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bordercases · 2017-11-20 · Original thread
So I'm laughing at all the examples that have made the rounds on HN innumerable times. How about this.

"Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy" https://www.amazon.com/Possible-Worlds-Introduction-Philosop...

Analytic philosophy has produced a methodical approach to thinking about things that we don't seem to teach as methods. Instead it trickles down into pop-science takes on thinking which tells you a lot /about a domain/ but not how to /use/ things in the domain.

Thinking in terms of "possible worlds" is a nice little hack that unifies a lot of our intuitions in how we determine what is true. It also implies a lot of nice methods that we already use implicitly, like making thought experiments, or conceptual analysis, or testing arguments with ad absurdums, or working with modalities (like treating what we should do differently from what we could do). This book teaches possible worlds at an introductory level, when typically it's considered a graduate-level topic. It also gives exercises, which are ultimately the important bit. I don't think I've seen too many books that teach philosophy /as a method/ beyond argument construction.

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