Reality? Knowledge? Philosophy!
An Introduction to Metaphysics and Epistemology
Links ethical and social questions to build a new approach to metaphysics and epistemology
Fundamentally, what are we? And what, if anything, do we know? Minds, bodies; free will; evil; meaningful lives; harmful deaths: do such properties make us whatever we are? Truth; rationality; fallibility; knowledge; observation, reason; sceptical doubts: are these also vital to our being whatever we are?
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Preface
Using This Book
Acknowledgments
1.Persons
1.1 Physicalism
1.2 Immaterialism
1.3 Dualism
1.4 Questions of personal identity
1.5 'No longer the same person'
1.6 Conventionalism
1.7 Descartes on what persons are
1.8 Locke on personal identity
1.9 Hume on personal identity
Further reading
2. Free Will
2.1 Determinism
2.2 Fatalism
2.3 What is free will?
2.4 Indeterminism
2.5 Evidence of free will?
2.6 Moral responsibility
2.7 Foreknowledge
2.8 Hume's compatibilism
Further reading
3. God and Evil
3.1 The traditional problem of evil
3.2 The world as a whole
3.3 The evidence-problem of evil
3.4 The free will defence
3.5 Socrates's challenge
3.6 Evil within people?
Further reading
4. Life's Meaning
4.1 Criteria of meaning?
4.2 The myth of Sisyphus
4.3 Plato's cave
4.4 Nozick's machines
4.5 Living ethically
4.6 Living philosophically
4.7 Aristotle on the best way to live
Further reading
5. Death's Harm
5.1 Objective harm?
5.2 Epicurus and Lucretius on being dead
5.3 Being deprived by being dead?
5.4 Dying
5.5 Never dying
5.6 Brain death
Further reading
6. Properties
6.1 The problem of universals
6.2 Platonic Forms
6.3 Label nominalism
6.4 Class nominalism
6.5 Resemblance nominalism
6.6 Individualised properties
6.7 Essentialism
Further reading
7. Truth
7.1 Caring about truth as such
7.2 Correspondence
7.3 Coherence
7.4 Pragmatism
7.5 Disagreement
7.6 Claiming truth
7.7 Social constructivism
7.8 Social facts
Further reading
8. Well Supported Views
8.1 Objective support
8.2 Fallibilism
8.3 Reliabilism
8.4 Popper and testability
8.5 Intellectual virtue
8.6 Agreement
8.7 Epistemic relativism
Further reading
9. Knowledge
9.1 Knowledge's objectivity
9.2 A traditional conception of knowledge
9.3 Gettier's challenge
9.4 Avoiding false evidence
9.5 Knowing luckily
9.6 Gradualism
9.7 Fallible knowledge
9.8 Education
9.9 Taking knowledge seriously
Further reading
10. Observational Knowledge
10.1 Purely observational knowledge
10.2 Observational limits?
10.3 Empiricism
10.4 Representationalism
10.5 Berkeley's idealism
10.6 Phenomenalism
10.7 Perception and reliability
10.8 Hume on causation
10.9 Non-inferential knowledge
Further reading
11. Pure Reason
11.1 Rationalism
11.2 A priori knowledge
11.3 Plato's rationalism
11.4 Descartes's rationalist method
11.5 Kant on a priori knowledge
11.6 Mill's radical empiricism
11.7 Logical empiricism
11.8 Fallible a priori knowledge
Further reading
12. Sceptical Doubts
12.1 Blended knowledge?
12.2 Scepticisms
12.3 Descartes's dreaming argument
12.4 Descartes's evil genius
12.5 Hume on induction
12.6 Other minds
12.7 Being freely rational
12.8 Moore and commonsense
12.9 Knowing fallibly
12.10 Improved knowledge
12.11 What you are
Further reading.
Using This Book
Acknowledgments
1.Persons
1.1 Physicalism
1.2 Immaterialism
1.3 Dualism
1.4 Questions of personal identity
1.5 'No longer the same person'
1.6 Conventionalism
1.7 Descartes on what persons are
1.8 Locke on personal identity
1.9 Hume on personal identity
Further reading
2. Free Will
2.1 Determinism
2.2 Fatalism
2.3 What is free will?
2.4 Indeterminism
2.5 Evidence of free will?
2.6 Moral responsibility
2.7 Foreknowledge
2.8 Hume's compatibilism
Further reading
3. God and Evil
3.1 The traditional problem of evil
3.2 The world as a whole
3.3 The evidence-problem of evil
3.4 The free will defence
3.5 Socrates's challenge
3.6 Evil within people?
Further reading
4. Life's Meaning
4.1 Criteria of meaning?
4.2 The myth of Sisyphus
4.3 Plato's cave
4.4 Nozick's machines
4.5 Living ethically
4.6 Living philosophically
4.7 Aristotle on the best way to live
Further reading
5. Death's Harm
5.1 Objective harm?
5.2 Epicurus and Lucretius on being dead
5.3 Being deprived by being dead?
5.4 Dying
5.5 Never dying
5.6 Brain death
Further reading
6. Properties
6.1 The problem of universals
6.2 Platonic Forms
6.3 Label nominalism
6.4 Class nominalism
6.5 Resemblance nominalism
6.6 Individualised properties
6.7 Essentialism
Further reading
7. Truth
7.1 Caring about truth as such
7.2 Correspondence
7.3 Coherence
7.4 Pragmatism
7.5 Disagreement
7.6 Claiming truth
7.7 Social constructivism
7.8 Social facts
Further reading
8. Well Supported Views
8.1 Objective support
8.2 Fallibilism
8.3 Reliabilism
8.4 Popper and testability
8.5 Intellectual virtue
8.6 Agreement
8.7 Epistemic relativism
Further reading
9. Knowledge
9.1 Knowledge's objectivity
9.2 A traditional conception of knowledge
9.3 Gettier's challenge
9.4 Avoiding false evidence
9.5 Knowing luckily
9.6 Gradualism
9.7 Fallible knowledge
9.8 Education
9.9 Taking knowledge seriously
Further reading
10. Observational Knowledge
10.1 Purely observational knowledge
10.2 Observational limits?
10.3 Empiricism
10.4 Representationalism
10.5 Berkeley's idealism
10.6 Phenomenalism
10.7 Perception and reliability
10.8 Hume on causation
10.9 Non-inferential knowledge
Further reading
11. Pure Reason
11.1 Rationalism
11.2 A priori knowledge
11.3 Plato's rationalism
11.4 Descartes's rationalist method
11.5 Kant on a priori knowledge
11.6 Mill's radical empiricism
11.7 Logical empiricism
11.8 Fallible a priori knowledge
Further reading
12. Sceptical Doubts
12.1 Blended knowledge?
12.2 Scepticisms
12.3 Descartes's dreaming argument
12.4 Descartes's evil genius
12.5 Hume on induction
12.6 Other minds
12.7 Being freely rational
12.8 Moore and commonsense
12.9 Knowing fallibly
12.10 Improved knowledge
12.11 What you are
Further reading.
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