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| Thanks | |
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| Note to Teachers | |
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| The Contract | |
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| The Lure of Certainty | |
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| Certainty and Doubt | |
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| Patterns of Thought | |
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| How Conventional Are Your Beliefs? | |
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| Conviction, Opinion, Doubt, and Belief | |
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| Trusting Textbooks | |
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| Certainty: the Closed-belief Trap | |
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| Cheat: a Story about Deception | |
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| Tree-worshipers and Flat-earthers | |
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| Revising History: 1984 | |
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| Doubt | |
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| Doubting What Someone Says | |
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| How Skeptical Are You? | |
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| Moral Skepticism | |
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| When is a Skeptic a Cynic? | |
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| Socratic Skepticism | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Sources of Conviction | |
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| Authority | |
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| Faith | |
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| Reason | |
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| Arguments | |
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| Eight Short Arguments | |
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| Puzzling Arguments | |
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| Arguments within Arguments | |
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| Proofs of God | |
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| Paradoxes | |
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| What to Trust on the Internet | |
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| Transforming the Question | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Rationalism | |
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| Optimism about Reason | |
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| Individualism | |
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| Galileo's Rationalism | |
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| Impossible Theories | |
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| Descartes' Optimism: Certainty from Doubt | |
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| Doubting Anything versus Doubting Everything | |
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| Demon Possibilities, Paranoia, and Fantasy | |
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| The Matrix | |
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| How Doubt Can Increase Belief | |
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| Skepticism and Religious Faith | |
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| "I Think, Therefore I Am" | |
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| Doubting Even One's Own Existence | |
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| Degrees of Certainty | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Rationalism versus Relativism in Morals | |
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| The Appeal of Moral Rationalism | |
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| Four Golden Rules | |
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| Equality and Justice | |
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| Plato's Moral Rationalism | |
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| Three Arguments from Plato's Republic | |
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| Moral Relativism | |
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| For and Against Moral Relativism | |
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| The Ik | |
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| Law and Morality | |
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| Existentialism | |
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| What Is Morality About? | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Induction and Deduction | |
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| Simple Induction | |
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| Applying Simple Induction | |
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| Seeing Patterns in Nature | |
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| Deduction 1: Syllogisms | |
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| Deduction 2: Validity | |
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| Deduction 3: Venn Diagrams and Counterexamples | |
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| Induction versus Deduction | |
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| The Induction-friendliness of the World | |
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| Diagramming Induction-friendliness | |
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| Hume's Discovery: Nightmare or Liberation? | |
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| Causation and Induction | |
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| Choosing the Right Concepts | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| The Retreat from Certainty | |
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| Feeble Reason? | |
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| Hume on the Power(lessness) of Reason | |
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| Four Famous Passages from Hume | |
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| Four Kinds of Irrationality | |
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| Degrees of Certainty | |
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| Valuing Values | |
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| How Tolerant Are You? | |
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| Mill on Freedom of Expression | |
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| Toleration in Science | |
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| Making Uncertainty Pay | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Postcard History of Philosophy I | |
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| Life in An Uncertain World | |
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| Utilitarianism | |
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| Naive Utilitarianism | |
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| Choosing the Utilitarian Action | |
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| Pleasure, Pain, and Consequences | |
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| Hedonism | |
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| Four Styles of Advice | |
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| Bentham and Mill | |
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| Quotations from Bentham and Mill | |
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| Arguments for Utilitarianism | |
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| Objecting to the Arguments | |
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| Two Controversial Recommendations | |
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| The Appeal of Utilitarianism | |
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| Utilitarianism and Risk | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Kantian Ethics | |
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| Means and Ends | |
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| Motive, Rule, and Means | |
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| Kant's Argument | |
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| Evaluating Kant's Argument | |
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| Consequentialism versus Deontology | |
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| Diagnosing Disagreements | |
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| |
| When it Might Be Right to Lie and Break Promises | |
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| Strong Deontology | |
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| The Demands of Morality: the Case of Famine | |
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| Morality in an Uncertain World | |
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| Conclusions | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| |
| Empiricism | |
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| Are You an Empiricist? | |
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| The Appeal of Empiricism | |
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| Some Empiricist Views | |
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| The Idea Idea | |
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| Translation Exercises | |
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| |
| Locke's "Way of Ideas" | |
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| |
| Locke against Innate Ideas | |
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| Concepts, Beliefs, and Sensations | |
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| Ways of Defining Concepts | |
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| |
| Barriers to Concept Acquisition | |
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| |
| Empirical Evidence | |
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| |
| Adequate Evidence? | |
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| |
| Conclusions | |
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| |
| Further Reading | |
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| |
| |
| Beyond Empiricism | |
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| |
| Risk of What? | |
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| |
| Accuracy versus Informativeness about Friendship | |
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| |
| Other Minds | |
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| |
| Testing the Argument from Analogy | |
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| |
| |
| Folk Psychology: the Argument from Explanation | |
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| |
| |
| Being Wrong about Yourself | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Inference to the Best Explanation | |
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| |
| Explanation | |
| |
| |
| |
| Justifying Astrology | |
| |
| |
| |
| Inference to the Best Explanation versus Simple Induction | |
| |
| |
| |
| Perception and Belief | |
| |
| |
| |
| Falsification | |
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| |
| |
| The Hypothetico-deductive Method | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Test Case: Continental Drift | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| Further Reading | |
| |
| |
| |
| Objectivity | |
| |
| |
| |
| Escape from the Cave | |
| |
| |
| |
| Background Beliefs: First Test Case--Probability | |
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| |
| |
| Background Beliefs: Second Test Case--Moral Status | |
| |
| |
| |
| Reflective Equilibrium | |
| |
| |
| |
| How Ethics Is Like Science | |
| |
| |
| |
| Fallibilism | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| Further Reading | |
| |
| |
| Postcard History of Philosophy II | |
| |
| |
| |
| Reality | |
| |
| |
| |
| Materialism and Dualism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Materialism, Naturalism, Idealism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Materialisms | |
| |
| |
| |
| Are You a Materialist or an Idealist? | |
| |
| |
| |
| Dualism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Leibniz on the Unimaginability of Materialism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Crude and Subtle Materialisms | |
| |
| |
| |
| Lucretius on Mind and Body | |
| |
| |
| |
| Antidepressants, Psychosomatic Medicine, and the Mind--Body Problem | |
| |
| |
| |
| Materialism and Self-knowledge | |
| |
| |
| |
| Technology versus Introspection | |
| |
| |
| |
| Eliminative Materialism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Five Typical Quotations | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| Further Reading | |
| |
| |
| |
| Morality for Naturalists | |
| |
| |
| |
| God and Morality | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Moralist's Nightmare | |
| |
| |
| |
| Hobbes on the State of Nature | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Restaurant Dilemma | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Prisoner's Dilemma | |
| |
| |
| |
| Hobbes and the Prisoner's Dilemma | |
| |
| |
| |
| Implicit Contract | |
| |
| |
| |
| Imaginary Social Contracts | |
| |
| |
| |
| Morals in Nature? Rousseau, Hegel, Marx | |
| |
| |
| |
| Real States of Nature | |
| |
| |
| |
| Moral Motivation: Decency, Villainy, and Hypocrisy | |
| |
| |
| |
| Morals within Nature? | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| Further Reading | |
| |
| |
| |
| Deep Illusions | |
| |
| |
| |
| Primary and Secondary Qualities | |
| |
| |
| |
| Hard Questions about Color | |
| |
| |
| |
| Color as Illusory | |
| |
| |
| |
| Free Will | |
| |
| |
| |
| Freedom and Responsibility | |
| |
| |
| |
| Freedom as a Secondary Quality | |
| |
| |
| |
| Fatalism versus Determinism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Identity through Time | |
| |
| |
| |
| Personal Identity: Problem Cases | |
| |
| |
| |
| Personal Identity: Theories | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Meanings of Lives | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| Further Reading | |
| |
| |
| |
| Realism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Science versus the Everyday World | |
| |
| |
| |
| Counting Objects | |
| |
| |
| |
| Berkeley's Idealism | |
| |
| |
| |
| A Puzzle about Pain: the Locations of Qualities | |
| |
| |
| |
| Apples, Surprises, Scopes, and Existence | |
| |
| |
| |
| Verificationism | |
| |
| |
| |
| Instrumentalism versus Realism | |
| |
| |
| |
| First Case Study: Crystal Spheres | |
| |
| |
| |
| Second Case Study: Phlogiston | |
| |
| |
| |
| Arguments for Realism and Instrumentalism | |
| |
| |
| |
| The Last Word | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| Further Reading | |
| |
| |
| Postcard History of Philosophy III | |
| |
| |
| Definitions | |
| |
| |
| Index | |