OER and ZTC by Subject (A-Z)

Open Alberta. Textbook. An introduction to philosophy with selections on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and logic. The emphasis is on exposing students to important philosophers and issues in philosophy. Chapters include multiple choice questions to test reading comprehension.

Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, Introduction to Philosophy surveys logic, metaphysics, epistemology, theories of value, and history of philosophy thematically. To provide a strong foundation in global philosophical discourse, diverse primary sources and examples are central to the design, and the text emphasizes engaged reading, critical thinking, research, and analytical skill-building through guided activities.

The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, the goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress.

In one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as "how are we to live" and "what is the nature of reality". A broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations.

Learning from Arguments is a novel approach to teaching Introduction to Philosophy. It advances accessible versions of key philosophical arguments, in a form that students can emulate in their own writing, and with the primary aim of cultivating an understanding of the dynamics of philosophical argumentation.

This is a textbook (or better, a workbook) in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. The introductory chapter, Minilogic and Glossary, are designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions.

This Philosophy of Western Religions textbook was developed as an Open Textbook (OER, Open Educational Resource) for use as an introductory level course in a Community College. This work is effectively an anthology of contemporary issues in the philosophy of religions as well as classic arguments and foundational texts in the subject of Western religions. Many of the articles were crowdsourced from talented philosophers and the rest are classic historical readings in the public domain. It is released under a CC-BY license, which means all of the works within it contain licenses that allow them to be used and distributed freely and openly and may be printed (even for commercial purposes). Please contact the editor for comments, feedback, or suggestions. It meets accessibility requirements as well.

Philosophy is the critical, rational examination of fundamental questions that people have pondered for more than 2500 years. These include, but are not limited to, questions such as: What is reality? What is the nature of the self? Does God exist? What is good and just? What ought I to do? Philosophy courses are directed towards an understanding of these and other fundamental questions, often through reading and studying philosophers who have addressed these questions in the past, with appreciation of the historical and cultural contexts in which these questions are raised and answered. Philosophy courses help students to develop good logical and critical reasoning skills, expose hidden preconceptions, encourage open debate and independent thought, and provide opportunity to apply valuable insights gained to contemporary life. Major sub-fields of philosophy include metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic and philosophy of science.

This textbook will be useful for anyone that is taking an introduction to ethics class or is interested in learning more about ethics. The articles, while sometimes challenging, are readable and accessible even to newcomers to philosophy.

We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others' behavior and choices. This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millenia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition.

Context: The Examined Life -- A Little Bit of Logic -- Fallacies and Biases -- Ethics Culture and Religion -- Relativism --Religion and Ethics -- Reconstructing Norms -- Egoism -- Social Contract Theory -- Utilitarianism -- Kant and the ethics of duty -- Applied Ethics -- Theory in Practice -- Euthanasia -- Liberty and its Limits -- Crime and Punishment -- Animals and Ethics --
Ethics and the Environment

The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics provides readers with insight into the central questions of development ethics, the main approaches to answering them, and areas for future research. Over the past seventy years, it has been argued and increasingly accepted that worthwhile development cannot be reduced to economic growth. Rather, a number of other goals must be realised: Enhancement of people's well-being Equitable sharing in benefits of development Empowerment to participate freely in development Environmental sustainability Promotion of human rights Promotion of cultural freedom, consistent with human rights Responsible conduct, including integrity over corruption Agreement that these are essential goals has also been accompanied by disagreements about how to conceptualize or apply them in different cases or contexts. Using these seven goals as an organizing principle, this handbook presents different approaches to achieving each one, drawing on academic literature, policy documents and practitioner experience. This international and multi-disciplinary handbook will be of great interest to development policy makers and program workers, students and scholars in development studies, public policy, international studies, applied ethics and other related disciplines.

