A Logical Introduction to Philosophy

by Richard L. Purtill

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0135399173
• ISBN13: 9780135399170
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Philosophical logic or logical philosophy?

This book could easily have been better titled: A Philosophy Oriented Introduction to Logic. Purtill works through the history of philosophy introducing various systems of logic along the way. He begins with Socrates and the search for definitions, moves on to Plato and the arguments used in his recount of Socrates last days. Then he continues the theme of arguments from the context of the medievals, particularly Thomas Aquinas and the reintroduction of Aristotle. The fourth chapter is on syllogistic arguments and assumptions. This is followed by a look at mixed arguments in Descartes and Liebniz. Chapter six tackles Hume probability and causal arguments; seven covers analogy, induction, and theistic argument. His final chapter on philosophy covers Kant and necessity. The final two chapters cover analyzing philosophical arguments and explain how to construct a philosophical argument. There are also three appendices covering what he had missed: other methods of checking validity, predicate logic and recent philosophy, and squares of opposition. Throughout the examination of philosophers and their use of logic he sticks to one main theme which is the existence of God and related subjects: the presence of evil, human free will, causality, etc. This makes it easier to compare 2000 years of philosophy's use of logic but doesn't present the philosophers as a whole which is why I suggest the alternate title. Purtill presents copious examples from the writings of the various philosophers but that doesn't make it an easy read. Throughout the book he examines particular arguments and then shows how they cancel to a particular conclusion. He also reverses this using Carroll's sorites arguments. First you find the conclusion, then you reconstruct the chain of syllogisms, then you cancel the argument to its conclusion. On a whole this is an interesting book but it perhaps tries to do too much. In being both an introduction to philosophy and an introduction to logic it requires a lot of the reader. Someone with a background in either of the two would find it a useful introduction to the other field but I doubt many would have studied one without the other to begin with.