There were actually quite a lot. For instance, there were the Neoplatonists, around the third century, such as Plotinus, Proclus and Porphyry. Then there were the Fathers of the Christian Church, from the third to the fifth centuries. Some of the latter, it is true, do qualify more as theologians than philosophers: but there were also several genuine philosophers among them, such as Origen, Tertullian or Saint Augustine. After that, though, the state of philosophy in this region (and we're talking about the Mediterranean here, from Greece and Rome, through Asia Minor, down to Egypt) did begin to decline. Boethius (d. 524 or 525) is sometimes cited as the last significant philosopher of the classical period, before the Dark Ages properly set in. And I do know what you mean, because then there was quite a striking gap in philosophical activity. The gap might not have been a thousand years, but it probably was two or three hundred. Still, though, things did eventually start to get back on track; and...

I hadn't originally intended to attempt a reply to this one, simply because the history of this is something that I've never really looked at in detail. But I do have to take issue with something that Allen Stairs says: "The distinction between deduction and induction never was a distinction between universal-to-particular and particular-to-universal." Erm... that's precisely what it was. I've had a quick leaf through a few of the books I happen to have to hand, and it's quite clear that this was how folks like Bacon, Arnauld & Nicole, Leibniz, Newton, Berkeley, and many others, understood the distinction. Not to mention Aristotle. Or how about the following from John Stuart Mill's 1843 work, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive : "Although, therefore, all processes of thought in which the ultimate premises are particulars, whether we conclude from particulars to a general formula, or from particulars to other particulars according to that formula, are equally Inductive; we...

There are, of course, differences between the two cases. The Soviets did at least have some opportunity to defend themselves, for instance. On the other hand, vastly more of them died. So let's just put all such differences to one side, and suppose that the two cases are indeed equivalent. Okay then, if Hitler had the right to invade the USSR, then he had the right to slaughter the German Jews. But so what? The antecedent of the conditional is plainly false. Why on earth would anyone think he had the right to invade the USSR?

This sounds like an accusation that was regularly thrown at Medieval Aristotelian physicists. Aristotelian physics was built around the "teleological" principle that things have natural tendencies to strive to achieve certain goals or destinations. Why does a stone fall? Aristotle would say that the explanation for this rests on the fact that it is in the nature of an earthy body to move towards the natural place of such bodies, which (he believed) is in the centre of the cosmos. But you're quite right, this does sound rather vacuous, to say that it moves as it does because it has a natural tendency to do so. The Aristotelians sought to explain natural phenomena in terms of what came to be known as "occult qualities" and, although the term "occult" might not have carried quite the connotations it has now, it was used perjoratively by many non-Aristotelians to point to the fact that these supposed qualities really weren't explanatory at all. The Aristotelian approach was famously lampooned by Molière,...

The charge of atheism was levelled against countless philosophers over the centuries: but, historically, it usually signified nothing more than a criticism of the established state religion and/or a heretical view on the nature of God/gods, and not a flat denial that there was any existent being answering to that name at all. For instance, among ancient philosophers, Epicurus and the other classical atomists were widely regarded as atheistic: but they really weren't. They did postulate the existence of gods. It was just that their so-called gods were material beings, living serene lives off in outer space, who didn't create the universe or, frankly, do much of anything at all, and who had absolutely no interest in mundane affairs, and consequently weren't fit objects for our religious devotion. Later on, Spinoza's contemporaries generally tended to regard him as an atheist, as did those of Hobbes, and Hume, not to mention Bruno, Vanini, Toland, and many others. But most of these figures ...

I'd certainly agree that qualities like goodness and badness aren't really features of the world as it is in itself, so much as attitudes that we project onto it. And it does indeed follow from this that such attitudes are neither accurate nor inaccurate, since there is no objective quality out there to which they might either conform or fail to conform. So, if optimism and pessimism simply meant regarding the world as mostly good or mostly bad, then they would not generate any inaccuracy. But there's more to optimism and pessimism than that: they also tend to give rise to specific expectations about the future. Optimism might lead you to believe that you're going to win the lottery, land your dream job, find your soulmate, and live happily ever after. Pessimism might lead you to believe the opposite. And those beliefs about future events certainly will be objectively accurate or inaccurate, depending on how things actually turn out. My suspicion is that excessive optimism and pessimism are both likely to...

I think it comes down to a question of guilt or innocence. A criminal has committed a major sin, and hence deserves a major punishment: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life. Even just an ordinary adult will have some track-record of sin behind them -- none of us are perfect. They might not quite be evil enough to deserve to be targetted directly, but nevertheless it wouldn't be such a terrible thing if they were to become the victims of collateral damage in war. But an unborn baby, having had no opportunity to sin, is completely and utterly innocent, an unblemished soul, and consequently of greater moral worth. As far as I can discern, that's roughly the idea that those fundamentalists have. Speaking for myself, I regard this attitude as wholly abhorrent, both antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and morally repugnant in itself. But, hey, that's just my opinion, and what do I know?

Well, it all depends on what you're hoping to get out of it. If your interest is in the history of philosophy, and you want to find out about the state of logic and philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, then sure, go ahead and read it. (Although, given a choice, I'd actually recommend John Stuart Mill's System of Logic over Whateley). But if your interest is in logic as such, and you're hoping that this book will give you a decent introduction to the subject and a general overview of the state of play, then no, it really, really won't do that. Logic didn't actually change a whole lot from Aristotle's time right up until that of Whateley and Mill: but then, just a few decades later, it suddenly underwent a radical transformation. The work of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and others, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, completely revolutionised the subject, and works written before their time are nowadays of interest only to historians. That's not to say that I'd...

One suggestion that philosophers have come up, for measuring people's degrees of certainty, is to relate it to their willingness to place bets. Of course, there are all kinds of factors that undermine this approach: in the real world, some people avoid gambling altogether for ethical or religious reasons; some might not regard it as worth the effort of betting at all, when the prospective reward is tiny; and, in certain cases, it is hard to conceive who could possibly qualify as the arbiter of whether the bet had been won or lost. But, abstracting away from all of those problems, suppose that we agree that a person's betting inclinations are an accurate guide to their level of confidence. If someone is only willing to place a bet on the truth of a certain proposition when the offered odds are very long, that shows that they are very unconfident. They need the prospect of a very large return to justify risking their stake. On the other hand, if someone is willing to place a bet at very short odds, that...

First of all, let's distinguish two issues that seem to be interwoven in your question: what do/should historians of philosophy study, and what do/should actual working philosophers study? Taking the latter first, it is very true that Western philosophers tend to give little or no thought to folks like Nagarjuna. But there's nothing remarkable about that: they tend to give little or no thought to Plotinus either, or to Eriugena, or even to Descartes. Most working philosophers, although they might occasionally enjoy showing off a certain erudite awareness of the historical origins of their current debates, will rarely actually read and engage with works that are more than twenty years old. I suppose the idea is that newer works will preserve all that was good about earlier attempts at solutions to the problems in question, while also ironing out their flaws and generally pushing things forward. Giving "a more thorough exploration of the idea", as you put it. And maybe it would be a little naive to push...