|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Review
"This book is terrific... It covers a lot of ground, but in a wonderfully relaxed and interesting way."-Simon Blackburn, University of Cambridge and author of Think
"This text is ideal for giving students a quick introduction to formal logic or for adding pizzazz to an otherwise dry logic course."--Glenn Ross, Franklin & Marshall College
Book Description
Most people like to think of themselves as logical. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb, comprehensive Intro to Logic,
By Karl Young (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Logic: A Very Short Introduction (Paperback)
I am a novice in logic. But I need logic--some of it sophisticated--to understand a philosophy paper I am working with.I found Graham Priestly's Logic, a Very Short Introduction superb and immensely helpful. I searched full-length texts, but I knew I would never wade through them. I didn't want to take the time for a college course. I searched the Web and found some excellent material, ... However, Graham's book proved far and away the simplest and best. Here are the advantages I found. Some advantages are simply due to the brevity of the book that suited my needs, but some stand out in any context. 1. The book goes into topics early-truth tables and modal logic, for example. Copi's Introduction to Logic, while undoubtedly very good, and used in many logic courses, does not get to truth tables until Chapter 10 while Priest starts using truth tables in Chapter 2, page 9. Another text, Stephan Layman's The Power of Logic, did not get to modal logic until about page 450. Graham starts the topic in chapter 6, page 38, about 1/3 of the way through his book. 2. The book had every single logic symbol that I needed. I found no one book, full-length text or web source that did this. Equally important every symbol was used and discussed somewhere in the book. Some symbols were missing or introduced very late in other books. 3. Graham doesn't spoon feed the reader with great detail like other books, nor employ elaborate introduction to a topic. 4. Logic, a Very Short Introduction is about 10% the length of other books I looked at (Copi & Layman were about 550-650 pages, for example)-considering Graham's page size is probably that of a normal book. Other books cost roughly 3 to 8 as much. 5. Graham has a very clear, engaging, and often humorous, style. The book is very well organized and written. 6. It is easy to get into meat quickly. 7. In a little over 100 pages, Priest uses a given chapter's logic to analyze a variant form of several classical philosophical questions. For example: the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God, fatalism, the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God, the Argument from Design for God's existence, etc. 8. The book has an unusual amount of supplemental material-brief history of logic, glossary, list of symbols, problems ..., bibliography, general index and index of names. 9. Every chapter ends with a simple summary of the ideas it covers. There were numerous figures. 10. There were 13 illustrations ranging from cartoons, to art, to famous philosophers. Of course, this is a short survey and so no one should think that any one topic is covered in depth. Breadth rather than depth is the book's objective. The book could be used by: 1. Self learners 2. People taking a logic course who want a quick overview or supplement 3. People, who would like rudimentary familiarity with logic for their work, but do not need a college course or a full-length logic book. ...
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A logical choice,
By FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Logic: A Very Short Introduction (Paperback)
Graham Priest is author of several books on logic, including 'An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic' and 'Towards Non-Being: The Logic And Metaphysics Of Intentionality'. He has experience as a professor of logic at the University of Queensland in helping to determine the needs of those who are in need of logic help. This book, part of the Very Short Introductions series of Oxford University, is both an introduction and a refresher for those who have had logic before. Because of its brevity, it might be a bit too condensed for those looking for a logic course; however, used together with a larger text (Copi's logic book is the one I used in my early logic days), this VSI book provides good supplemental information and helps clarify key points. This book provides an introduction both to symbolic logic as well as linguistic logic. Issues such as probability, truth and fact statements, conditional statements, decision theory and validity are all presented in clear, concise ways. There are fourteen chapters (a lot of chapters for book with barely over 100 pages of text), and each chapter deals with a few key points summarised in a pull-quote box at the end of each chapter. There are diagrams, sentences and equations to illustrate the points in visual as well as language terms. The final chapter, 'A Little History and Some Further Reading', is a good short review of key figures and historical issues that underpin the material presented in the previous chapters. There is a helpful glossary of terms, and Priest also provides a page of logic puzzles and problems to be worked by the students, keyed to an Oxford University Press website that has the solutions to the questions. This is a good book for review of logic prior to taking tests (such as the LSAT) or graduate courses that require understanding of logical thought processes (systematic theology or philosophy). As some reviewers have noted, this is not a lock-step presentation of standard analytic logic (indeed, many of Priest's other writings have a more non-standard approach), but does provide some good insights in the overall way in which logic is structured and done.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult but rewarding,
By alexliamw (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Logic: A Very Short Introduction (Paperback)
On this page, there are negative reviews, saying either that this book is unreadably difficult, or that it is superficial and elementary. Let me start by straightening this out. This book is an introduction. You can't expect it to be tremedously in-depth - it would leave readers new to the subject (those it is aimed at) out of their depth and render a broad overview impossible in the short space available. You can already see some are having difficulty as it is, but this is because Logic is a difficult topic. Having said this, this seems to be as lucid as it could be given the difficulty of the academic discipline.I read this book because I am considering doing Philosophy at university, and this is an area of Philosophy I am not familiar with. To be honest, it gave me some doubts. I found it hard for an introduction (compared with about 5 other volumes I've read it the same series). Having said this, the author does say there will be times where you have to stop, think and go back over text, and maybe I was being too impatient. So it gave me doubts about the subject. However, as far as the book itself is concerned, it is excellent. Priest does a magnificent job of making what, in the hands of almost anyone else, could be studiously dull, engaging. He applies logic to everyday problems, questions and scenarios and writes in an engaging style with wide use of examples. The mathematical nature of logic means it is not for everyone, but if you want an introduction, this is the book (I've heard that other so-called 'introductions' to the subject are rather difficult for the layman). It is rewarding when you do understand and master concepts, and it makes you think about different questions and go deeper into basic issues, adding a whole new dimension to philosophical thought.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy > Logic
- Books > New & Used Textbooks > Sciences > Mathematics
- Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Logic & Language
- Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Mathematics > Pure Mathematics
- Books > Science > Mathematics > Pure Mathematics > Logic
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
