Department of Philosophy

Philosophy

A Concise Introduction to Logic

This textbook is an introduction to formal logic suitable for undergraduates taking a general education course in logic or critical thinking, and is accessible and useful to any interested in gaining a basic understanding of logic.

Includes: Practice problems

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

forall x: Calgary, An Introduction to Formal Logic

forall x: Calgary is a full-featured textbook on formal logic. It covers key notions of logic such as consequence and validity of arguments, the syntax of truth-functional propositional logic TFL and truth-table semantics. It also deals with some advanced topics such as modal logic, soundness, and functional completeness. Exercises with solutions are available. It is provided in PDF (for screen reading, printing, and a special version for dyslexics) and in LaTeX source code.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Fundamental Methods of Logic

This text is suitable for a one-semester introduction to logic/critical reasoning course. It covers a variety of topics at an introductory level.

Includes: Exercises

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Inferring and Explaining

This is a book in practical epistemology. It examines the notion of evidence and assumes that good evidence is the essence of rational thinking.

Includes: Exercises and quizzes

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking, aimed at providing the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments.

Includes: Exercises

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

An Introduction to Philosophy

This peer-reviewed open textbook presents philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. Early chapters are historically organized, to help trace a developmental progression of thought that introduce basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today.

Includes: Instructor resources

Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics

This text considers basic questions about moral and ethical judgment.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Introduction to Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind

This textbook surveys the central themes in philosophy of mind and places them in a historical and contemporary context intended to engage first-time readers in the field. It focuses on debates about the status and character of the mind and its seemingly subjective nature in an apparently more objective world.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

The Material Theory of Induction

This open book argues against the assumption that inductive inference can be accommodated by a single formal account with universal applicability. Instead, it argues that that there is no single, universally applicable formal account. Rather, each domain has an inductive logic native to it. The content of that logic and where it can be applied are determined by the facts prevailing in that domain.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy

This book addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices.

Includes: Suggestions for further study

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Modern Philosophy

This open textbook in modern philosophy combines readings from primary sources.

Includes: Study questions

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

The Originals: Classic Readings in Western Philosophy

This open textbook provides readers with an appreciation and understanding of philosophy framed by the very words and ideas of those who have shaped our thinking over the centuries.

Includes: Primary source documents

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Philosophical Ethics: A Guidebook for Beginners

This book is an introduction to philosophical ethics intended for use in introductory college or high school level courses.

Includes: Exercises, slideshow summaries

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Plato’s Republic: An Introduction

This book offers a rigorous and thought-provoking analysis of the text, helping readers navigate one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory.

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Public Domain Core Collection [New]

Includes fiction and non-fiction public domain works that have been adapted for post-secondary use through Pressbooks. This collection is a collaborative project between Ryerson and Brock universities. Many of the works include audiobook recordings as well.

Licence: Public Domain

Sets, Logic, Computation: An Open Introduction to Metalogic

Sets, Logic, Computation is an introductory textbook on metalogic. It covers naive set theory, first-order logic, sequent calculus and natural deduction, the completeness, compactness, and Löwenheim-Skolem theorems, Turing machines, and the undecidability of the halting problem and of first-order logic. The audience is undergraduate students with some background in formal logic, e.g., what is covered by forall x (Description from resource).

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Words of Wisdom: Intro to Philosophy

This text discusses topics ranging from “Are Humans good by nature?” to “Is there a God?” to “Do I have the right to my own opinion?”, using both ancient and contemporary references.

Includes: Primary source documents, quiz question bank (upon request)

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Gender and Sexuality Studies

Gendered Lives: Global Issues

This textbook takes a regional approach to examine gender issues from an anthropological perspective with a focus on globalization and intersectionality. Chapters present contributors’ ethnographic research, contextualizing their findings within four geographic regions: Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Global North. Each regional section begins with an overview of the broader historical, social, and gendered contexts, which situate the regions within larger global linkages. These introductions also feature short project/people profiles that highlight the work of community leaders or non-governmental organizations active in gender-related issues. This modular, regional approach allows instructors to select the regions and cases they want to use in their courses. While they can be used separately, the chapters are connected through the book’s central themes of globalization and intersectionality.

Includes: Learning objectives, discussion questions, resources for further exploration

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Global Women’s Issues: Women in the World Today

This global politics text has been positively-reviewed and has been successfully adopted by other faculty. It covers concepts in women’s political issues, from women and education to the rights of children.

Includes: Key terms, review questions and answers, discussion questions, essay questions

Licence: Public Domain

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library and BCcampus Open Textbook Collection

Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (Lumen Learning)

This reviewed open textbook available through Lumen Learning covers various topics that introduce the interdisciplinary field of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and how scholars in different disciplines incorporate gender as a critical tool in their analysis.

Includes: Videos

Licence: CC BY 4.0, unless otherwise noted.

Reviews: Available through the Open Textbook Library

Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understanding of Place

This edited volume examines how patriarchy, gender, and colonialism have shaped the experiences of Indigenous women as both knowers and producers of knowledge. From a variety of methodological perspectives, contributors to the volume explore the nature and scope of Indigenous women’s knowledge, its rootedness in relationships both human and spiritual, and its inseparability from land and landscape.

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Note: This is an open access text which restricts remixing and adapting).

Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN)

OAPEN lists many gender studies-related books that can be incorporated into your course readings.  Some of them have CC-BY-4.0 or CC-BY-SA-4.0 copyright licenses that you can adopt, remix, transform, and build upon the original.  Check Subject under “gender studies” or “gay studies” areas and browse.  Check the copyright status assigned to selected titles.  Refer to the four different copyrights. The following three titles are examples from the OAPEN collection:

1. Between Violence, Vulnerability, Resilience and Resistance

How are the structures of power and the notion of agency among Syrian women during the recent Syrian conflict connected? To explore this matter, Rand El Zein investigates gender politics around displacement, conflict, the body, and the nation. In doing so, she outstandingly reconciles critical media theory as myriad and productive with the theoretical concepts on subjectivity, power, performativity, neoliberalism, and humanitarian governance. The book examines how the Arab television news discursively represented the experiences of Syrian women during the conflict in relation to the four main concepts: violence, vulnerability, resilience, and resistance.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

2. Changing Gender Norms in Islam Between Reason and Revelation

Women‘s movements in Islamic countries have had a long and arduous journey in their quest for the realization of human rights and genuine equality. The author examines whether discriminatory laws against women do in fact originate from Islam and, ultimately, if there is any interpretation of Islam compatible with gender equality. She investigates women’s rights in Iran since the 1979 Revolution from the perspectives of the main currents of Islamic thought, fundamentalists, reformists, and seculars, using a sociological explanation.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

3. Feeling Gender: A Generational and Psychosocial Approach

Persistence is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies