A Reader Needs Advice on Assembling a Philosophical Toolkit

I'm an avid reader of your blog and have really enjoyed the in-depth analysis of a myriad of issues and assorted ideas. It really is one of a kind!

That being said, I'm emailing to get some advice on how I should further my philosophical studies. I've decided on political science as a major and philosophy as a minor. I hope to pursue my studies far beyond the undergraduate level, mostly in political philosophy. The problem I'm starting to have is when I really try to dissect some of your posts for their technical content, I find that I am unfamiliar with a lot of the philosophical tools that you use in your writings, tools that we undergraduates are not really acquainted with, and so I was wondering if you'd be able to direct me to some resources that would enable me to get to the next level.

So far I've looked far and wide for introductory books that would house something similar to what I've described above, perhaps a compilation of commonly used analytical techniques (if that's what you would call them), but I have come up with virtually nothing.

For some reason, I have this feeling that you're going to tell me that there aren't any such resources, and that the job of the philosopher is to comb through analytic philosophy (or even before) from its inception and pick out strategies that philosophers have introduced, often in ambiguous ways, over a large span of time, and refine them so they are somewhat usable. Is the creation of a toolkit a matter of hitting the books (something I don't mind) or is it really a bottom-up, creative endeavor?

P.S. Your posts regarding politics are a breath of fresh air.

I'm hoping that my readers can be of some assistance here.  There are probably some recent handbooks of which I am not aware.  But I know of some older books that should be useful.  One is Richard L. Purtill, A Logical Introduction to Philosophy.  Another is Jay F. Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy: A Handbook for Beginners.  And you may want to take a look at John Passmore, Philosophical Reasoning and Douglas N. Walton, Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation.

Comments

[Eric]

The Philosopher's Toolkit is a great introduction to basic terminology (there's also The Ethics Toolkit if you're interested in moral philosophy). I second Dr. Vallicella's recommendation of Walton's text on informal logic (and I'll have to check out his other recommendations myself!). I also benefited from Flew's How to Think Straight. Hope that helps!

[David Parker]

I would recommend Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp for the basic of argumentation.

In my humble opinion, Dr. Vallicella draws extensively from work in the philosophy of language. Check out this IEP article for a good overview and bibliography.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/lang-phi/

You might enjoy Nicholas Rescher's What If?: Thought Experimentation in Philosophy. Rescher devotes some attention to aporetic clusters, which you'll likely be familiar with if you read this blog. Here is a preview. Cheers!

[Charles]

One of the tools that Dr. Vallicella uses quite often is the "aporetic cluster". I think it is one of the best ways to quickly get to the heart of a matter. You can find an excellent explanation of this technique, along with many examples of its use, in The Strife of Systems: An Essay on the Grounds and Implications of Philosophical Diversity by Nicholas Rescher.

[Colin]

As for reading in analytical political philosophy, one of the best introductory books on the market is "Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction" by Will Kymlicka. Though it is broadly egalitarian in its content, it will at least give you an understanding of what is popular in academic political philosophy these days.

[Chad McIntosh]

I would recommend. The Broadview Guides to Philosophy. If you're interested in analytic philosophy in particular, essential is Eric Steinhart's More Precisely: The Math You Need to do Philosophy.

[Boram Lee]

I second David Parker's recommendation to read up on philosophy of language, because that's where you can get most of the analytic techniques in use today, aside from logic. Martinich's anthology, The Philosophy of Language, contains many of the classics: Frege, Russell, Strawson, Quine, Tarski, Grice, Searle, Putnam, Kripke, Kaplan, etc. (If you have institutional access to JSTOR you can download many of the articles.) If you go on to do a grad program in philosophy, you have to read these folk anyway, so you will be getting a head start.

Since you are interested in political philosophy, you may want to get acquainted with the analytical tools most often used in it: rational choice theory and game theory. These tools have their limitations, and Robert Paul Wolff has an excellent introduction to these subjects in a tutorial made available on his blog, which you can find by googling. Like Bill, Wolff is an elegant writer, so you will enjoy the read.

[Ethan]

Coffey (Louvain insitute) Science of Logic (2 vols), Epistemology (2 vols), Ontology. Joyce, Principles of Logic, Principles of Natural Theology. You can get all that stuff from www.archive.org.

http://www.archive.org/download/thescienceoflogi01coffuoft/thescienceoflogi01coffuoft.djvu

http://www.archive.org/download/thescienceoflogi02coffuoft/thescienceoflogi01coffuoft.djvu

http://www.archive.org/download/ontology00coffuoft/ontology00coffuoft.djvu

http://www.archive.org/download/epistemologycoff01coffuoft/epistemologycoff01coffuoft.djvu

http://www.archive.org/download/epistemologycoff02coffuoft/epistemologycoff02coffuoft.djvu

http://www.archive.org/download/principleslogic00joycuoft/principleslogic00joycuoft.djvu

http://www.archive.org/download/principlesofnatu00joycuoft/principlesofnatu00joycuoft.djvu

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks for the suggestions. Robert Paul Wolff's blog is here: http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/

[Jonah]

Thanks again! I've already checked out _The Practice of Philosophy: A Handbook for Beginners_ by Rosenberg.

[Bill Vallicella]

Jonah,

Good. Rosenberg is tendentious and I'm not endorsing all of what he says. Read it critically, as he no doubt would want you to.

[Edward from Ockham]

I also agree with Martinich The Philosophy of Language. It has absolutely all the required reading and more, and is quite cheap.

[Bill Vallicella]

Martinich is excellent. Used it in a Phil. of Lang. course I taught.

[James A. Robinson IV]

I found the following valuable:

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff

How Ideas Work: Think with Conviction Act with Confidence by Kent Worthington

The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics by David Harriman

[James A. Robinson IV]

I also recommend a treatise that elaborates the Objectivist epistemology called "How We Know" by philospher Harry Binswanger. Unfortunately, it has not been published yet. So far I've read only a draft of it early last year. So I guess that it will be available within a few years.

[Bill Vallicella]

Binswanger commented here a couple of years ago. His book would be worth reading.