info@woodslane.com.au
Contact us on (02) 8445 2300
For all customer service and order enquiries

WOODSLANE

Popular Subjects

Woodslane Online Catalogues

9781442216099 Add to Cart

Uncommon Sense

The Strangest Ideas from the Smartest Philosophers
Description
Table of
Contents
Google
Preview
In Uncommon Sense, Andrew Pessin leads us on an entertaining tour of philosophy, explaining the pivotal moments when the greatest minds solved some of the knottiest conundrums-by asserting some very strange things. But the great philosophers don't merely make unusual claims, they offer powerful arguments for those claims that you can't easily dismiss. And these arguments suggest that the world is much stranger than you could have imagined: *You neither will, nor won't, do certain things in the future, like wear your blue shirt tomorrow. *But your blue shirt isn't really blue, because colors don't exist in physical objects; they're only in your mind. *Time is an illusion. *Your thoughts are not inside your head. *Everything you believe about morality is false. *Animals don't have minds. *There is no physical world at all. In eighteen lively, intelligent chapters, spanning the ancient Greeks and contemporary thinkers, Pessin examines the most unusual ideas, how they have influenced the course of Western thought, and why, despite being so odd, they just might be correct. Here is popular philosophy at its finest, sure to entertain as it enlightens.
Introduction: "Stop Making Sense" Chapter 1: Plato / More Than What Meets the Eye Chapter 2: Aristotle / Neither You Will Nor You Won't Chapter 3: Augustine / Forced to Be Free Chapter 4: Anselm / God is Not Just a Good Idea Chapter 5: Maimonides / Keeps Going, and Going, and Going ... Or Not? Chapter 6: Thomas Aquinas / God Has Not Been on Vacation Since the Original Creation Chapter 7: Rene Descartes / "A Monstrous Thesis" Chapter 8: John Locke / True Colors Chapter 9: Nicolas Malebranche / On Honoring Leeks and Vegetables Chapter 10: G. W. Leibniz / Synchronicity Chapter 11: George Berkeley / To Be Is to Perceive, or Be Perceived Chapter 12: David Hume / Stercus Accidit Chapter 13: Friedrich Nietzsche / Philosopher, Psychologist-Antichrist? Chapter 14: John McTaggart / Time Does Not Fly Even When You're Having Fun Chapter 15: Ludwig Wittgenstein / The Voice In My Head is Speaking Nonsense Chapter 16: Hilary Putnam / Thinking Outside the (Cranial) Box Chapter 17: David Lewis / The Incredulous Stare Chapter 18: Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers / Mind and Matter, Together Again at Last (Sort of)!
Google Preview content