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How to Build a Person: A Prolegomenon
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Author: John Pollock
List Price: $35.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0262161133
Publisher: MIT Press (08 December, 1989)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 906,386
Average Customer Rating: 1 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 1 out of 5
If you know the author, maybe you'll like the book
Quick check - do you *love* to use terms like de se, de re, defeasible reasoning, supervenient, attenuated rational functionalism, intentionality, individuating, Tversky's representativeness heuristic, rebutting defeater, doxastic assumption, physicalism and simpliciter? If so, we _might_ have a book for you herei'm not sure how to describe this book. i realize my rating (1 star) is harsh, so let me justify it by saying that this book appeals to a very small niche, and if you're not in that niche (which i am not), this book will probably bore you to tears Although Pollock claims to be a philosopher, having read the book i'm going to guess that his specialty is symbolic logic. Pollock, obviously an active academic, talks exclusively about formal logic - "building a person" means only the ability to do formal logic. Like many boring academic works, it is chock full of citations, and the author seems to assume that you've read most of them. Actually, i get the feeling that the author expects that you wrote some of them, as the writing tone reminds me of an email pulled out of the end of a long, detailed flame war. People who follow arguments in formal logic closely (i.e., other logicians) might find something interesting in this book. However, since i know relatively little about the current state of formal logic, this book went right over my head. As such, i'm really not qualified to say anything about the book other than, if you aren't part of the niche this book is targeting, you probably won't like it
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