This Is Philosophy E-Book

Steven D. Hales

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: This is Philosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 553

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This is Philosophy: An Introduction offers an engagingly written introduction to philosophical concepts that include ethics, the existence of God, free will, personal identity, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. * Conveys the excitement and importance of philosophy while explaining difficult concepts clearly for the average undergraduate * Represents a student-friendly yet knowledgeable guide to the questions, problems, and great thinkers of philosophy * Extensive online student and instructor resources. Features chapter-by-chapter links to supplemental materials and freely available online primary sources, a glossary, student comprehension self-assessment exercises, and more. * Instructors can also access a 175-question test bank and answer key, 40 PowerPoint lectures Available at https://www.wiley.com/en-us/thisisphilosophy/thisisphilosophyanintroduction

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

How to Use This Book

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Ethics

The Normative Universe

Is Morality Just Acting on Principles?

Divine Command Theory (Is Morality Just What God Tells Me to Do?)

Egoism (Is Morality Just My Own Personal Code?)

Moral Relativism (Is Morality Just How Society Says We Should Act?)

2 Ethics

Utilitarianism (Is Morality Doing What I Can to Make This the Best World Possible?)

Deontology, or Kantianism (Is There an Absolute Moral Law?)

Virtue Ethics (Is Morality All about Having a Virtuous Character?)

Conclusion

3 God

Faith

The Attributes of God

Why There Is a God

Why There Is No God

Conclusion

4 Freedom

Why There Is No Free Will, Part 1: Divine Foreknowledge

Why There Is No Free Will, Part 2: A Regress of Reasons for Acting

Why There Is No Free Will, Part 3: The Dilemma Argument

The Feeling of Freedom

Conclusion

5 Self

The Problem of Difference and the Problem of Sameness

Preliminary Positions

The Soul Criterion

The Physicalist Criterion

The Psychological Criterion

The Bundle Theory

Conclusion

6 Mind

The Rare and Mysterious Mind

First Theory of the Mind: Substance Dualism

Second Theory of the Mind: Behaviorism

Third Theory of the Mind: Mind–Brain Identity Theory

Fourth Theory of the Mind: Functionalism

Conclusion

7 Knowledge

The Value of Truth

The Value of Evidence

How Much Evidence Do We Need?

Sources of Evidence

The Nature of Knowledge

The Skeptic’s Challenge

The Counterfeit Detector

Index

This Is Philosophy

Series editor: Steven D. Hales

Reading philosophy can be like trying to ride a bucking bronco—you hold on for dear life while “transcendental deduction” twists you to one side, “causa sui” throws you to the other, and a 300-word, 300-year-old sentence comes down on you like an iron-shod hoof the size of a dinner plate. This is Philosophy is the riding academy that solves these problems. Each book in the series is written by an expert who knows how to gently guide students into the subject regardless of the reader’s ability or previous level of knowledge. Their reader-friendly prose is designed to help students find their way into the fascinating, challenging ideas that compose philosophy without simply sticking the hapless novice on the back of the bronco, as so many texts do. All the books in the series provide ample pedagogical aids, including links to free online primary sources. When students are ready to take the next step in their philosophical education, This is Philosophy is right there to help them along the way.

This Is Philosophy: An Introduction

Steven D. HalesForthcoming:

This Is Metaphysics: An Introduction

Kristopher McDaniel

This Is Epistemology: An Introduction

Clayton Littlejohn

This Is Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction

Neil Manson

This Is Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction

Pete Mandik

This is Ethics: An Introduction

Jussi Suikkanen

This edition first published 2013

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hales, Steven D.

 This is philosophy : an introduction / Steven D. Hales.

p. cm. – (This is philosophy)

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-0-470-65882-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-470-65883-3 (paperback) – ISBN 978-1-118-32780-7 (epub) 1. Philosophy–Introductions. I. Title.

 BD21.H223 2013

 100–dc23

2012026657

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

Cover Design by www.cyandesign.co.uk

For Vanessa

Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point.

