Every month I will write about something I recommend buying and why. I am an Amazon Associate, so if you click through the sales link in any of these brief recommendation blogs (like today’s), I will get a commission on everything in your cart when you check out (even if you don’t buy the thing I recommend, and even if you buy a bunch of weird stuff like Pure Grace Perfume or A History of Palliative Care), as long as you fill that cart after following my link, and complete your purchase within 24 hours. I also get bonuses (in addition to the commissions) if my links pull enough sales volume every month (at least a thousand dollars, which is hard to do, but hey, let’s try!).

This holds for all Amazon links in any article or page on my entire website. But here I am highlighting two of the books I have long recommended people read…

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Today’s featured books are valuable starter kits in philosophy that I believe every philosopher would benefit from, but especially committed beginners (and I believe every citizen should endeavor to be some scale of philosopher): The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (now in its 3rd Edition) by Peter Fosl and Julian Baggini; Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities and Sets by David Papineau; and Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies by Bo Bennett.

These three handbooks are useful references on philosophical concepts, including all the core math and logic any philosopher should know (or be able to look up, like in one of these guides):

Why these?

• Fallacious is the largest all-in-one collection of logical fallacies in print. With this you can train yourself to catch countless errors by learning all the ways people make arguments that look or sound persuasive but are actually illogical. It has a very useful introductory section that serves as a decent primer for logical reasoning altogether. Then it lists three hundred fallacies alphabetically. It then closes with academic appendices ranging from a “Top 25” fallacies list to a chapter on distinguishing logical fallacies from cognitive biases, then a whole a series of training exercises.
• Devices gets a little more advanced. First it walks you through sets and numbers, and important hypotheses and theorems therein. Then it covers “analyticity, a prioricity, and necessity,” in other words the domain of logical certainties, what some say is the core business of philosophy: analyzing words and concepts, and exploring possibility-space. Then it covers probability, per its description: “outlining the difference between objective and subjective probability and exploring aspects of conditionalization and correlation,” including a section on Bayesian reasoning. It closes with what it calls “metalogic,” i.e. the underlying logic of logics, distinguishing things like “syntax and semantics” and looking at examples like Gödel’s theorem. The whole book bears re-reading over time to master each subject, and is always handy as a reference to check and bone up on each subject it covers whenever needed. Indeed it was built out of an intro philosophy course at King’s College.
• Toolkit is something in between, combining a catalog-like organization of concepts you need to master (including an alphabetized index of them), but organizing them in a logical, hierarchical way such that it makes sense to work through them from beginning to end. So it can be used as a handbook, to look up some concept and rehearse it when you need, and as a textbook, to just work your way through, by the end of which you’ll have all the basic tools needed to do substantive philosophy. For example, it will prime you in basic things like the realist-antirealist distinction, the concept of properly basic beliefs, feminist lensing, or even the Foucaultian critique of power. It is brief in every case, and often non-committal (it describes, rather than justifies, some tools, but provides references to pursue the justifications elsewhere; and even those that aren’t justified you need to be familiar with anyway so you know what they are when they come up). But that makes it ideal for a first-take understanding of what each thing is.

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Some things to consider:

• Though Fallacious is more like a dictionary, it’s introductory and conclusory chapters serve well as a 101 introduction to logical reasoning and can be read straight up and will get you well oriented in what you need to advance further. And though the bulk of it in between is then just an alphabetized list of fallacies, handy to consult as needed, it is still worthwhile to work through one by one. You’ll learn a lot by the process.
• Though Devices is advanced, it is still introductory. For example, you could raise objections or nuances to every subject it covers; it does not address them because it is not meant to, but to just get you situated and thus able to. For example, it talks about Gödel’s Theorem, and gets you to understanding it, but does not discuss axiomatic systems immune to its conclusion (like Willard Arithmetic). So you should not take what it says as the end of the argument, but the beginning.
• Though Toolkit is more brief and descriptive than providing justifications or proofs, it does get you started. For example, on both Gödel’s Theorem and Feminist Critique it gives you a description of each and examples of their consequences, but it does not explain if or why any of that is true. However, it provides a solid bibliography to pursue the subject further. It also suggests connections to other subjects it briefs that is illuminating. For example, it points out the connection of feminist critique to the Foucaultian critique of power, and when you read both, you realize one is a subset of the other, which can advance your understanding of both.

These all have overlaps (e.g. two of them cover Gödel, all cover some of the same fallacies), but even those are informative, as you get different approaches and perspectives and examples, helping you triangulate further understanding. Moreover, as one reviewer aptly put (talking about Devices but they could just as well have been talking about any of these), “I didn’t always agree with the reasoning and choices made,” but “I couldn’t have had the knowledge to agree or disagree until I understood the device in the first place,” which is what these three volumes are best for. They get you oriented. If you have a grasp of the contents of these books, you will be able to improve or critique anything in philosophy—including in these volumes!