Reason and Responsibility Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy

by Feinberg, Joel; Shafer-Landau, Russ

• ISBN13: 9780534573522
• ISBN10: 0534573525
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-07-05
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing

Summary

The eleventh edition of this renowned, topically organized anthology provides a superb balance of historical selections and recent material. The text covers reason and religious belief, human knowledge, mind and its place in nature, determinism, free will and responsibility, and morality and its critics in five parts with careful attention to opposing points of view.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part One: REASON AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Introduction

The Existence of God

Anselm of Canterbury: The Ontological Argument: from Proslogium

Gaunilo: On Behalf of the Fool

William L

Rowe: The Ontological Argument

Thomas Aquinas: The Five Ways: from Summa Theologica

Samuel Clarke: A Modern Formulation of the Cosmological Argument

William L

Rowe: The Cosmological Argument

Derek Parfit: Why is there Something rather than Nothing? William Paley: The Argument from Design

David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, II-XI

Deborah Mathieu: Male Chauvinist Religion

The Problem of Evil

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rebellion: from The Brothers Karamazov

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz: A Refutation of Arguments from Evil, from Theodicy

J

L

Mackie: Evil and Omnipotence

Peter Van Inwagen: The Magnitude: Duration and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy

Reason and Faith

W

K

Clifford: The Ethics of Belief

William James: The Will to Believe

Blaise Pascal: The Wager

Simon Blackburn: Miracles and Testimony, from Think

Part Two: HUMAN KNOWLEDGE: ITS GROUNDS AND LIMITS

Introduction

Skepticism

John Pollock: A Brain in a Vat

Sextus Empiricus: The Modes of Skepticism, from Outlines of Pyhroonism

Roderick M

Chisholm: The Problem of the Criterion

Keith Lehrer: Why Not Skepticism? Our Knowledge of the External World

Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy

G

Moore: Proof of an External World

John Locke: The Causal Theory of Perception, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

George Berkeley: Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous

The Methods of Science

David Hume: An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, II, IV-VII

Wesley C

Salmon: An Encounter with David Hume

Duane Gish: Creation, Evolution and Public Education

Philip Kitcher: Believing Where We Cannot Prove, from Abusing Science

Part Three: MIND AND ITS PLACE IN NATURE

Introduction

The Mind-Body Problem

Keith Campbell: Dualisms, from Body and Mind 2ed

Frank Jackson: The Qualia Problem

Paul M

Churchland: Behaviorism, Materialism, and Functionalism, from Matter and Consciousness

Peter Carruthers: The Mind is the Brain, from Introducing Persons

Can Non-Humans Think? John R

Searle: Minds: Brains: and Programs

William G

Lycan: Robots and Minds, from Consciousness

Colin Allen: Star Witness

Personal Identity and the Survival Of Death

Daniel Dennett: Where Am I?, from Brainstorms

Terence Penelhum: Survival: The Problem of Identity

John Perry: A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality

Part Four: DETERMINISM, FREE WILL AND RESPONSIBILITY

Introduction

Hard Determinism: The Case for Determinism and its Incompatibility With Any Important Sense of Free Will

Paul Holbach: The Illusion of Free Will, from System of Nature

Ted Honderich: A Defense of Hard Determinism, from How Free are You? Compatibilism: The Case for Determinism and its Compatibility with the Most Important Sense of Free Will

A

J

Ayer: Freedom and Necessity, from Philosophical Essays

Walter T

Stace: The Problem of Free Will, from Religion and the Modern Mind

Libertarianism: The Case for Free Will and its Incompatibility with Determinism

Roderick Chisholm: Human Freedom and the Self

Robert Kane: Free Will: Ancient Dispute, New Themes

Freedom and Moral Responsibility

Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility

Harry Frankfurt: Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility

Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck

Part Five: MORALITY AND ITS CRITICS

Introduction

Challenges to Morality

Joel Feinberg: Psychological Egoism

James Rachels: Ethical Egoism, from Elements of Moral Philosophy

Plato: The Immoralist's Challenge, from Republic, Book II

Plato, Socrates' Answer (in part), from Republic, Books II, III and IV

Friedrich Nietzsche: Master and Slave Morality, from Genealogy of Morals & Beyond Good and Evil

Proposed Standards of Right Conduct

Russ Shafer-Landau: Ethical Subjectivism

James Rachels: The Challenge of Cultural Relativism: from The Elements of Moral Philosophy

Aristotle: The Nature of Virtue, from Nicomachean Ethics

Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan: Pt

I: chs

XIII-XV

Philip Quinn: God and Morality

Immanuel Kant: The Good Will: and The Categorical Imperative: from Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism, Chapters 1-2. John Rawls: Justice as Fairness, from A Theory of Justice

Applied Ethics

Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality

Onora O'Neill: Kantian Approaches to Some Famine Problems

James Rachels: Active and Passive Euthanasia

Tom Beaucamp: A Reply to Rachels on Active and Passive Euthanasia

Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion

Don Marquis: An Argument that Abortion is Wrong

John Harris: The Survival Lottery

Tom Regan: The Case for Animal Rights

Plato: Crito

Glossary