Beginning Metaphysics An Introductory Text with Readings

by Geirsson, Heimir; Losonsky, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781557867285
• ISBN10: 1557867283
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1991-01-16
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This flexible textbook is both an introduction and a reader in metaphysics combining original discussion with selections from primary sources. This text shows that important social, political and moral concerns involve metaphysical questions and that important metaphysical positions have practical implications. It discusses major metaphysical topics such as God, Freedom, Mind, Causality, Value, and Universals as well as important historical and contemporary critiques of metaphysics. Each chapter is followed by selections from classic and contemporary texts, allowing for in-depth study of primary sources.

Author Biography

Heimir Geirsson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State University. He is the co-editor, with Michael Losonsky, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) and has published on philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntnis, and Journal of Philosophical Research.

Michael Losonsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is the co-editor, with Heimir Geirsson, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996). He has published on contemporary metaphysics in American Philosophical Quarterly, Minds and Machines, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophy, amongst others. He has also published on metaphysics in the history of modern philosophy in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Pragmatics and Cognition, among others.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	vii	(1)
Acknowledgments	viii
1 What Is Metaphysics?	1	(10)
2 Metaphysics and Political Philosophy	11	(71)
Plato
Crito	30	(9)
Plato
Phaedo	39	(23)
Thomas Hobbes
Selection from The Leviathan	62	(8)
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex, Introduction	70	(4)
Bertrand Russell
Selection from The Problems of Philosophy	74	(8)
3 Values and Reality	82	(101)
John O'Neill
The Varieties of Intrinsic Value	105	(17)
J.L. Mackie
The Subjectivity of Values	122	(23)
Richard Boyd
How to Be a Moral Realist	145	(38)
4 God and Evil	183	(54)
St Anselm of Canterbury
Selection from Proslogion	199	(2)
St Thomas Aquinas
Selection from Summa Theologica	201	(2)
David Hume
Selection from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion	203	(6)
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Summary of the Controversy Reduced to Formal Arguments	209	(6)
J.L. Mackie
Evil and Omnipotence	215	(11)
Alvin Plantinga
Was It within God's Power to Create Any Possible World He Pleased?	226	(11)
5 Causation and Responsibility	237	(46)
David Hume
Selection from Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding	253	(8)
Edward H. Madden
A Third View of Causality	261	(12)
Alan Garfinkel
The Ethics of Explanation	273	(10)
6 Mind and Morality	283	(75)
Rene Descartes
Selections from Principles of Philosophy and Passions of the Soul	309	(7)
Denis Diderot
Selection from Conversation between d'Alembert and Diderot	316	(9)
Thomas Nagel
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?	325	(11)
John R. Searle
Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?	336	(11)
Paul M. Churchland
Patricia S. Churchland
Could a Machine Think?	347	(11)
7 Freedom and Responsibility	358	(77)
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
Selection from The System of Nature, Appendix	374	(2)
C.A. Campbell
Has the Self "Free Will"?	376	(13)
William L. Rowe
Two Concepts of Freedom	389	(19)
Harry G. Frankfurt
Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person	408	(13)
Susan Wolf
Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility	421	(14)
8 Against Metaphysics	435	(50)
Rudolf Carnap
The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language	444	(18)
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Four Great Errors	462	(5)
John Rawls
Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical	467	(18)
Glossary	485	(5)
Index	490