Core Questions in Philosophy : A Text with Readings

by Sober, Elliott

• ISBN13: 9780131898691
• ISBN10: 0131898698
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780130835376, 9780132437783
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Presented in an engaging lecture-style format, this combined textbook-anthology presents a series of discussions on the basic issues and ideas in philosophy, with lectures supported by related readings from historically important sources. While the author's lecture approach lends this book a natural flow and sense of immediacy, it comprises a fully integrated book with all of the traditional organizational and pedagogical features to aid users' learning, including chapter summaries, marginal notes, boxed inserts, discussion questions, problems, test questions, a glossary, and bibliography. The discussions emphasize the logic of philosophical arguments; and, in particular, how they relate to the content of modern physical and social sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Lectures

What Is Philosophy?

Deductive Arguments

Inductive and Abductive Arguments

Philosophy of Religion

Lectures

Aquinas' First Four Ways

The Design Argument

Evolution and Creationism

Can Science Explain Everything?

The Ontological Argument

Is the Existence of God Testable?

Pascal and Irrationality.

The Argument from Evil

Readings

Five Ways to Prove That God Exists

The Design Argument

Critique of the Design Argument

The Ontological Argument

The Will to Believe

The Meaninglessness of Religious Discourse

Defending Atheism

Theory of Knowledge

Lectures

What Is Knowledge?

Descartes' Foundationalism.

The Reliability Theory of Knowledge.

Justified Belief and Hume's Problem of Induction.

Can Hume's Skepticism Be Refuted?

Beyond Foundationalism.

Introduction to Probability -- Bayes Theorem

Readings

Knowledge Is Something More than True Belief, Plato

Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes

Induction Cannot Be Rationally Justified

Philosophy of Mind

Lectures.

Dualism and the Mind/Body Problem

Logical Behaviorism

Methodological Behaviorism

The Mind/Brain Identity Theory

Functionalism

Freedom, Determinism, and Causality

A Menu of Positions on Free Will

Compatibilism

Psychological Egoism

Readings

Other Minds Are Known by Analogy from One's Own Case

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The philosophical problems investigated in this book concern fundamental facts about our place in the universe. Many of us were brought up to believe that God exists, that there is a real difference between right and wrong, that we can freely choose what sort of lives to lead, and that it is possible for us to gain knowledge of the world we inhabit. A major goal of philosophy is to discover whether these opinions can be rationally defended or are just comfortable illusions. Core Questions in Philosophyemphasizes the idea that philosophy is a subject devoted toevaluating argumentsandconstructing theories.This is not the same as describing the history of what various philosophers have thought. Although I discuss historical texts, I do so because they are rich sources of ideas pertinent to answering philosophical questions. The point is not to say solemn and respectful words about worthy figures now dead, but to engage them in dialogue--to grapple with the theories they have proposed, to criticize these theories, even to improve upon them. Besides proposing answers to philosophical questions, I also try to make clear which questions I have not answered. I hope that the reader will approach what I say the way I have approached the philosophical texts I discuss. This is a book to argue with, to dissect. It isn't my goal to have the reader accept without question the conclusions I reach. This work is a combinationtextbook with readings.The text part (which I call "Lectures") is followed by a group of related readings (drawn from Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and others). The lectures flow together, so that the main areas covered--philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics--are connected to each other to make a coherent whole. The lectures are intended to belaunching padsfrom which readers can pursue issues on their own. I believe students are best able to think about philosophy if they first are provided with some basic tools and concepts. It is the purpose of the lectures to provide thesecore ideas. Following the lectures in Parts II through V, there are a number of readings; these are drawn mainly from historical texts, although a few are by contemporary philosophers. The lectures often discuss these readings, but the area of overlap is far from total. Many lectures contain material that isn't touched on in any reading; and the readings raise a wealth of issues that the lectures don't address. The lectures are intended to stand on their own as well as to provide points of entry into the readings. Each lecture is followed by review questions and by problems for further thought. These should help readers to consolidate their understanding of what I have said and to think creatively about related problems. The lectures often contain material in "boxes"; these boxes provide a nutshell restatement of a main idea or a brief discussion of a related matter that may interest the reader. A list of the boxes immediately follows the table of contents. Each main part of the text includes suggestions for further reading. And there is a glossary at the end of the book that provides simple definitions of the main concepts used. Besides covering a number of traditional topics, this book also takes up some contemporary theories and problems, both from philosophy and from other disciplines. Creationism and evolutionary theory are hotly debated now. The issues they raise are continuous with a tradition of argument in philosophy of religion that goes back (at least) to Aquinas, Hume, and Paley. The relation of mind and body is a philosophical problem of long standing, but the ideas of Freud and Skinner get a hearing along with those of Descartes. In ethics there has long been a debate as to whether ethical truths are discovered or created. Plato and Sartre are separated by more than