The author shows that different communities can indeed be subject to incompatible moralities, because their local mores are rationally binding. At the same time, he explains why the mores of different communities, even when incompatible, are still variations on the same moral themes. The book thus maps out a universe of many moral worlds without, as Velleman puts it, “moral black holes”. The six self-standing chapters discuss such diverse topics as online avatars and virtual worlds, lying in Russian and truth-telling in Quechua, the pleasure of solitude and the fear of absurdity.

This is a textbook (or better, a workbook) in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. The introductory chapter, Minilogic and Glossary, are designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions.

ntroduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. The book progresses systematically while placing key ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. Central topics include the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies.

Aesthetic Theory and Practice offers fresh perspectives on canonical and emerging topics in aesthetics, and also brings attention to a number of culturally sensitive topics that are customarily silenced in introductions to philosophical aesthetics. The papers are heterogeneous in terms of length and degrees of difficulty, inviting the reader into the study of contemporary aesthetics, which spans a lifetime.

From the Textbook: It's Funny 'Cause It's True (Henrigillis and Gimbel) an introductory text in philosophy exploring logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics through questions in the philosophy of humor. Subfields receive a substantive introduction with interactive essays written to be accessible to undergraduates.

List of short articles and extended about aesthetics, along with a linkable Mind Map, that links to more information about key individuals and concepts related to the search term, aesthetics. Sources include: Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought, Dictionary of World Philosophy, Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Columbia Encyclopedia, The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics, and more.

Aesthetics may be defined narrowly as the theory of beauty, or more broadly as that together with the philosophy of art. The traditional interest in beauty itself broadened, in the eighteenth century, to include the sublime, and since 1950 or so the number of pure aesthetic concepts discussed in the literature has expanded even more.

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and appreciation of art, beauty and good taste. It has also been defined as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature". The word "aesthetics" derives from the Greek "aisthetikos", meaning "of sense perception". Along with Ethics, aesthetics is part of axiology (the study of values and value judgments). Source: The Basics of Philosophy: A Huge Subject Broken Down Into Manageable Chunks.

Introduced into the philosophical lexicon during the 18th century, the term ‘aesthetic’ has come to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience, and a kind of value. For the most part, aesthetic theories have divided over questions particular to one or another of these designations: whether artworks are necessarily aesthetic objects; how to square the allegedly perceptual basis of aesthetic judgments with the fact that we give reasons in support of them; how best to capture the elusive contrast between an aesthetic attitude and a practical one; whether to define aesthetic experience according to its phenomenological or representational content; how best to understand the relation between aesthetic value and aesthetic experience. Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

In 46 episodes, Hank Green will teach you philosophy! This course is based on an introductory Western philosophy college level curriculum. By the end of the course, you will be able to:
* Examine topics like the self, ethics, religion, language, art, death, politics, and knowledge through a philosophical perspective
* Craft arguments, apply deductive and inductive reasoning, and identify fallacies
* Understand the perspectives and major theories proposed by various philosophers throughout history
* Apply philosophical ideas to ethical questions in modern society
* Consider your personal values and approach to life

The purpose of the IEP is to provide detailed, scholarly, peer-reviewed information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of academic philosophy. The Encyclopedia’s articles are written by experts but not for experts with the intention that most of the article can be understood by students majoring in philosophy, but also by others who are not working in the field.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work.

Includes links to reference resources, online books, open access journals, and podcasts

Authored by Maria Popova — a reader and a wonderer reckoning with the meaning of it all in writing. The Marginalian is the record of the reckoning — a one-woman labor of love, exploring what it means to live a tender, thoughtful life of purpose and gladness, wonder-smitten by reality. Founded in 2006 as an email to seven friends under the outgrown name Brain Pickings and since included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials, it remains a chronicle of my ongoing becoming — intellectually, creatively, spiritually, poetically — drawn from my extended marginalia on the search for meaning across science, art, philosophy, and the various other tendrils of human thought and feeling; a private inquiry shimmering with the ultimate question, the great quickening of wonderment that binds us all: