Welcome, Intro Students!
Welcome to the companion website for the 4th edition of Introduction to Philosophy, edited by John Perry, Michael Bratman, and John Martin Fischer.
This site is mainly for students who are using this textbook in a course they are taking, but we hope that instructors will find the site useful, too. By way of introduction, allow us to fill you in on all that this site has to offer. First, you'll notice that this is a weblog, or "blog" for short. Blogs are dynamic, interactive sites by definition, and this one is no exception. We will be posting new and interesting information on a fairly regular basis, and there are lots of opportunities for you to interact with this site. The useful features of this blog include:
(1) At the top of the left-hand column, you'll see a section called "Connecting the Book to the Web". Here we have hooked up each article in the textbook with relevant information from the internet, such as articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and episodes from the philosophy radio show, Philosophy Talk. In this same section you will also find a link to "Test Yourself Quizzes". Clicking this link will take you to a brief multiple-choice quiz for each article in the textbook so that you can test your reading comprehension when you have finished reading an article that has been assigned for your class. At the bottom of each quiz is a link to the answers, so you can instantly find out how well you have understood the article.
(2) Also in the left-hand column, directly below the resources just discussed, you'll find a section called "Other Online Resources". Some of these links (such as the Logical Toolkit) lead you to posts that we have created that we think will help you as you work your way through the book; others lead to external sites that we think are either interesting or helpful, or both.
(3) Working our way down the left-hand column, next we come to a section called "Writing". Since learning how to articulate your ideas is an important part of any philosophy course, we have included links to some resources that we think will help improve your writing skills.
(4) Finally, at the bottom of the left-hand column, we have listed a few books you may be interested in looking at, as well as links to sites that contain "philosophical humor". Some critics say that's an oxymoron, but we strongly disagree!
(5) In addition to a list of recent posts and comments, the right-hand column contains links to a number of personal blogs maintained by undergraduates from across the country. Go check them out and see what it's like to be an undergraduate philosophy student from another's perspective!
(6) And at the bottom of the right-hand column you will find links to other academic philosophy blogs. Some have been created around a particular topic (such as the Garden of Forking Paths, which is dedicated to free will and moral responsibility), whereas others have been created around a particular group of people (such as Orange Philosophy, which is a blog run by philosophy graduate students at Syracuse University in New York).
We hope you will find these resources helpful. And please don't hesitate to leave us a comment if you find a broken link or have a suggestion for what we might do to improve the site. It's a work in progress.
Happy studying!
Orange Philosophy seems to be defunct or in hibernation. The Missouri grad student blog, Show Me the Argument, seems pretty active, however, if anyone is interested.
Posted by: Clayton | March 25, 2007 at 10:15 PM