Philosophy- Key Themes
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Philosophy: Key Themes Also by Julian Baggini and Gareth Southwell PHILOSOPHY: Key Texts Also by Julian Baggini THE EGO TRICK SHOULD YOU JUDGE THIS BOOK BY ITS COVER? COMPLAINT DO THEY THINK YOU’RE STUPID? WELCOME TO EVERYTOWN THE PIG THAT WANTS TO BE EATEN WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? ATHEISM: A Very Short Introduction MAKING SENSE: Philosophy Behind The Headlines Also by Gareth Southwell A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO DESCARTES’S MEDITATIONS A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NIETZSCHE’S BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL WORDS OF WISDOM: Philosophy’s Most Important Quotations and Their Meanings Philosophy: Key Themes Second edition Julian Baggini and Gareth Southwell © Julian Baggini 2002 © Julian Baggini and Gareth Southwell 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 2012 978-0-230-29663-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition published 2002 Second revised edition published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-29664-0 ISBN 978-1-137-00887-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137008879 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10987654321 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2013 Contents Preface to the Second Edition viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Where do we start? 1 Premises 2 Forms of rational justification 3 Critiquing arguments 6 Beyond demolition 8 Becoming a philosopher 9 1 Theory of Knowledge 11 What is the theory of knowledge? 11 Rationalism 12 Empiricism 15 Foundationalism 17 The tripartite account of knowledge 20 Against the tripartite account 23 The nature of belief 25 Scepticism concerning knowledge 29 Scepticism concerning perception 32 Realism 36 Idealism 36 Phenomenalism 38 Kant and the Synthetic A Priori 39 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 41 Objectivity and relativism 43 Conclusion 47 2 Moral Philosophy 52 What is moral philosophy? 52 The divisions of moral philosophy 54 Morality and realism 55 Non-cognitivism 56 The role of reason 57 Prescriptivism 58 v vi Contents Deontological and consequentialist ethics 61 Virtue ethics 64 Utilitarianism 66 Kantian ethics 69 Aristotelian ethics 71 Animal rights 72 Abortion 74 Euthanasia 76 Approaches to applied ethics 77 Conclusion 78 3 Philosophy of Mind 81 What is the philosophy of mind? 81 Dualism 83 Arguments against dualism 85 Behaviourism 88 Arguments against behaviourism 91 Physicalism 93 Functionalism 95 Non-reductive materialism and epiphenomenalism 98 Eliminativism 101 Other minds 103 Personal identity 105 Personhood 109 The problem of free will 112 Conclusion 115 4 Philosophy of Religion 120 What is the philosophy of religion? 120 What is God? 121 The problem of evil 122 Faith and reason 124 Betting on God 127 The status of religious language 128 The ontological argument 131 The cosmological argument 133 The teleological argument 134 Religious experience 137 Miracles 140 God and morality 142 Conclusion 143 Contents vii 5 Political Philosophy 147 What is political philosophy? 147 Liberalism 148 Socialism 150 Conservatism 152 Anarchism 154 Freedom 156 Justice 159 Rights 162 Tolerance 164 The justification of the state and its authority 168 Laws and law-breaking 170 Justifications for punishment 172 Conclusion 174 6 Aesthetics 178 What is aesthetics? 178 What counts as art? 178 Art as imitation 181 Conventions and representation 183 Art as expression 185 Art as form 188 Art and society 190 Authorship and meaning 194 Art and morality 196 Conclusion 199 Glossary 204 Further Reading 205 Index 206 Preface to the Second Edition This book is designed to help the reader approach key themes in Western philosophy. Its aim is to give brief, accurate and informative overviews of the major arguments given and positions held in each area. The introduction contains some advice on how to read and make sense of philosophical arguments. Philosophy is not a museum of ideas or an intellectual pick and mix. Arguments need to be carefully exam- ined and assessed and this section helps provide some of the tools to do this. Each chapter comprises a discussion of the main areas in each theme, a summary, a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading. The discussions combine two main features. First, they summarise and explain the main arguments of each theme, clarifying and distilling their core. Second, the discussions also contain critical points, question- ing the validity or soundness of arguments, and highlighting potential weaknesses and problems in the positions examined. The main purpose of this is not to provide an exhaustive catalogue of criticisms, but to highlight potential weaknesses and to encourage the reader to question the claims being made for themselves. There is also a glossary of key philosophical words at the end of the book, along with suggestions for further reading in philosophy. This second edition adds a sixth theme (Aesthetics) and includes revisions and additions to the chapters on the original five. viii Acknowledgements Terka Acton, Priyanka Gibbons, Penny Simmons and the anonymous readers at the publishers who helped make this book possible and then better than it otherwise would have been. Julian also thanks his former students whose feedback on the teach- ing materials that formed the bases of the first edition of this book encouraged him to develop them further. Gareth thanks Julian, for his generosity and support; Mam and Mike, for their frequent and timely help; Dad and Dor, for the sumptuous shed, wherein most of this was written; Phill and Carol, for the kind loan of their laptop, on which most of this was written; the Royal Literary Fund and the Society of Authors, for their literary alms; and Jo, for her only very occasionally daunted optimism (I loves you, babes). ix Introduction If you went to a driving school, you might well expect to be taught about the highway code and some basics about car maintenance, but what you’d expect to spend most of your time doing would be actually learning to drive. If you pick up an introduction to philosophy or enrol on a philosophy course, however, you’ll find that you spend a lot of time being presented with philosophical arguments but very little time, if any at all, learning how to actually philosophise. The presumption seems to be that to do philosophy, you just have to dive into some of it and find your way around yourself. Being thrown in at the deep end is not always the best way to learn and even being thrown in at the shallow end, which is what happens to most readers of introductions, is not much better. So before going on to discuss the six themes covered in this book, this introduction will give you a crash course in the basic skills of philosophising. Of course, these skills will be best developed when applied to the arguments presented in the rest of the book. But at the very least, they should give you a head start in being able to make the most of them. Where do we start? One of philosophy’s distinguishing features is that it questions every- thing and assumes nothing. Philosophy exposes and questions the assumptions which underlie our everyday thinking about the world, ourselves, our values and our beliefs. But at the same time, one cannot always be questioning everything or else we would only ever be able to consider the most fundamental questions in philosophy. These questions include many of those dis- cussed in the chapter on theory of knowledge, such as how we can 1 2 Philosophy: Key Themes have knowledge and whether the external world exists or not. These are vital questions in philosophy. But if we are considering, for example, the question of the mind’s relation to the body, we will get nowhere fast if we insist we first have to justify our belief in the existence of an external reality. So although it is true that philosophy questions everything and assumes nothing, this questioning has to be kept in its place. The time to question the existence of the external world is when we are doing epistemology (theory of knowledge) or metaphysics, not usually when we are doing the philosophy of mind. The problem is that there is no formula for determining which ques- tions should be put to one side and which are central to the issue being discussed.