Reviews for Writing philosophy

The average rating for Writing philosophy based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-08-05 00:00:00 Louie Garza This book has plenty of exercises that allow you to apply the concepts and techniques you learn. Not enough introductory books in philosophy take this applied approach, which I think is essential.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-03 00:00:00 Hiroki Tsujikami In the introduction, the author defensively clarifies his decision regarding the pronoun usage in the book in the most haphazard, indecorous manner possible: "When for one reason or another, I have found it convenient to use generic pronouns that are grammatically male or female, I have used the following conventions. Male gender pronouns will be used for reference to the professor. Female gender pronouns will be used for references to the student. One professor was astounded 'no, outraged'that this was my convention...because he thought I was implying males are superior to females because he thinks that professors are superior to students. I do not. A professor simply has a different role from that of a student. A student is as worthy of respect as any other human being, a professor no more worthy of no more than any student. Since students are referred to more often that professors in this book, there are more female generic pronouns than masculine ones." This discussion of pronouns morphs into a kind of Jeffersonian declaration of all-humans-are equal. He was honestly best not to address it at all, having made the situation spectacularly worse by defending it with this approach. If you will, imagine that I create a fictionalized speech between a president and a citizen, and I use he pronouns for the president, and she pronouns for the citizen. Then I unnecessarily contrive an explanation by saying that a president is no more intrinsically valuable than a regular citizen. This is perhaps true, but in a gratuitous defense of one's pronoun usage, to resort to an affirmation of human equalization is as banal as it is unconvincing. Furthermore, in the first page of first chapter, following the introduction, we encounter this tidbit: "Unless the student is exceptional, she is not writing to inform or convince her audience of the truth of the position she expostulates....Presumably, the professor already understands the material the student is struggling to present clearly and correctly." To read this after the explanation is to wince tremendously. Aside from the unfortunate introduction, I recommend the book itself as a reasonably good resource to students.