An Introduction to Philosophy

by Russ W. Payne

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This text presents philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, the goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text then addresses ethics, broadly construed.

Description from LibreTexts.

Publisher
Bellevue College
Subjects
Humanities, Philosophy
Licence
CC BY-NC 4.0, as LibreTexts states it. Non-commercial use only.
Who can read
Teens profiles and older, judged from its title and subjects

Contents

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  1. Front Matter
  2. TitlePage
  3. InfoPage
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Licensing
  6. Preface
  7. 1: What Philosophy Is
  8. 1.1: What is philosophy?
  9. 1.2: Metaphysics
  10. 1.3: Epistemology
  11. 1.4: Ethics
  12. 1.5: What is the value of philosophy?
  13. 1.6: The Value of Philosophy
  14. 1.7: Review and Discussion Questions
  15. 2: How Philosophy is Done
  16. 2.1: Truth
  17. 2.2: Is Truth Relative to Meaning?
  18. 2.3: Arguments
  19. 2.4: Deductive Validity
  20. 2.5: Inductive Strength
  21. 2.6: Fallacies
  22. 2.7: Review and Discussion Questions
  23. 2.8: Exercises
  24. 3: Ancient Philosophy
  25. 3.1: The Presocratics
  26. 3.2: Socrates
  27. 3.3: Plato
  28. 3.4: Aristotle
  29. 3.5: From Ancient to Modern Philosophy
  30. 3.6: Review and Discussion Questions
  31. 4: The Rationalists
  32. 4.1: Descartes
  33. 4.2: Spinoza
  34. 4.3: Leibniz
  35. 4.4: Review and Discussion Questions
  36. 5: The Empricists
  37. 5.1: John Locke
  38. 5.2: George Berkeley
  39. 5.3: David Hume
  40. 5.4: Review and Discussion Questions
  41. 6: Philosophy of Science
  42. 6.1: Karl Popper
  43. 6.2: Thomas Kuhn
  44. 6.3: Review and Discussion Questions
  45. 7: Philosophy of Mind
  46. 7.1: Empiricism leads to Logical Behaviorism
  47. 7.2: The Brain State Identity Theory
  48. 7.3: Functionalism
  49. 7.4: Consciousness and Property Dualism
  50. 8: Love and Happiness
  51. 8.1: Love
  52. 8.2: Happiness
  53. 8.3: Review and Discussion Questions
  54. 9: Meta-Ethics
  55. 9.1: Applied Ethics, Normative Ethics, and Meta-Ethics
  56. 9.2: Realism, Conventionalism, and Subjectivism
  57. 9.3: Ethical Realism
  58. 9.4: Review and Discussion Questions
  59. 10: Right Action
  60. 10.1: Utilitarianism
  61. 10.2: Respect for Persons - Kant’s Moral Theory
  62. 10.3: Ethical Pluralism
  63. 10.4: Review and Discussion Questions
  64. 11: Social Justice
  65. 11.1: John Locke
  66. 11.2: John Rawls
  67. 11.3: Review and Discussion Questions
  68. Back Matter
  69. Index
  70. Glossary
  71. Detailed Licensing
  72. Detailed Licensing