How to Use This Book

The problems of philosophy are deeply interconnected, and there is no natural or obvious starting point from which to begin. Indeed, plausible arguments might be given for starting with almost any of the central problems in the field. You might think that we should surely start with epistemology; until we understand what knowledge is and settle the matter of whether and how we can gain any knowledge at all, how can we possibly determine whether we can have knowledge of God, or our moral duties, or the nature of the mind? Clearly epistemology is the most fundamental philosophical project. Wait—how can we be sure that knowledge is valuable to have? Or that we ought to care about gaining truth and avoiding error? We’d better start with axiology and sort out duty, obligation, and responsibility first. Normativity and ethics must be foundational. Of course, how can we determine what our epistemic responsibilities are if we don’t antecedently know whether we are free to believe one thing rather than another, or if we are truly at liberty to make choices? Let’s begin with the issue of free will and figure that out first. If we’re not free, that torpedoes a lot of other philosophical agendas. Yet if we don’t know what kinds of beings we are, how can we ever determine whether we are free? Maybe personal identity should be the first stop on the road. And so on.

The chapters in the present book are self-contained units on the topics they address. While there are occasional references within them to other chapters, they can be taught or studied in any order. In Daybreak (section 454), Nietzsche wrote that, “A book such as this is not for reading straight through or reading aloud but for dipping into, especially when out walking or on a journey; you must be able to stick your head into it and out of it again and again and discover nothing familiar around you.” To some extent, the same is true of This Is Philosophy: An Introduction, even though it is much more straightforwardly systematic and less aphoristic than Nietzsche’s Daybreak.

That said, the chapters are not randomly distributed, and are placed in one sensible progression. Most people have views about ethics and God before ever encountering philosophy, and so starting with topics to which they have already given some thought is a natural way to entice students into a deeper investigation. Appeal to human free choice is a venerable move in theodicy, and one with which the chapter on God ends. A chapter on free will then follows. Afterwards is a pair of chapters focusing on what it is to be a thinking, persisting person at all—personal identity and philosophy of mind. The final chapter in the book, on knowledge, ties together the threads of evidence, reason-giving, and rational belief that appear, one way or another, in all of the chapters, and ends with a comprehensive skeptical problem.

The problems of philosophy resemble a Mandelbrot Set (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEw8xpb1aRA), and the more closely one focuses on the small details, the more complications one finds. Some of the initial hooks and spirals can be found in the annotated bibliographies at the end of each chapter. These bibliographies list primary sources from the great thinkers that one may wish to read in conjunction with the present chapters, as well as some of the more accessible contemporary literature that is the next step for the Padawan philosopher (see http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Padawan).

Preface

If this is the first philosophy book you’ve ever read, then you probably have no idea what you are in for. You pick up a book on chemistry and you expect diagrams of molecules and talk about “valences,” a book on German and there will be long multisyllable words and lots of umlauts. But philosophy? What could that be about?

The word “philosophy” comes from two Greek words: “philia,” which was one of the Greek words for love, and “sophia,” which means wisdom. Thus philosophy is the love of wisdom. You may think that is not terribly informative, and it isn’t. However, you have to remember that, back in ancient Greece, to be a scholar at all meant that one was a philosopher. You might have been a stonemason, a fisherman, a soldier, a physician, or a philosopher, a pursuit that would have included mathematics and science. Over the years, as concrete, definite advances have been made in different areas, philosophy has spawned spin-offs, fields that have become their own disciplines with their own specific methodology and subject matter. Mathematics was one of the first fields to splinter off this way, and then in the Renaissance science became separate from philosophy. In the nineteenth century psychology broke away from philosophy and, most recently, cognitive science, which used to be the scientific end of philosophy of mind, has become its own field. In some ways philosophy proper is left with the hardest questions, the ones that we have made the least definitive progress on.

That does not mean that philosophers have made no progress in 2500 years. We have. Nevertheless, the philosophical issues to be discussed in the present book are tough nuts to crack. Let us hope you do not crack your own coconut in the attempt! In the modern era, philosophy is in the business of giving good reasons for one’s nonempirical beliefs. That is, philosophers try to give arguments for believing claims about the nature of the self, or the existence of God, or moral duty, or the value of knowledge. These are topics that the scientific method of performing laboratory experiments and giving mathematical explanations does poorly in addressing. Philosophers take seriously the findings of experts in other disciplines, but we still have our own puzzles to solve.

Some philosophical topics stir great passions, and people find it threatening to ask questions about those issues. Philosophers are proud that one of the greatest philosophers in ancient times, Socrates, was executed by the state because he refused to stop questioning authority (see http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html). Socrates claimed to know nothing, but he was willing to go down for the pursuit of truth, fearless inquiry, and the life of the mind. If you are to find something of value in this book, you too need to be prepared to question your long-standing beliefs, to honestly ask yourself if the things you may have believed your entire life are actually true. All of us believe some things for poor reasons, and to be a philosopher is to try to ferret out those beliefs and either justify them or discard them as unworthy of your intellect. It is a difficult and often painful process to become an athlete of the mind, but there is great joy and thrilling discoveries to be had as well.

Just beneath the surface of your everyday life are chasms of mystery. We will not descend into the furthest reaches of the labyrinth in the present book, but there are wonders aplenty in the beginning passages. Plato wrote that philosophy begins in wonder (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/theatu.html)—so let us begin!

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jeff Dean at Wiley-Blackwell for encouraging this book and the This Is Philosophy series. He is the ne plus ultra of editors. Thanks also to my colleagues at Bloomsburg University for their support, and to my many Introduction to Philosophy students who have participated in the joint enterprise of learning.

1

Ethics

Preliminary Theories

The Normative Universe

1.1

Life’s just filled with all sorts of things you’re supposed to do. You should be nice to your sister, brush between meals, never mix beer and wine, get your car inspected, tithe to the poor, wear clean underwear, avoid consumer debt, love thy neighbor as thyself, buy low and sell high, read good books, exercise, tell the truth, have evidence-based beliefs, come to a complete stop at a red light, eat your vegetables, call your mom once in a while. The list goes on and on. All these things you should do, various obligations, duties, and responsibilities, form the normative universe. Shoulds, oughts, duties, rights, the permissible and the impermissible populate the normative universe. Not all these shoulds and oughts are ethical in nature, however. There are many dimensions to the normative universe, not just the moral dimension. Here are a few examples:

Jim is deciding whether he should invest his money in gold bullion, mutual funds, or government bonds.

Vanessa wonders whether it is permissible for her to turn right on red in this state.

Todd is debating whether he ought to put more cinnamon in his ginger snaps.

Holly is considering whether she filled out her taxes right.

The first case is about what Jim should practically or prudentially invest in; the second example concerns the legal permissibility of turning right on red; the third offers an aesthetic case regarding what Todd ought to do when baking cookies; and the fourth case is about the reasonableness of Holly’s believing that her tax form is correct. In these cases, “should,” “permissible,” “ought,” and “right” have nothing to do with morality, even though they are still normative expressions. When exactly those words concern morality is not an easy matter to describe with any precision. But confusion will ensue if we aren’t sensitive to the fact that what we ought to do practically or legally is not the same as what we ought to do morally. We will see more of this later.

1.2

Everyone is faced with making ethical choices—decisions about what they should do in some circumstance. We must each decide for ourselves whether a potential action is right or wrong, and contemplate the nature of honor, duty, and virtue. There are standards of correct action that aren’t moral standards. Still, it is clear that the following are cases of moral deliberation.

Your best friend’s girlfriend has had one beer too many and is coming on to you at the party. If you can get away with it, should you hook up with her?

Your friend Shawna knows how to pirate new-release movies, and wants to show you how. Should you go with her and get some flicks?

Your grandmother is dying of terminal pancreatic cancer and has only a few, painful, days to live. She is begging you to give her a lethal overdose of morphine, which will depress her respiration and allow her to die peacefully. Should you give her the overdose?

You are a pregnant, unmarried student. Testing has shown that your fetus has

Down Syndrome

.

1

Should you abort?

You didn’t study enough for your chem exam, and don’t have all those formulas you need memorized. One of your friends tells you to get a water bottle and carefully peel off the label. Then write the formulas down on the inside of the label and stick it back on the bottle. Take the bottle of water to the exam; the prof will never know you’re cheating every time you take a swig. You should do whatever you can to get ahead in this world, right?

These aren’t far-fetched cases; at least a few of them should fit your own experience. Well, how do you decide what to do? If you’re like most people, you might reflect on whatever values your parents taught you growing up; or think about what your religion or holy book has to say on the topic; or go with your gut instinct about what to do; or consider the consequences if you do the action; or imagine how it would make you feel later if you did it; or think about whether the proposed action is compatible with some moral rule you believe, like do unto others as they would do unto you. If you look at this list, you’ll see that it naturally divides into two main approaches: (1) base your action on some rule, principle, or code, and (2) base your action on some intuition, feeling, or instinct.