edlin314's review against another edition
informative
3.0
Yeah I think I missed out on a lot of the explanations and examples because of the audiobook format. I found the book hard to follow and to comprehend because of this.
alastairherd's review
1.0
Before saying anything else if you are going to get a basic book on Logic don't get this one, get Logic by Wilfred Hodges (Pelican - Out of Print). You can find it easily online for less than this book and it is way better.
It took me a long time to get through this book. Not because it was long, but because it was too short.... Sadly, I always finish books I start so I made it out the other side.
I will start with the positives of the book which are:
1. It has problems and solutions in the back
2. It has a glossary page of terms at the back incase you forget what something means
Those are probably the best bits.
I've read quite a few "Very Short Introduction" books now and I've come to the conclusion that they're not very good. Most of them seem to be written by people who can't figure out what kind of book they're writing. They tend to be too short to give the reader any depth in the topic, but also too short for the author to actually explain the basics of the topic. Basically, a book for someone who doesn't need to read it.
With that said, this is definitely the worst one I have read.
Throughout the book the author seems to have a hard time staying on topic, which, given the brevity of the chapters makes most of them fairly pointless, reminding me more of one of those 10 minute explanatory Youtube videos where they spend 9 minutes rambling about the weather and then copy a load of text on screen at the end and think they're the bees-knees . If the chapters have to be short (or even "Very Short") then they ought to be focused on the topic at hand.
This book is onlyeasy to read finishable if you already know enough logic to begin with to not need a "Very Short Introduction" and that point, why waste your time with this.
It took me a long time to get through this book. Not because it was long, but because it was too short.... Sadly, I always finish books I start so I made it out the other side.
I will start with the positives of the book which are:
1. It has problems and solutions in the back
2. It has a glossary page of terms at the back incase you forget what something means
Those are probably the best bits.
I've read quite a few "Very Short Introduction" books now and I've come to the conclusion that they're not very good. Most of them seem to be written by people who can't figure out what kind of book they're writing. They tend to be too short to give the reader any depth in the topic, but also too short for the author to actually explain the basics of the topic. Basically, a book for someone who doesn't need to read it.
With that said, this is definitely the worst one I have read.
Throughout the book the author seems to have a hard time staying on topic, which, given the brevity of the chapters makes most of them fairly pointless, reminding me more of one of those 10 minute explanatory Youtube videos where they spend 9 minutes rambling about the weather and then copy a load of text on screen at the end and think they're the bees-knees . If the chapters have to be short (or even "Very Short") then they ought to be focused on the topic at hand.
This book is only
loganjb's review
3.0
Pretty good intro to logic, especially if you're studying philosophy or math. Brings up arguments that have been made for the existence of God, some don't seem to be analyzed as well as he thinks, but other wise it's worth a buy.
cantabilis's review against another edition
was reading to see if i enjoyed logic for a future philosophy course, concluded that i did but didn’t sufficiently understand what was going on to make reading the rest of the book worthwhile
katzemoos's review against another edition
3.0
I have a hard time rating this book, as I honestly had a hard time understanding it.
I do not know what my expectations for a book about logic were, but I was definitely surprised by the amount of math. Seemingly the math was simple, there was just a lot of it and as a typical language/history/social sciences-person I had a hard time following. To me the word examples given made perfect sense, but as soon as letters and symbols started symbolising words and parts of sentences Priest lost me.
What this book did wonderfully was apply humour to the otherwise dry topic and bring interesting examples and understandable examples (when math was NOT involved). Having small snarky comments definitely assisted the readability and took part in motivating me to make it till the end!
In conclusion I did not get much out of this book a part from possibly being able to recognise a few names and terms later in life and a little bit about the history of logic and I expected an easier approach from an introductory book, but I think that this is definitely an interesting read if you are interested in logic, but a bit of pre-knowledge is required.
I do not know what my expectations for a book about logic were, but I was definitely surprised by the amount of math. Seemingly the math was simple, there was just a lot of it and as a typical language/history/social sciences-person I had a hard time following. To me the word examples given made perfect sense, but as soon as letters and symbols started symbolising words and parts of sentences Priest lost me.
What this book did wonderfully was apply humour to the otherwise dry topic and bring interesting examples and understandable examples (when math was NOT involved). Having small snarky comments definitely assisted the readability and took part in motivating me to make it till the end!
In conclusion I did not get much out of this book a part from possibly being able to recognise a few names and terms later in life and a little bit about the history of logic and I expected an easier approach from an introductory book, but I think that this is definitely an interesting read if you are interested in logic, but a bit of pre-knowledge is required.
darwin8u's review against another edition
3.0
"...with vagueness, nothing is straighforward."
Graham Priest, VSI Logic
I was going to try to write a VSR (Very Short Review) of this book using symbolic logic, but abandoned that idea about 1/3 of the way through this book as I began to remember that while I enjoy logic in theory, the practice of formal logic and its symbols sometimes drives me batty. I think it stems not from my computing power, just my weak will power and general lack of interest. Some people love symbolic logic with its ability to dodge some of the difficulties of vagueness, equivocation, and confusion from emotive significance that comes from thinking carefully using languages that are, by nature, all a little fudgy. But, like any language, symbolic logic requires practice, discipline, and time. I guess I lack all three. I could write that in symbolic logic too, I guess, but like I said earlier. Nah, not really interested.
The book is, however, a nice overview of logic. Going through the basics of: validity, truth functions, names and quantifiers, descriptions, self-reference, necessity and possibility, conditionals, the future and the past, identity and change, vagueness, probability, inverse probability, decision theory, and a quick survey of logic from the Greeks to Bertrand Russell (and a bit beyond).
Probably, my favorite parts were probability and decision theory. But that goes back to my days doing economic analysis and econometrics. I felt like I was partially on terra firma. Partially. I should also disclose I read this in the bath. That is neither here nor there, but I think part of my difficulties with this book might have come from the lack of an oak table, green lamp, and chewed-up pencil.
Graham Priest, VSI Logic
I was going to try to write a VSR (Very Short Review) of this book using symbolic logic, but abandoned that idea about 1/3 of the way through this book as I began to remember that while I enjoy logic in theory, the practice of formal logic and its symbols sometimes drives me batty. I think it stems not from my computing power, just my weak will power and general lack of interest. Some people love symbolic logic with its ability to dodge some of the difficulties of vagueness, equivocation, and confusion from emotive significance that comes from thinking carefully using languages that are, by nature, all a little fudgy. But, like any language, symbolic logic requires practice, discipline, and time. I guess I lack all three. I could write that in symbolic logic too, I guess, but like I said earlier. Nah, not really interested.
The book is, however, a nice overview of logic. Going through the basics of: validity, truth functions, names and quantifiers, descriptions, self-reference, necessity and possibility, conditionals, the future and the past, identity and change, vagueness, probability, inverse probability, decision theory, and a quick survey of logic from the Greeks to Bertrand Russell (and a bit beyond).
Probably, my favorite parts were probability and decision theory. But that goes back to my days doing economic analysis and econometrics. I felt like I was partially on terra firma. Partially. I should also disclose I read this in the bath. That is neither here nor there, but I think part of my difficulties with this book might have come from the lack of an oak table, green lamp, and chewed-up pencil.