About this item
A leading American philosopher brings the tools of his trade to contentious contemporary debates.How can we have meaningful debates with political opponents? How can we distinguish reliable science from over-hyped media reports? How can we talk sensibly about God?In What Philosophy Can Do, Gary Gutting takes a philosopher's scalpel to modern life's biggest questions and the most powerful forces in our society -- politics, science, religion, education, and capitalism -- to show how we can improve our discussions of contentious contemporary issues.Gutting introduces readers to powerful analytic tools in the philosopher's arsenal that they can use to make new sense of current debates. One such tool is a crucial distinction between inductive and deductive reasoning that explains why both sides on a disputed issue often are sure they have compelling cases for their views.
About the Author
Gary Gutting is a distinguished academic philosopher and a major contributor to public discussions of philosophical questions.He has taught for many years at the University of Notre Dame, where he holds the John A. O'Brien Chair in Philosophy. He is the author of seven academic books and editor of five others, and has published over forty articles. His main areas of research are philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and twentieth-century French philosophy. For a wider audience, he is the author of Foucault: A Very Short Introduction, a volume that has been translated into 7 languages. Since June, 2011, he has been a regular contributor to the New York Times philosophy blog, The Stone, publishing over 100 columns and interviews. Other work for the Times includes analyses of the 2012 Presidential Debates for "Campaign Stops" and essays in the Sunday Review. His recent book, What Philosophy Can Do, contains essays on politics, science, religion, education, and art that expand on his Stone columns.He has been interviewed on a number of radio and television broadcasts, including National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" (with Richard Harris on climate policy) , Canadian Broadcasting Television's "Lang & O'Leary Exchange" (gun control) , Sirius Radio's "StandUp with Peter Dominick" (gun control) , Cyberstation USA (religion and politics) , and Al-Jazeera English TV (with Bob Reynolds on extraterrestrial life) .
