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.
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.
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.
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:
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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). -
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. -
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. -
The moral argument from Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (1788).
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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
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Epicurus, the problem of evil (290 BC ?)
A beautifully succinct statement by Epicurus, as relayed in Lactantius’ On the Anger of God (c. 310). -
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1778)
Hosted by Saint Anselm College. -
Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian (6 March 1927)
Transcript of a speech originally delivered at Battersea Town Hall. Hosted by PositiveAtheism.org.
iii. Is it more rational not to believe?
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Antony Flew, Theology and Falsification (1968)
Hosted by StephenJayGould.org. -
Alvin Platinga, Theism, Atheism and Rationality (1995)
Hosted by Leadership University.
Who Am I?
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 book, 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 West Valley College.
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 Parfit, 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.
How Should I 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
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Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (c.350 BC)
Translated by WD Ross. Hosted by the Internet Classics Archive. -
Alasdair MacIntyre, Learning from Aristotle and Aquinas (2006)
Excerpted from his book, Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, Volume 2; hosted by the Cambridge University Press.
ii. Ethics of duties or contracts
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Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785)
Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. Hosted by eserver.org. -
Stephen Palmquist, Four Perspectives on Moral Judgment: the Rational Principles of Jesus and Kant (April 1991)
Hosted by the Hong Kong Baptist University. -
Onora O’Neill, Licence to Deceive (2002)
Her fifth and final Reith Lecture on trust. Hosted by the BBC.
iii. Ethics of consequences or utility
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JS Mill, Utilitarianism (1863)
Hosted by Utilitarianism Resources. -
Christopher Panza, Williams: A Critique of Utilitarianism (2003?)
Lecture notes for students. Hosted by Drury University. -
Peter Singer, What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You? (17 December 2006)
Published in and hosted by the New York Times.
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 the College of Alameda.
Rudyard Kipling, The Law of the Jungle (1894)
Excerpted from The Jungle Book. Hosted by Edward Bonver on his Poetry Lovers’ Page.
Friedrich 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 Parfit, 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.