Table of Contents

EACH PART OPENS WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND ENDS WITH KEY TERMS (NEW TO THIS EDITION) AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING. ; *=NEW TO THIS EDITION ; PREFACE ; * TIME LINE ; I. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? ; 1. Plato: Socratic Wisdom ; * 2. Plato: The Allegory of the Cave ; 3. John Locke: Of Enthusiasm and the Quest for Truth ; 4. Bertrand Russell: The Value of Philosophy ; EXCURSUS: A LITTLE BIT OF LOGIC ; II. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ; II A. IS BELIEF IN GOD RATIONALLY JUSTIFIED? ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD ; 5. Thomas Aquinas: The Five Ways ; 6. William Lane Craig: The Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Anthropic Principle ; 7. Paul Edwards: A Critique of the Cosmological Argument ; 8. William Paley: The Watch and the Watchmaker ; 9. David Hume: A Critique of the Teleological Argument ; 10. St. Anselm and Gaunilo: The Ontological Argument ; 11. William Rowe: An Analysis of the Ontological Argument ; II.B. WHY IS THERE EVIL? ; 12. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Why Is There Evil? ; 13. B.C. Johnson: Why Doesn't God Intervene to Prevent Evil? ; 14. John Hick: There Is a Reason Why God Allows Evil ; II.C. IS FAITH COMPATIBLE WITH REASON? ; 15. Blaise Pascal: Yes, Faith Is a Logical Bet ; 16. W.K. Clifford: The Ethics of Belief ; 17. William James: The Will to Believe ; 18. Antony Flew, R.M. Hare, and Basil Mitchell: A Debate on the Rationality of Religious Belief ; 19. Alvin Plantinga: Religious Belief Without Evidence ; 20. Soren Kierkegaard: Faith and Truth ; 21. Michael Martin: Holy Spirit Epistemology ; 22. Bertrand Russell: Can Religion Cure Our Troubles? ; III. KNOWLEDGE ; III.A. WHAT CAN WE KNOW? CLASSICAL THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE ; 23. Rene Descartes: Cartesian Doubt and the Search for Foundational Knowledge ; 24. John Locke: The Empiricist Theory of Knowledge ; 25. George Berkeley: An Idealist Theory of Knowledge ; 26. David Hume: The Origin of Our Ideas ; 27. John Hospers: An Argument Against Skepticism ; III.B. TRUTH, RATIONALITY, AND COGNITIVE RELATIVISM ; 28. Bertrand Russell: The Correspondence Theory of Truth ; 29. William James: The Pragmatic Theory of Truth ; 30. Richard Rorty: Dismantling Truth: Solidarity versus Objectivity ; 31. Daniel Dennett: Postmodernism and Truth ; 32. Harvey Siegel: Relativism ; * III.C. INDUCTION ; * 33. David Hume: Skeptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding ; * 34. Wesley C. Salmon: The Problem of Induction ; IV. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM ; IV.A. WHAT AM I? A MIND OR A BODY? ; 35. Rene Descartes: Substance Dualism ; 36. Gilbert Ryle: Exorcising Descartes' "Ghost in the Machine" ; 37. J.P. Moreland: A Contemporary Defense of Dualism ; 38. Paul Churchland: On Functionalism and Materialism ; 39. Thomas Nagel: What Is It Like to Be a Bat? ; 40. Jerry A. Fodor: The Mind-Body Problem ; 41. David Chalmers: Property Dualism ; 42. John Searle: Minds, Brains, and Computers ; * 43. Ned Block: Troubles with Functionalism ; IV.B. WHO AM I? DO WE HAVE PERSONAL IDENTITY? ; 44. John Locke: Our Psychological Properties Define the Self ; 45. David Hume: We Have No Substantial Self with Which We Are Identical ; * 46. Buddhist Scripture: Questions to King Milinda ; IV.C. IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? AM I IMMORTAL? ; 47. Plato: Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul ; 48. Paul Edwards: An Argument Against Survival: The Dependence of Consciousness on the Brain ; 49. John Hick: In Defense of Immortality ; V. FREEDOM OF THE WILL AND DETERMINISM ; 