Beginning Metaphysics An Introductory Text

This flexible textbook is both an introduction and a reader in metaphysics combining original discussion with selections from primary sources. This text shows that important social, political and moral concerns involve metaphysical questions and that important metaphysical positions have practical implications. It discusses major metaphysical topics such as God, Freedom, Mind, Causality, Value, and Universals as well as important historical and contemporary critiques of metaphysics. Each chapter is followed by selections from classic and contemporary texts, allowing for in-depth study of primary sources.

Heimir Geirsson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State University. He is the co-editor, with Michael Losonsky, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) and has published on philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntnis, and Journal of Philosophical Research.

Michael Losonsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is the co-editor, with Heimir Geirsson, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996). He has published on contemporary metaphysics in American Philosophical Quarterly, Minds and Machines, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophy, amongst others. He has also published on metaphysics in the history of modern philosophy in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Pragmatics and Cognition, among others.

List of Figures and Tables

vii

(1)

Acknowledgments

viii

1 What Is Metaphysics?

1

(10)

2 Metaphysics and Political Philosophy

11

(71)

Plato

Crito

30

(9)

Plato

Phaedo

39

(23)

Thomas Hobbes

Selection from The Leviathan

62

(8)

Simone de Beauvoir

The Second Sex, Introduction

70

(4)

Bertrand Russell

Selection from The Problems of Philosophy

74

(8)

3 Values and Reality

82

(101)

John O'Neill

The Varieties of Intrinsic Value

105

(17)

J.L. Mackie

The Subjectivity of Values

122

(23)

Richard Boyd

How to Be a Moral Realist

145

(38)

4 God and Evil

183

(54)

St Anselm of Canterbury

Selection from Proslogion

199

(2)

St Thomas Aquinas

Selection from Summa Theologica

201

(2)

David Hume

Selection from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

203

(6)

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Summary of the Controversy Reduced to Formal Arguments

209

(6)

J.L. Mackie

Evil and Omnipotence

215

(11)

Alvin Plantinga

Was It within God's Power to Create Any Possible World He Pleased?

226

(11)

5 Causation and Responsibility

237

(46)

David Hume

Selection from Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

253

(8)

Edward H. Madden

A Third View of Causality

261

(12)

Alan Garfinkel

The Ethics of Explanation

273

(10)

6 Mind and Morality

283

(75)

Rene Descartes

Selections from Principles of Philosophy and Passions of the Soul

309

(7)

Denis Diderot

Selection from Conversation between d'Alembert and Diderot

316

(9)

Thomas Nagel

What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

325

(11)

John R. Searle

Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?

336

(11)

Paul M. Churchland

Patricia S. Churchland

Could a Machine Think?

347

(11)

7 Freedom and Responsibility

358

(77)

Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

Selection from The System of Nature, Appendix

374

(2)

C.A. Campbell

Has the Self "Free Will"?

376

(13)

William L. Rowe

Two Concepts of Freedom

389

(19)

Harry G. Frankfurt

Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person

408

(13)

Susan Wolf

Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility

421

(14)

8 Against Metaphysics

435

(50)

Rudolf Carnap

The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language

444

(18)

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Four Great Errors

462

(5)

John Rawls

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical

467

(18)

Glossary

485

(5)

Index

490

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Beginning Metaphysics An Introductory Text with Readings

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials