The Philosopher's Toolkit

Acknowledgements Alphabetical Table of Contents Preface Internet Resources for Philosophers 1 Basic Tools for Argument 1.1 Arguments, premises, and conclusions 1.2 Deduction 1.3 Induction 1.4 Validity and soundness 1.5 Invalidity 1.6 Consistency 1.7 Fallacies 1.8 Refutation 1.9 Axioms 1.10 Definitions 1.11 Certainty and probability 1.12 Tautologies, self-contradictions, and the law of non-contradiction 2 More Advanced Tools 2.1 Abduction 2.2 Hypothetico-deductive method 2.3 Dialectic 2.4 Analogies 2.5 Anomalies and exceptions that prove the rule 2.6 Intuition pumps 2.7 Logical constructions 2.8 Performativity and speech acts 2.9 Reduction 2.10 Representation 2.11 Thought experiments 2.12 Useful fictions 3 Tools for Assessment 3.1 Affirming, denying, and conditionals 3.2 Alternative explanations 3.3 Ambiguity and vagueness 3.4 Bivalence and the excluded middle 3.5 Category mistakes 3.6 Ceteris paribus 3.7 Circularity 3.8 Composition and division 3.9 Conceptual incoherence 3.10 Contradiction/contrariety 3.11 Conversion, contraposition, obversion 3.12 Counterexamples 3.13 Criteria 3.14 Doxa/para-doxa 3.15 Error theory 3.16 False dichotomy 3.17 False cause 3.18 Genetic fallacy 3.19 Horned dilemmas 3.20 Is/ought gap 3.21 Masked man fallacy 3.22 Partners in guilt 3.23 Principle of charity 3.24 Question-begging 3.25 Reductios 3.26 Redundancy 3.27 Regresses 3.28 Saving the phenomena 3.29 Self-defeating arguments 3.30 Sufficient reason 3.31 Testability 4 Tools for Conceptual Distinctions 4.1 A priori/a posteriori 4.2 Absolute/relative 4.3 Analytic/synthetic 4.4 Belief/knowledge 4.5 Categorical/modal 4.6 Cause/reason 4.7 Conditional/biconditional 4.8 De re/de dicto 4.9 Defeasible/indefeasible 4.10 Entailment/implication 4.11 Endurantism/perdurantism 4.12 Essence/accident 4.13 Internalism/externalism 4.14 Knowledge by acquaintance/description 4.15 Mind/body 4.16 Necessary/contingent 4.17 Necessary/sufficient 4.18 Nothingness/being 4.19 Objective/subjective 4.20 Realist/non-realist 4.21 Sense/reference 4.22 Substratum/bundle 4.23 Syntax/semantics 4.24 Universal/particular 4.25 Thick/thin concepts 4.26 Types/tokens 5 Tools of Historical Schools and Philosophers 5.1 Aphorism, fragment, remark 5.2 Categories and specific differences 5.3 Elenchus and aporia 5.4 Hegel's master/slave dialectic 5.5 Hume's fork 5.6 Indirect discourse 5.7 Leibniz's law of identity 5.8 Ockham's razor 5.9 Phenomenological method(s) 5.10 Signs and signifiers 5.11 Transcendental argument 6 Tools for Radical Critique 6.1 Class critique 6.2 Différance, deconstruction, and the critique of presence 6.3 Empiricist critique of metaphysics 6.4 Feminist and gender critique 6.5 Foucaultian critique of power 6.6 Heideggerian critique of metaphysics 6.7 Lacanian critique 6.8 Critiques of naturalism 6.9 Nietzschean critique of Christian-Platonic culture 6.10 Pragmatist critique 6.11 Sartrean critique of 'bad faith' 7 Tools at the Limit 7.1 Basic beliefs 7.2 Gödel and incompleteness 7.3 Hermeneutic circle 7.4 Philosophy and/as art 7.5 Mystical experience and revelation 7.6 Paradoxes 7.7 Possibility and impossibility 7.8 Primitives 7.9 Self-evident truths 7.10 Scepticism 7.11 Underdetermination and incommensurability Index