From Puzzles To Principles

Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship.

This book emphasises the systemic character of Aristotle's philosophy by examining questions on metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy and mind and ethics. His reliance on dialectic as the method of philosophy appears to conflict with the metaphysical realist view of his conclusions.

Melinda A. Roberts introduces the newcomer to population ethics and investigates the key issues in a way that will be of interest to professional philosophers, economists, lawyers, and students in all those areas who seek to understand what a cogent, intuitively plausible theory of population will look like. To that end, Roberts presents five perplexing but telling existence puzzles that already are or shall soon become important parts of the population ethics literature: the Asymmetry Puzzle, the Pareto Puzzle, the Addition Puzzle, the Anonymity Puzzle, and the Better Chance Puzzle. Roberts develops solutions to the puzzles that together form a partial theory of population, a collection of principles grounded in intuition but highly sensitive to the formal demands of consistency and cogency.

A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.

This ethics reader presents a host of theoretical puzzles in addressing moral reasoning, ehtical theory, and applied ethics.Pieces of the Puzzle boxes are featured throughout the text to focus the reader's attention on today's pressing moral questions and dilemmas.

Previous treatments of Artificial Intelligence (AI) divide the subject into its major areas of application, namely, natural language processing, automatic programming, robotics, machine vision, automatic theorem proving, intelligent data retrieval systems, etc. The major difficulty with this approach is that these application areas are now so extensive, that each could, at best, be only superficially treated in a book of this length. Instead, I have attempted here to describe fundamental AI ideas that underlie many of these applications. My organization of these ideas is not, then, based on the subject matter of their application, but is, instead, based on general computational concepts involving the kinds of data structures used, the types of operations performed on these data struc tures, and the properties of con'trol strategies used by AI systems. I stress, in particular, the important roles played in AI by generalized production systems and the predicate calculus. The notes on which the book is based evolved in courses and seminars at Stanford University and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Although certain topics treated in my previous book, Problem solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence, are covered here as well, this book contains many additional topics such as rule-based systems, robot problem-solving systems, and structured-object representations.

Engages with the life and work of Larry Alexander to explore puzzles and paradoxes in legal and moral theory.

"If you have a desire to lead positive change and take charge of your own life, read this book. This book shows you how you can make sense out of life, lead positive change, and make tough decisions. Read Making Life's Puzzle Pieces Fit and learn the secrets of taking charge of your own life!"