This page contains lectures on elementary symbolic logic. I created the final dozen or so. I curated the initial batch from various OER platforms - primarily YouTube.
The emperor Nero is etched into the Western imagination as one of ancient Rome’s most infamous villains, and Tacitus’ Annals have played a central role in shaping the mainstream historiographical understanding of this flamboyant autocrat.
This section of the text plunges us straight into the moral cesspool that Rome had apparently become in the later years of Nero’s reign, chronicling the emperor’s fledgling stage career including his plans for a grand tour of Greece; his participation in a city-wide orgy climaxing in his publicly consummated ‘marriage’ to his toy boy Pythagoras; the great fire of AD 64, during which large parts of central Rome went up in flames; and the rising of Nero’s ‘grotesque’ new palace, the so-called ‘Golden House’, from the ashes of the city. This building project stoked the rumours that the emperor himself was behind the conflagration, and Tacitus goes on to present us with Nero’s gruesome efforts to quell these mutterings by scapegoating and executing members of an unpopular new cult then starting to spread through the Roman empire: Christianity.
All this contrasts starkly with four chapters focusing on one of Nero’s most principled opponents, the Stoic senator Thrasea Paetus, an audacious figure of moral fibre, who courageously refuses to bend to the forces of imperial corruption and hypocrisy.
This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, study aids with vocabulary, and a commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Owen’s and Gildenhard’s incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both A2 and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis and historical background to encourage critical engagement with Tacitus’ prose and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought.
The is W.E.B. Du Bois' essay "The Talented Tenth."
Online instructors need a framework for “teaching beyond text” using rich media as instructional resources. These include multimedia, social media, and cloud-based Web tools. This book defines rich media, its affordances, its value in conveying information, a model for pedagogical strategies, a set of instructor competencies, and two models for assessment for use in professional development.
This course is an introduction to epistemology: the theory of knowledge. We will focus on skepticism—that is, the thesis that we know nothing at all—and we will survey a range of skeptical arguments and responses to skepticism.
This version of the classic Tao Te Ching includes the original 81 chapters with the addition of Wang Pi's commentary (226-249 C.E.).
This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of Bentham and Mill's utilitarianism.
Do we really have free will? Today Hank explores possible answers to that question, explaining theories like libertarian free will and it’s counterpoint, hard determinism. One of the most common questions in psychology, stemming from philosophy. Duration: 10:25.
This reading includes excerpts from Books 1 and 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
How do we evaluate ambiguous concepts such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice? How do we develop policies that offer everyone the best chance to achieve what they want from life? The capability approach, a theoretical framework pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s, has become an increasingly influential way to think about these issues.
Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined is both an introduction to the capability approach and a thorough evaluation of the challenges and disputes that have engrossed the scholars who have developed it. Ingrid Robeyns offers her own illuminating and rigorously interdisciplinary interpretation, arguing that by appreciating the distinction between the general capability approach and more specific capability theories or applications we can create a powerful and flexible tool for use in a variety of academic disciplines and fields of policymaking.
This book provides an original and comprehensive account that will appeal to scholars of the capability approach, new readers looking for an interdisciplinary introduction, and those interested in theories of justice, human rights, basic needs, and the human development approach.
During [his] teaching career [David Boersema] heard the same question, “What can you do with a degree in philosophy?” many times from some students [he] taught (and their parents)...many other philosophy professors have heard the same question. This book works to dispel the view that studying philosophy is impractical or unimportant. As it turns out, most of the students I taught over the years who got a degree in philosophy went on to non-academic jobs and careers. They eliminate the notion that the only thing one can do with a degree in philosophy is to teach philosophy. Does studying philosophy teach one how to fix a leaky faucet? No, but neither does studying economics. Does studying philosophy lead to rewarding and fulfilling careers? Not necessarily, but it certainly can.
This article introduces students to psychological and ethical egoism and the social contract theories of Hobbes and Rawls.
Purcell's article on Aztec moral philosophy provides a fruitful supplement to teaching the classical Greek virtue ethicists Plato and Aristotle. While the Greeks and Aztecs each center character formation, the latter lack the emphases on rationality and happiness found in the former.
Words of Wisdom can come from anyone. In this text we discuss topics ranging from "Are Humans good by nature?" to "Is there a God?" to "Do I have the right to my own opinion?" Philosophy is the study of wisdom, and can emerge in our conversations in places like social media, in school, around the family dinner table, and even in the car. The text uses materials that are 2,500 years old, and materials that were in the news this year. Wise people come in all shapes and types, and from every culture on earth. We have poetry and folktales, sacred writings and letters. Dialogues and interviews, news columns, podcasts, Ted Talks, You Tube recordings and even comedy are all a part of the content in this text.You will be most successful using this collection this on line.
This module will provide students with an introduction to religion as an academic discipline. The module Learning Unit will familiarize students with the difficulties of defining religion as an academic category, explore academic theories for understanding individual religious impetus, and provide a definitional criteria for the term ‘World Religion.’ From there, the student will analyze the views of four religious scholars to argue for which they regard as being most convincing on the Discussion Board for this module. Finally, the student will demonstrate proficiency of this Learning Unit through the module assessments.
forall x: Calgary is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity of arguments, the syntax of truth-functional propositional logic TFL and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic FOL with identity (first-order interpretations), translating (formalizing) English in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as modal logic, soundness, and functional completeness. Exercises with solutions are available. It is provided in PDF (for screen reading, printing, and a special version for dyslexics) and in LaTeX source code.
forall x is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity of arguments, the syntax of truth-functional propositional logic TFL and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic FOL with identity (first-order interpretations), translating (formalizing) English in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as truth-functional completeness. Exercises with solutions are available. It is provided in PDF (for screen reading, printing, and a special version for dyslexics) and in LaTeX source code. A proof editor/checker for the proof system used is available at http://proofs.openlogicproject.org/.
forall x: Dortmund is an adaptation and German translation of forall x: Calgary. As such, it is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity, the syntax of truth-functional (propositional) logic and truth-table semantics, the syntax of first-order (predicate) logic with identity and first-order interpretations, formalizing German in TFL and FOL, and Fitch-style natural deduction proof systems for both TFL and FOL. It also deals with some advanced topics such as the syntax and (Kripke-)semantics of modal logic. The book is provided in PDF and in LaTeX source code. A booklet with solutions for all exercises in the book is available.