Martin, Robert : Columbia University

Robert Martin, educated at Columbia University and the University of Michigan, is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Dalhousie University. He is also the author of The Meaning of Language (MIT Press, 1987), There Are Two Errors In The The Title Of This Book (Broadview, 2/e 2002), and Scientific Thinking (Broadview, 1997).

�Martin's Dictionary is one that professionals can rely on and recommend to students with confidence. But Martin also presents philosophy in a witty, engaged manner; the reader gets the rewarding sensation of a discipline in motion, an ongoing conversation between past, present, and future.�

-- Edrie Sobstyl, University of Texas at Dallas

�Clearly [the dictionary] best-suited for introductory philosophy students.�

-- Dialogue

�As interesting to the general reader as it is useful for the student.�

-- David Copp, Bowling Green University

�...very valuable: an excellent first place to look for explanations of philosophical concepts.�

-- Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto

Broadview Press Web Site, May, 2002

Philosophy has its own technical vocabulary � probably more so than any other discipline in the Humanities � and philosophers often ordinary words in special ways. Yet many dictionaries of philosophy tend to concentrate on historical obscura and to ignore many terms in wide contemporary use. In vain will one look in many other philosophy dictionaries for such terms as �rigid designator,� �veil of ignorance,� �Godel�s proof,� or �Berry�s paradox.� Moreover, other philosophy dictionaries often tend toward long definitions that can too easily tempt the student into treating them as a substitute for actually reading philosophy.

In this dictionary, Robert Martin works from very different premises. His central aim to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to philosophical terms. Definitions are brief, clear, and user-friendly. Notes on usage, spelling, and pronunciation are included, and there are brief entries on hundreds of the best known philosophers. Throughout, Martin writes in a style at once informal and authoritative, enlightening and entertaining, making difficult concepts intelligible without distorting them.

Among the approximately 150 entries new to this edition are: anaphora, Berry�s paradox, Chinese room example, communitarianism, Fallibilism, Fermat�s last theorem, fuzzy logic, Necker cube, nomological dangler, paraconsistent logic, Pareto principle, phallocentric, postcard paradox, perfectionism, and satisfice.