problems.

This book offers what may with reservations be described as a theory of the mind. But it does not give new information about minds. We possess already a wealth of information about minds, information which is neither derived from, nor upset by, the arguments of philosophers. The philosophical arguments which constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge which we already possess.

In our ever-more-polarized society, there's at least one thing we still agree on: The world is overrun with misinformation, faulty logic, and the gullible followers who buy into it all. Of course, we're not among them - are we? Scientist David Robert Grimes is on a mission to expose the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that drive our discourse on a dizzying array of topics - from vaccination to abortion, 9/11 conspiracy theories to dictatorial doublespeak, astrology to alternative medicine, and wrongful convictions to racism.

Perfect for gifting to lovers of philosophy or mining intelligent ice-breaker topics for your next party, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten offers one hundred philosophical puzzles that stimulate thought on a host of moral, social, and personal dilemmas. Taking examples from sources as diverse as Plato and Steven Spielberg, author Julian Baggini presents abstract philosophical issues in concrete terms, suggesting possible solutions while encouraging listeners to draw their own conclusions.

El pensamiento crítico te permite evaluar situaciones de forma clara y racional, ayudándote a comprender las causas subyacentes, cuestionar suposiciones y explorar soluciones. Al aplicar la lógica, estructuras tu proceso de pensamiento, lo que te permite analizar problemas metódicamente y tomar decisiones sólidas y fundamentadas. Este libro te dota de herramientas prácticas para tomar decisiones acertadas con confianza, tanto en tu trabajo como en tu vida personal.

Upon its first English publication in 1959, Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery revolutionized thinking about the scientific method. Largely an exploration of the demarcation problem, or what distinguishes science from non-science, Popper introduced and defended his concept of falsifability -- that scientific systems are ones open to empirical disconfirmation -- against the prevailing views of his day.