Philosophy Subject Guide

Potentially useful to a broad range of students, Argument Diagramming provides an introduction to exploring and understanding arguments. This course will explain what the parts of an argument are and how to break arguments into their parts and create diagrams to show how those parts relate to each other.

This course provides an introduction to causal and statistical reasoning. After taking this course, students will be better prepared to make rational decisions about their own lives and about matters of social policy. They will be able to assess critically—even if informally—claims that they encounter during discussions or when considering a news article or report. A variety of materials are presented, including Case Studies where students are given the opportunity to examine a causal claim, and the Causality Lab, a virtual environment to simulate the science of causal discovery. Students have frequent opportunities to check their understanding and practice their skills.

This is an introductory course designed for students from a broad range of disciplines, from mathematics and computer science to drama and creative writing. The highly interactive presentation makes it possible for any student to master the material. Concise multimedia lectures introduce each chapter; they discuss, in detail, the central notions and techniques presented in the text, but also articulate and motivate the learning objectives for each chapter.

This book provides an overview of the current debates about the nature and extent of our moral obligations to animals. We will explore the most influential and most developed answers to these questions – given by philosophers, scientists, and animal advocates and their critics – to try to determine which positions are supported by the best moral reasons.

A collection of open textbooks on various topics in Philosophy.

An introductory logic text that uses low-stakes, fun examples to illustrate good and bad arguments.

The text is suitable for a one-semester introductory logic or “critical thinking” course. The emphasis is on formal techniques and problem solving rather than analytical writing, though exercises of the latter sort could easily be incorporated.

A list of introductory and advanced logic open textbooks and free textbooks that are not under open licences. Many of the open textbooks include source files.

This book introduces readers to the many arguments and controversies concerning abortion.

Aesthetic Theory and Practice offers fresh perspectives on canonical and emerging topics in aesthetics, and also brings attention to a number of culturally sensitive topics that are customarily silenced in introductions to philosophical aesthetics. The papers are heterogeneous in terms of length and degrees of difficulty, inviting the reader into the study of contemporary aesthetics, which spans a lifetime.

Central topics include the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies.

We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others' behavior and choices. This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition.

The chapters, all written by experts in the field, provide an overview of what arguments are, the different types of arguments one can expect to encounter in both philosophy and everyday life, and how to recognize common argumentative mistakes.

Philosophy of Mind surveys the central themes in philosophy of mind and places them in a historical and contemporary context intended to engage first-time readers in the field. It focuses on debates about the status and character of the mind and its seemingly subjective nature in an apparently more objective world.

Philosophy of Religion introduces some of the major traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as some less well-known, but thought-provoking arguments for the existence of God, and one of the most important new challenges to religious belief from the Cognitive Science of Religion. An introductory chapter traces the connection between philosophy and religion throughout Western history, and a final chapter addresses the place of non-Western and non-monotheistic religions within contemporary philosophy of religion.

The book is made up of six meditations written as if Descartes had meditated for six days; each meditation refers to the last one as "yesterday." The author rejects all belief in things that are not absolutely certain and then attempts to establish what can be absolutely certain.

This book combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. The introductory chapter, Minilogic and Glossary, are designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions.

Some Problems of Philosophy is a first pass at providing a beginning text for college and university students.

This text takes the unique approach of teaching logic through intellectual history; the author uses examples from important and celebrated arguments in philosophy to illustrate logical principles. The text also includes a basic introduction to findings of advanced logic. As indicators of where the student could go next with logic, the book closes with an overview of advanced topics, such as the axiomatic method, set theory, Peano arithmetic, and modal logic.

Carnap is a free and open software framework written in Haskell for teaching and studying formal logic.

A collection of videos for a Critical Thinking in Global Challenges course. Topics include obesity, climate change, infectious diseases, and population.

A collection of 34 videos on different introductory topics in philosophy.