An Introduction to Philosophy E-Book

Jon Nuttall

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 514

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

This new textbook is a lively and highly accessible introduction to philosophy.

From the fundamental issues of philosophical thought to the latest theories in the philosophy of mind, An Introduction to Philosophy provides clear and incisive discussion of the key areas of philosophy for students new to the subject.

• Provides the tools new students need to tackle philosophical arguments themselves
• Clearly presents and explains contemporary issues and current debates
• Covers the key areas of philosophy, including perception, epistemology, metaphysics, the mind, philosophy of religion, ethics and political philosophy
• Contains numerous learning features such as introductions, summaries, questions and further reading

An Introduction to Philosophy is an ideal text for AS level, A level and first-year undergraduate students or anyone studying the subject for the first time.

Leseprobe

An Introduction to

Philosophy

Jon Nuttall

polity

Copyright © Jon Nuttall 2002

The right of Jon Nuttall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2002 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Reprinted 2003, 2006, 2007

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMaiden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nuttall, Jon.

An introduction to philosophy / by Jon Nuttall.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 000) and index.

ISBN: 978-0-7456-1662-9 — ISBN: 978-0-7456-1663-6 (pb) — ISBN: 978-0-7456-6807-9 (ebook)

1. Philosophy—Introductions. I. Title.

BD21 .N88 2002

100—dc21

2001007564

Typeset in 10.5 on 12.5pt Timesby Graphicraft Limited, Hong KongPrinted and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services Limited, Oxford

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

Contents

Philosophers Past and Present

Acknowledgements

1    The Nature of Philosophy

2    The Start of Modern Philosophy: Descartes’ Meditations

3    Perception and Reality

4    Knowledge, Belief and Logic

5    Space, Time, Causality and Substance

6    The Mind

7    God

8    Morality

9    Political Issues

Guide to Further Reading

Index

Detailed Chapter Contents

1   The Nature of Philosophy

What is philosophy?

Some philosophical questions

Some initial thoughts on these questions

What sort of knowledge can philosophy yield?

Three main areas of philosophy

An explanation of the term ‘metaphysics’

‘Meta’-activities

About the rest of this book

Summary

2   The Start of Modern Philosophy: Descartes’ Meditations

Introduction

Background to Descartes’ Meditations

An overview of the Meditations

Outdoing the sceptic

Doubting the senses

Dreaming

The malicious demon

The basis of knowledge

The cogito

Clear and distinct perceptions

Ideas

The idea of God

The existence of physical objects

Objections

Is the cogito justified?

Criterion for knowledge

Proving that God exists

Proving that material things exist

Perception

The nature of objects

The self

A thinking thing

Substances

The relationship between mind and body

Free will

Faculties of the mind

What is willing?

Descartes’ God

Attributes of God

The first proof

The second proof

Descartes legacy

Summary

Questions raised

3   Perception and Reality

Introduction

Philosophical and scientific issues

The subjective nature of sense perception

Naïve realism

Immediate objects of perception

The reality behind appearances

Representational realism

Ideas and qualities

Primary and secondary qualities

The role of primary qualities in causal explanations

Berkeley’s idealism

The one-world view

Misconceptions of Berkeley’s position

‘An idea can be like nothing but another idea’

The real existence of objects

The role of God in Berkeley’s philosophy

Objections to idealism

Scientific enquiry

Hume’s scepticism

Ideas and impressions

Relations of ideas and matters of fact

Cause and effect

Belief in the existence of bodies

Scepticism with regard to the existence of bodies

Phenomenalism

Objects are logical constructions out of sense data

Summary

Questions raised

4   Knowledge, Belief and Logic

Introduction

Propositional knowledge

Knowing how and knowing that

Sentences and propositions

Is belief a mental state?

Knowing involves believing

One can know only what is true

Grounds for belief

A priori knowledge

Analytic propositions

Logical truths

Deductive arguments

Conditionals

Validity

Inductive arguments

Paradoxes of induction

Scientific knowledge

Falsification of theories

Kuhnian paradigms

Summary

Questions raised

5   Space, Time, Causality and Substance

Introduction

The aims and limits of metaphysics

A priori concepts

Space and time

Zeno’s paradoxes of motion

Twentieth-century physics

Causality

Types of causes

The influence a cause exerts on an effect

Determinism

Freewill

Substance

The substance–attribute distinction

The independence of substance

Substance as a substrate

The persistence of substance

Summary

Questions raised

6   The Mind

Introduction

Descartes’ real distinction of mind and body

Distinctive aspects of the mental

Intentionality I

Phenomenological aspect

Qualia

The infallibility of the first-person viewpoint

Conflicting criteria for what counts as mental phenomena

Materialism

Eliminative materialism

Identity theories

Functionalism

The mind as a computer program

Can machines think?

