Philosophy

March 14th, 2010
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Links to different philosophical areas are in the menu bar to the left; a thematic introduction to philosophy is below.

1. Why do philosophy?

Plato, Apology (380 BC ?)
This is his account of the trial of Socrates on charges of corrupting the youth and spreading disbelief in the Greek gods. Translated by Benjamin Jowett; hosted by the Internet Classics Archive.

Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (30 September 1784)
Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.

Bertrand Russell, The Value of Philosophy (1912)
Extract from his book, The Problems of Philosophy. Hosted by the Skeptic’s Dictionary.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
English version. Hosted by Swarthmore College.

Susan Wolf, The Meanings of Lives (2007)
Hosted by New York University.

2. What can we know?

a. What is knowledge?

Plato, Theaetetus (c.360 BC)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Hosted by the Internet Classics Archive.

Edmund L Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (1963)
Hosted and transcribed into HTML by Andrew Chrucky.

b. How can I know what is real?

René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)
English version. Hosted by Oregon State University.

David Hume, Of Scepticism with regard to the Senses (1739 – 1740)
From his Treatise of Human Nature.

Wesley Salmon, The Problem of Induction (1967)
An extract from his book, The Foundations of Scientific Inference. Hosted by California State University, Long Beach.

Christopher Grau, Philosophy and the Matrix (last updated 18 October 2006)
Hosted by OnwardOverLand.com.

Bertrand Russell, The Argument from Analogy for Other Minds (1948)
From his book, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. This excerpt is hosted by the Texas Christian University and is also available in MS Word format here.

Hilary Putnam, Putnam on Brains in a Vat (1982)
An extract from his book Reason, Truth and History. Hosted by the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados.

c. Can I know if there is a God?

i. Attempted proofs of God’s existence

The most well-known attempted proofs of God’s existence (usually, the Judaeo-Christian God) are as follows:

  1. The ontological argument from St Anselm’s Proslogium (1077 – 1078).
    These texts are hosted by, respectively, Saint Anselm College (Jonathan Barnes’ translation) and Fordham University (Sidney Norton Deane’s translation).

  2. The cosmological argument.
    This argument first surfaces in Plato’s Laws (c.360 BC) and is developed by Aristotle in his Metaphysics (c.350 BC). Thus, it may be the oldest attempted proof of a creator God or “Prime Mover.” The argument was further developed by Avicenna in his Book of Healing (1027), in which a distinction between essence and existence is famously posited. For the West, the argument was again explicated by St Thomas Aquinas in his unfinished work, Summa Theologica (1265 – 1274), wherein he attempts to show Five Ways to Prove the Existence of God.

  3. Pascal’s Wager.
    Rather than being a strict proof, this is Pascal’s answer to the question “why is it better to believe in God if there is no good proof of His existence?” The argument comes from his Pensées (1670), here translated by WF Trotter.

  4. The moral argument from Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (1788).

  5. The argument from design.
    William Paley famously set forth this argument in his book, Natural Theology (1802), here hosted by P Caimi at ATT.net.

ii. Arguments against a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God
iii. Is it more rational not to believe?

3. Who are we?

a. What is my mind?

René Descartes and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Correspondence (16 May – 28 June 1643)
Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. Hosted by California State University, Northridge.

Gilbert Ryle, Descartes’s Myth (1949)
The first chapter of his A Concept of Mind, hosted by Jorge F. Morales Ladrón de Guevara on Googlepages.com.

BF Skinner, Science and Human Behaviour (PDF) (1953)
Hosted by the BF Skinner Foundation.

JJC Smart, Sensations and Brain Processes (April 1959)
First published by the Philosophical Review. Hosted by Scribd.com.

Hilary Putnam, The Nature of Mental States (1967)
Hosted by Scribd.com.

Patricia Smith Churchland, Brain-Wise (2002)
An extended Google Books preview.

b. Could computers think?

