Thanks | p. xi |
Note to Teachers | p. xi |
The Contract | p. xii |
The Lure of Certainty | p. 1 |
Certainty and Doubt | p. 3 |
Patterns of Thought | p. 4 |
How Conventional Are Your Beliefs? | p. 7 |
Conviction, Opinion, Doubt, and Belief | p. 9 |
Trusting Textbooks | p. 11 |
Certainty: the Closed-belief Trap | p. 12 |
Cheat: a Story about Deception | p. 14 |
Tree-worshipers and Flat-earthers | p. 17 |
Revising History: 1984 | p. 20 |
Doubt | p. 21 |
Doubting What Someone Says | p. 23 |
How Skeptical Are You? | p. 25 |
Moral Skepticism | p. 27 |
When is a Skeptic a Cynic? | p. 28 |
Socratic Skepticism | p. 30 |
Conclusions | p. 33 |
Further Reading | p. 33 |
Sources of Conviction | p. 35 |
Authority | p. 36 |
Faith | p. 39 |
Reason | p. 40 |
Arguments | p. 42 |
Eight Short Arguments | p. 45 |
Puzzling Arguments | p. 47 |
Arguments within Arguments | p. 48 |
Proofs of God | p. 49 |
Paradoxes | p. 54 |
What to Trust on the Internet | p. 55 |
Transforming the Question | p. 57 |
Conclusions | p. 58 |
Further Reading | p. 58 |
Rationalism | p. 59 |
Optimism about Reason | p. 60 |
Individualism | p. 61 |
Galileo's Rationalism | p. 63 |
Impossible Theories | p. 64 |
Descartes' Optimism: Certainty from Doubt | p. 66 |
Doubting Anything versus Doubting Everything | p. 70 |
Demon Possibilities, Paranoia, and Fantasy | p. 71 |
The Matrix | p. 74 |
How Doubt Can Increase Belief | p. 76 |
Skepticism and Religious Faith | p. 77 |
"I Think, Therefore I Am" | p. 80 |
Doubting Even One's Own Existence | p. 81 |
Degrees of Certainty | p. 84 |
Conclusions | p. 86 |
Further Reading | p. 86 |
Rationalism versus Relativism in Morals | p. 89 |
The Appeal of Moral Rationalism | p. 90 |
Four Golden Rules | p. 90 |
Equality and Justice | p. 92 |
Plato's Moral Rationalism | p. 96 |
Three Arguments from Plato's Republic | p. 98 |
Moral Relativism | p. 102 |
For and Against Moral Relativism | p. 104 |
The Ik | p. 109 |
Law and Morality | p. 110 |
Existentialism | p. 113 |
What Is Morality About? | p. 115 |
Conclusions | p. 118 |
Further Reading | p. 118 |
Induction and Deduction | p. 121 |
Simple Induction | p. 122 |
Applying Simple Induction | p. 123 |
Seeing Patterns in Nature | p. 126 |
Deduction 1: Syllogisms | p. 128 |
Deduction 2: Validity | p. 131 |
Deduction 3: Venn Diagrams and Counterexamples | p. 133 |
Induction versus Deduction | p. 136 |
The Induction-friendliness of the World | p. 138 |
Diagramming Induction-friendliness | p. 141 |
Hume's Discovery: Nightmare or Liberation? | p. 142 |
Causation and Induction | p. 144 |
Choosing the Right Concepts | p. 146 |
Conclusions | p. 148 |
Further Reading | p. 148 |
The Retreat from Certainty | p. 149 |
Feeble Reason? | p. 150 |
Hume on the Power(lessness) of Reason | p. 150 |
Four Famous Passages from Hume | p. 153 |
Four Kinds of Irrationality | p. 155 |
Degrees of Certainty | p. 158 |
Valuing Values | p. 158 |
How Tolerant Are You? | p. 160 |
Mill on Freedom of Expression | p. 163 |
Toleration in Science | p. 166 |
Making Uncertainty Pay | p. 167 |
Conclusions | p. 168 |
Further Reading | p. 169 |
Postcard History of Philosophy I | p. 170 |
Life in An Uncertain World | p. 171 |
Utilitarianism | p. 173 |
Naive Utilitarianism | p. 174 |
Choosing the Utilitarian Action | p. 175 |
Pleasure, Pain, and Consequences | p. 177 |
Hedonism | p. 178 |
Four Styles of Advice | p. 181 |
Bentham and Mill | p. 182 |
Quotations from Bentham and Mill | p. 184 |
Arguments for Utilitarianism | p. 186 |
Objecting to the Arguments | p. 188 |
Two Controversial Recommendations | p. 190 |
The Appeal of Utilitarianism | p. 191 |
Utilitarianism and Risk | p. 192 |
Conclusions | p. 197 |
Further Reading | p. 197 |
Kantian Ethics | p. 199 |
Means and Ends | p. 200 |
Motive, Rule, and Means | p. 202 |
Kant's Argument | p. 203 |
Evaluating Kant's Argument | p. 206 |
Consequentialism versus Deontology | p. 207 |
Diagnosing Disagreements | p. 208 |
When it Might Be Right to Lie and Break Promises | p. 209 |
Strong Deontology | p. 211 |
The Demands of Morality: the Case of Famine | p. 213 |
Morality in an Uncertain World | p. 214 |
Conclusions | p. 215 |
Further Reading | p. 216 |
Empiricism | p. 217 |
Are You an Empiricist? | p. 218 |
The Appeal of Empiricism | p. 221 |
Some Empiricist Views | p. 222 |
The Idea Idea | p. 224 |
Translation Exercises | p. 226 |
Locke's "Way of Ideas" | p. 227 |
Locke against Innate Ideas | p. 228 |
Concepts, Beliefs, and Sensations | p. 230 |
Ways of Defining Concepts | p. 233 |
Barriers to Concept Acquisition | p. 235 |
Empirical Evidence | p. 237 |
Adequate Evidence? | p. 240 |
Conclusions | p. 243 |
Further Reading | p. 243 |
Beyond Empiricism | p. 245 |
Risk of What? | p. 246 |
Accuracy versus Informativeness about Friendship | p. 247 |
Other Minds | p. 249 |
Testing the Argument from Analogy | p. 251 |
Folk Psychology: the Argument from Explanation | p. 253 |
Being Wrong about Yourself | p. 255 |
The Inference to the Best Explanation | p. 256 |
Explanation | p. 258 |
Justifying Astrology | p. 261 |
Inference to the Best Explanation versus Simple Induction | p. 262 |
Perception and Belief | p. 264 |
Falsification | p. 267 |
The Hypothetico-deductive Method | p. 271 |
A Test Case: Continental Drift | p. 274 |
Conclusions | p. 277 |
Further Reading | p. 277 |
Objectivity | p. 279 |
Escape from the Cave | p. 280 |
Background Beliefs: First Test Case--Probability | p. 282 |
Background Beliefs: Second Test Case--Moral Status | p. 286 |
Reflective Equilibrium | p. 290 |
How Ethics Is Like Science | p. 295 |
Fallibilism | p. 301 |
Conclusions | p. 304 |
Further Reading | p. 304 |
Postcard History of Philosophy II | p. 305 |
Reality | p. 307 |
Materialism and Dualism | p. 311 |
Materialism, Naturalism, Idealism | p. 312 |
Materialisms | p. 313 |
Are You a Materialist or an Idealist? | p. 315 |
Dualism | p. 316 |
Leibniz on the Unimaginability of Materialism | p. 321 |
Crude and Subtle Materialisms | p. 322 |
Lucretius on Mind and Body | p. 325 |
Antidepressants, Psychosomatic Medicine, and the Mind--Body Problem | p. 326 |
Materialism and Self-knowledge | p. 328 |
Technology versus Introspection | p. 330 |
Eliminative Materialism | p. 332 |
Five Typical Quotations | p. 334 |
Conclusions | p. 335 |
Further Reading | p. 335 |
Morality for Naturalists | p. 337 |
God and Morality | p. 338 |
The Moralist's Nightmare | p. 341 |
Hobbes on the State of Nature | p. 343 |
A Restaurant Dilemma | p. 346 |
The Prisoner's Dilemma | p. 348 |
Hobbes and the Prisoner's Dilemma | p. 350 |
Implicit Contract | p. 352 |
Imaginary Social Contracts | p. 355 |
Morals in Nature? Rousseau, Hegel, Marx | p. 356 |
Real States of Nature | p. 359 |
Moral Motivation: Decency, Villainy, and Hypocrisy | p. 361 |
Morals within Nature? | p. 362 |
Conclusions | p. 365 |
Further Reading | p. 365 |
Deep Illusions | p. 367 |
Primary and Secondary Qualities | p. 368 |
Hard Questions about Color | p. 370 |
Color as Illusory | p. 372 |
Free Will | p. 373 |
Freedom and Responsibility | p. 377 |
Freedom as a Secondary Quality | p. 379 |
Fatalism versus Determinism | p. 382 |
Identity through Time | p. 384 |
Personal Identity: Problem Cases | p. 387 |
Personal Identity: Theories | p. 389 |
The Meanings of Lives | p. 391 |
Conclusions | p. 396 |
Further Reading | p. 396 |
Realism | p. 399 |
Science versus the Everyday World | p. 400 |
Counting Objects | p. 401 |
Berkeley's Idealism | p. 404 |
A Puzzle about Pain: the Locations of Qualities | p. 408 |
Apples, Surprises, Scopes, and Existence | p. 409 |
Verificationism | p. 412 |
Instrumentalism versus Realism | p. 415 |
First Case Study: Crystal Spheres | p. 419 |
Second Case Study: Phlogiston | p. 421 |
Arguments for Realism and Instrumentalism | p. 423 |
The Last Word | p. 426 |
Conclusions | p. 427 |
Further Reading | p. 427 |
Postcard History of Philosophy III | p. 429 |
Definitions | p. 430 |
Index | p. 437 |
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