Philosophy Handbook

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Introduction Doing Philosophy

Beyond Buzzwords

Articulation and Argument: Two Crucial Features

of Philosophy

Concepts and Conceptual Frameworks

Doing Philosophy with Style

A Little Logic

Deduction

Induction

Criticizing Arguments

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Chapter Philosophical Questions

Philosophical Questions

Opening Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

The Meaning of Meaning

Children as Meaning

God as Meaning

Afterlife as Meaning

No Meaning at All

The Meanings of Life

Life as a Game

Life as a Story

Life as Tragedy

Life as Comedy

Life as a Mission

Contents

viii

Life as Art

Life as an Adventure

Life as Disease

Life as Desire

Life as Nirvana

Life as Altruism

Life as Honor

Life as Learning

Life as Suffering

Life as an Investment

Life as Relationships

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

Believing in God

Gods and Goddesses

The Traditional Western Conceptions of God

God as Transcendent

God as Immanent

God as Totally Immanent: Pantheism

God as Universal Spirit

God as Process

God as Transcendent Creator: Deism

God as the Unknown Object of Faith

God as a Moral Being

The Problem of Evil

Denial of God

Two Kinds of Evil

Denial of Evil

The Least of the Evils

The Aesthetic Totality Solution

The Free-Will Solution

Justice in the Afterlife

God’s “Mysterious Ways”

Working Out an Answer

Faith and Reason: Ways of Believing

The Cosmological Argument

The Argument from Design

The Ontological Argument

Rational Faith

Pascal’s Wager

Irrational Faith

Contents

Religious Tolerance: Ritual, Tradition, and Spirituality

Doubts

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

The Real World

What Is Most Real?

The Reality Behind the Appearances

Dreams, Sensations, and Reason: What Is Real?

The Basis of Metaphysics

The First Metaphysicians

Thales

The Pre-Socratic Materialists

Early Nonphysical Views of Reality

Plato’s Forms

Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Mind and Metaphysics

René Descartes

Baruch Spinoza

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Idealism

Teleology

Metaphysics and the Everyday World

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

What Is True?

Two Kinds of Truth

Empirical Truth

Necessary Truth

Rationalism and Empiricism

The Presuppositions of Knowledge

Skepticism

René Descartes and the Method of Doubt

David Hume’s Skepticism

The Resolution of Skepticism: Immanuel Kant

Knowledge, Truth, and Science

Contents ix

x

The Nature of Truth

The Coherence Theory of Truth

The Pragmatic Theory of Truth

Rationality

Why Be Rational?

Subjective Truth and the Problem

of Relativism

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

The Essential Self

Self as Body, Self as Consciousness

The Self and Its Emotions

The Egocentric Predicament

The Mind-Body Problem

Behaviorism

Identity Theory

Functionalism

The Self as a Choice

No Self, Many Selves

The Self as Social

Self and Relationships

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

Freedom and the Good Life

Why Is Freedom So Important

to Us?

What Is Freedom?

Free Will and Determinism

Determinism Versus Indeterminism

The Role of Consciousness

Soft Determinism

In Defense of Freedom

Closing Questions

Suggested Readings

Opening Questions

The Good Life

Hedonism

Contents

xi

Success

Asceticism

Freedom

Power and Creativity

Religion

Happiness

Egoism Versus Altruism

Morality and Theories of Morality

Duty-Defined Morality

Immanuel Kant and the Authority

of Reason

Consequentialist Theories

Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and

John Stuart Mill

Aristotle and the Ethics of Virtue