The Philosophers' Toolkit provides all the intellectual equipment necessary to engage with and participate in philosophical argument, reading and reflection. Each of its 87 entries explains how to use an important concept or argumentative technique accurately and effectively.
Table of Contents:
Part I: Basic Tools for Argument:. 1. Arguments, Premises and Conclusions.
2. Deduction.
3. Induction.
4. Validity and Soundness.
5. Invalidity.
6. Consistency.
7. Fallacies.
8. Refutation.
9. Axioms.
10. Definitions.
11. Certainty and Probability.
12. Tautologies, Self-Contradictions and the Law of Non-Contradiction.
Part II: Further Tools for Argument:.
13. Abduction.
14. Hypothetico-Deductive Method.
15. Dialectic.
16. Analogies.
17. Anomalies and Exceptions that Prove the Rule.
18. Intuition Pumps.
19. Logical Constructions.
20. Reduction.
21. Thought Experiments.
22. Transcendental Arguments.
23. Useful Fictions.
Part III: Tools for Assessment:.
24. Alternative Explanations.
25. Ambiguity.
26. Bivalence and the Excluded Middle.
27. Category Mistakes.
28. Ceteris Paribus.
29. Circularity.
30. Conceptual Incoherence.
31. Counterexamples.
32. Criteria.
33. Error Theory.
34. False Dichotomy.
35. Genetic Fallacy.
36. Horned Dilemmas.
37. Hume's Fork.
38. Is/ought Gap.
39. Leibniz's Law of Identity.
40. Masked Man Fallacy.
41. Ockham's Razor.
42. Paradoxes.
43. Partners in Guilt.
44. Principles of Charity.
45. Question-Begging.
46. Reductions.
47. Redundancy.
48. Regresses.
49. Saving the Phenomena.
50. Self-defeating Arguments.
51. Sufficient Reason.
52. Testability.
Part IV: Tools for Conceptual Distinctions:.
53. A Priori/A Posteriori.
54. Absolute/Relative.
55. Analytic/Synthetic.
56. Categorical/Modal.
57. Conditional/Biconditional.
58. Defeasible/Indefeasible.
59. Entailment/Implication.
60. Essence/Accident.
61. Knowledge by Acquaintance/Description.
62. Necessary/Contingent.
63. Necessary/Sufficient.
64. Objective/Subjective.
65. Realist/Non-Realist.
66. Sense/Reference.
67. Syntax/Semantics.
68. Thick/Thin Concepts.
69. Types/Tokens.
Part V: Tools for Radical Critique:.
70. Class Critique.
71. Deconstruction and the Critique of Presence.
72. Empiricist Critique of Metaphysics.
73. Feminist Critiques.
74. Foucaultian Critique of Power.
75. Heideggerian Critique of Metaphysics.
76. Lacanian Critique.
77. Nietzschean Critique of Christian-Platonic Culture.
78. Pragmatist Critique.
79. Sartrean Critique of 'Bad Faith'.
Part VI: Tools at the Limit:.
80. Basic Beliefs.
81. G;del and Incompleteness.
82. Mystical Experience and Revelation.
83. Possibility and Impossibility.
84. Primitives.
85. Self-evident Truths.
86. Scepticism.
87. Underdetermination.
Appendix: Web Resources.