A defence of functionalism

Summary

Questions raised

7   God

Introduction

Referring to God

Names

The concept of God

Religious language

Meanings arise from religious experience

Meanings arise from a model

Attempts to prove God’s existence

The ontological argument

The cosmological argument

The teleological argument

The problem of evil

The best of all possible worlds

Pain

The value of free will

The inscrutability of God

Free will and responsibility

God as a person

What is a person?

The phenomenology of embodiment

Summary

Questions raised

8   Morality

Introduction

What is distinctive about moral considerations?

Ethical subjectivism

Objections to ethical subjectivism

Emotivism

Limiting the scope of moral judgements

An objective meaning of ‘good’

A thing is good if it performs its function well

‘Good’ as an attributive adjective

Is a good person one who is flourishing?

Facts and valuess

Does evolution provide moral values?

A broader view of objectivity

Psychological egoism

Beliefs and desires are the causes of actions

Objections to psychological egoism

Ethical egoism

Kants categorical imperative

Categorical and hypothetical imperatives

The universality requirement

The requirement of rational endorsement

What ends can reason endorse?

Utilitarianism

Difficulties for utilitarianism

Justice

The meaning of ‘happiness’

Kantianism versus utilitarianism

Punishment

Abortion

Virtue ethics

What is a virtue?

Determining the virtues

Choosing between theories

Summary

Questions raised

9   Political Issues

Introduction

The legitimacy of government

Authority and power

Power

Authority

Anarchism

Rights

Natural and legal rights

Rights and obligations

Social contract theory

Rawls

The veil of ignorance

Game theory

Two principles of justice

Objections

Nozick

Historical versus end-result principles

Property

The role of the state

The minimal state

Objections

Ideologies and arguments

Summary

Questions raised

Philosophers Past and Present

The following philosophers, in chronological order (with dates) are mentioned in the body of the text.

Ancient

Socrates (470–399 BC), Zeno (c.470 BC), Plato (428–347 BC), Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Medieval

St Anselm (1033–1109), Roger Bacon (1220–1292), St Aquinas (1224–1274), William of Ockham (1285–1347)

Modern

Seventeenth century

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), René Descartes (1596–1650), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), John Locke (1632–1704), Isaac Newton (1642–1727), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), George Berkeley (1685–1753), François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778)

Eighteenth century

David Hume (1711–1776), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Immanuel Kant (1724–1802), Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Nineteenth century

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), Albert Einstein (1879–1955), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)

Twentieth century (authors in alphabetical order)

Alfred Ayer (1910–1989), Donald Davidson (1917– ), Daniel Dennett (1942– ), Peter Geach (1919– ), Nelson Goodman (1906–1998), Carl Hempel (1905–1997), Saul Kripke (1940– ), Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), John Mackie (1917–1981), Robert Nozick (1938–2002), Karl Popper (1902–1994), Willard Quine (1908–2000), John Rawls (1921– ), Richard Rorty (1931– ), John Searle (1932– ), Richard Swinburne (1934– ), Alan Turing (1912–1954).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Andrea Christofidou and Bob Frazier for helpful suggestions on drafts of the earlier chapters. I would also like to thank an anonymous reader for his/her efforts with earlier drafts of the manuscript, supplying numerous and detailed comments, criticisms and helpful suggestions, which ensured that at least some errors were avoided. I am grateful to Rebecca Harkin, who provided support and encouragement.

1 The Nature of Philosophy

What is philosophy?

Some philosophical questions

What sort of knowledge can philosophy yield?

Three main areas of philosophy

An explanation of the term ‘metaphysics’

About the rest of this book

Summary

What is philosophy?

Two answers are frequently given to the question ‘What is philosophy?’ One is that philosophy is an activity rather than a subject – in other words, you do philosophy rather than learn about it. The other is that philosophy is largely a matter of conceptual analysis – it is thinking about thinking. Both these suggestions contain more than a germ of truth but are unsatisfactory, giving little or no idea of the content of philosophy. It is all very well to say ‘Philosophize’ or ‘Analyse concepts’, but philosophize about what and in what sorts of ways; analyse what concepts and how? The most direct way of seeing what philosophy is about is to look at the sorts of questions that philosophers think are important and how they go about answering them.

What is common to all such questions is that they are questions that can be answered only by reasoning. In other disciplines, there are various ways of finding out answers to questions – such as by studying nature or ancient manuscripts, by conducting experiments or surveys, by building a piece of apparatus or a model or by running a simulation on a computer. By and large, these are what can be termed ‘empirical investigations’. The outcomes of these investigations – new discoveries, new data – will often be relevant to philosophy, but empirical investigations cannot provide the answers to philosophical questions.