Alan M Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)
Turing’s classic paper on machine intelligence; hosted by Hugh Gene Loebner.

John R Searle, Minds, Brains and Programs (1980)
The “penultimate unedited draft” of Searle’s famous essay, hosted by the Behaviour and Brain Sciences journal.

c. What is consciousness? Can it be completely described by (physical) science?

Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like To Be A Bat? (1974)
Hosted by Clark University.

Paul Churchland, Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes (February 1981)
From the Journal of Philosophy. Hosted by Scribd.

Frank Jackson, What Mary Didn’t Know (PDF) (May, 1986)
Hosted by the University of San Francisco.

Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (1989)
Hosted by Questia.org.

David J Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995)
Hosted by David Chalmers.

d. Am I the same person I was yesterday?

Bernard Williams, The Self and the Future (PDF) (April 1970)
Published in the Philosophical Review. Hosted by the University of British Columbia.

Daniel C Dennett, Where Am I? (1978)
Hosted by the New Banner Institute.

Derek Parfitt, Personal Identity and Rationality (PDF) (November, 1982)
Hosted by the University of Toronto.

e. Am I free?

Roderick M. Chisholm, Human Freedom and the Self (PDF) (1964)
A revised version of the Lindley Lecture given at the University of Kansas, 23 April 1964. Hosted by the State University of New York at Oswego.

Harry G. Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person (PDF) (January 1971)
Hosted by the University of San Francisco.

Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O’Rourke, and David Shier, Freedom and Determinism: A Framework (2003 ?)
Hosted by Michael O’Rourke at the University of Idaho.

4. How should we live?

a. Where does morality come from?

Aristotle, Moral Virtue (c.350 BC)
Excerpted from his Nicomachean Ethics; hosted by the Internet Sacred Text Archive.

Thomas Hobbes, Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity and Misery (1660)
From his book, The Leviathan.

Charles Darwin, On the origin of the moral sense (1871)
Taken from his book, The Descent of Man. Excerpted and hosted by philosophyblog.com.au.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (PDF) (1873)
Originally translated by Walter Kaufmann and Daniel Breazeale. Text hosted and amended by the Nietzsche Channel.

Marc D Hauser, Animal Minds (April 1999)
In conversation with Edge magazine.

b. Are there any moral principles I should live by?
i. Virtue ethics
ii. Ethics of duties or contracts
iii. Ethics of consequences or utility
c. What is justice?

Plato, Socrates and Thrasymachus debate the nature of justice (c.360 BC)
Excerpted from his work, The Republic. Hosted here by the Internet Sacred Text Archive.

John Rawls, Two Concepts of Rules (1955)
First published in the Philosophical Review. Hosted by the University of San Diego.

RJ Kilcullen, Robert Nozick: Against Distributive Justice (1996)
Study notes for students; hosted by Macquarie University.

GA Cohen, Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice (1997)
First published in Philosophy and Public Affairs. Hosted by the University of California at San Diego.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (1 February 2006)
Video of Appiah’s lecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Hosted by youtube.com.

d. Is it better to be good?

The Buddha, The Ceasing of Woe (520 AD?)
Excerpted from Some Sayings of the Buddha (1973), trans. JL Woodward; collected in Ethics (1994), ed. Peter Singer; hosted by the University of Texas.

François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Story of the Good Brahmin (1761)
Hosted by Boston College.

Rudyard Kipling, The Law of the Jungle (1894)
Excerpted from The Jungle Book. Hosted by Edward Bonver on his Poetry Lovers’ Page.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (English version) (1886)
Originally translated by Helen Zimmern and Walter Kaufmann. Text hosted and amended by the Nietzsche Channel.

Thomas Nagel, Moral Luck (1979)
Hosted by the University of California at San Diego.

Derek Parfitt, What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best? (1984)
From his book, Reasons and Persons. Hosted by Scribd.com.

JL Mackie, The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of Evolution (1985)
Published in Philosophy Journal. Hosted by the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

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