50. Baron d'Holbach: We Are Completely Determined ; 51. William James: The Dilemma of Determinism ; * 52. Peter van Inwagen: The Powers of Rational Beings: Freedom of the Will ; 53. Roderick M. Chisholm: Human Freedom and the Self ; 54. W.T. Stace: Compatibilism ; 55. Harry Frankfurt: Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person ; 56. David Hume: Liberty and Necessity ; 57. Richard Taylor: Fate ; VI. ETHICS ; VI.A. ARE THERE ANY MORAL ABSOLUTES OR IS MORALITY COMPLETELY RELATIVE? ; 58. Ruth Benedict: Morality Is Relative ; 59. James Rachels: Morality Is Not Relative ; VI.B. ETHICS AND EGOISM: WHY SHOULD WE BE MORAL? ; 60. Plato: Why Should I Be Moral?: Gyges' Ring and Socrates' Dilemma ; 61. Louis P. Pojman: Egoism and Altruism: A Critique of Ayn Rand ; VI.C. WHICH IS THE CORRECT ETHICAL THEORY? ; 62. Aristotle: The Ethics of Virtue ; * 63. Virginia Held: The Ethics of Care ; 64. Immanuel Kant: The Moral Law ; 65. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism ; 66. Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialist Ethics ; 67. James Rachels: The Divine Command Theory ; VII. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ; 68. Robert Paul Wolff: In Defense of Anarchism ; 69. Thomas Hobbes: The Absolutist Answer: The Justification of the State Is the Security It Affords ; 70. John Locke: The Democratic Answer: The Justification of the State Is Its Promotion of Security and Natural Human Rights ; 71. John Stuart Mill: A Classical Liberal Answer: Government Must Promote Freedom ; 72. John Rawls: The Contemporary Liberal Answer ; VIII. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE? ; 73. Epicurus: Moderate Hedonism ; 74. Epictetus: Stoicism: Enchiridion ; 75. Albert Camus: Life Is Absurd ; * 76. Julian Baggini: Living Life Forwards ; 77. Louis P. Pojman: Religion Gives Meaning to Life ; 78. Thomas Nagel: The Absurd ; 79. Bertrand Russell: Reflections on Suffering ; IX. CONTEMPORARY MORAL PROBLEMS ; IX.A. IS ABORTION MORALLY PERMISSIBLE? ; 80. Don Marquis: Why Abortion Is Immoral ; 81. Mary Anne Warren: On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion ; 82. Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion ; 83. Jane English: The Moderate Position: Beyond the Personhood Argument ; IX.B. IS THE DEATH PENALTY MORALLY PERMISSIBLE? ; 84. Burton Leiser: The Death Penalty Is Permissible ; 85. Hugo Adam Bedau: No, the Death Penalty Is Not Morally Permissible ; IX.C. DO ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS? ; 86. Peter Singer: The Case for Animal Liberation ; 87. Carl Cohen: The Case Against Animal Rights ; * IX.D. DO WE HAVE OBLIGATIONS TO THE POOR AND HUNGRY? ; * 88. Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality ; * 89. Garrett Hardin: Living on a Lifeboat ; APPENDIX: HOW TO READ AND WRITE A PHILOSOPHY PAPER ; GLOSSARY

About the Author

The late Louis P. Pojman was Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is the author or editor of more than thirty books including Classics of Philosophy, Third Edition (OUP, 2010) and The Moral Life, Fourth Edition (OUP, 2010).

Lewis Vaughn is the author or coauthor of several books, including Contemporary Moral Arguments (OUP, 2010), The Power of Critical Thinking, Third Edition (OUP, 2009), Doing Philosophy, Fourth Edition (2009), Bioethics (OUP, 2008), and Writing Philosophy (OUP, 2005)

Reviews

"For more than a decade, this is the only introductory text that I have used. I would not have remained faithful to it if I didn't believe it to be an excellent collection of problems and responses. It's the best available text for the type of introductory course that I want to offer our beginning students."--H. Scott Hestevold, The University of Alabama