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| Introduction | |
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| About This Book | |
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| Conventions Used in This Book | |
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| What You're Not to Read | |
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| Foolish Assumptions | |
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| Icons Used in This Book | |
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| Where to Go from Here | |
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| What Is Philosophy, Anyway? | |
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| Great Thinkers, Deep Thoughts | |
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| A Few Nuts Spice the Cake | |
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| Socrates on the Examination that Counts | |
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| The Questions We'll Ask | |
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| Philosophy as an Activity | |
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| Outward Bound for the Mind | |
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| Mapping Our Way Forward | |
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| The Extreme Power of Belief | |
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| The image of Plato's Cave | |
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| The philosophical Houdini | |
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| The Love of Wisdom | |
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| The Triple-A Skill Set of Philosophy | |
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| Paralysis without analysis | |
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| The skill of assessment | |
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| The use of argument | |
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| Wisdom Rules | |
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| The Socratic Quest for Wisdom | |
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| How Do We Know Anything? | |
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| Belief, Truth, and Knowledge | |
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| Our Beliefs about Belief | |
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| The Importance of Belief | |
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| The Ideal of Knowledge | |
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| The truth about truth | |
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| The complete definition of knowledge | |
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| Truth and rationality | |
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| The Challenge of Skepticism | |
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| The Ancient Art of Doubt | |
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| Incredible Questions We Cannot Answer | |
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| The questions of source skepticism | |
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| The questions of radical skepticism | |
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| What the skeptics show us | |
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| Doubting Your Doubts | |
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| Where Do We Go from Here? | |
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| The Amazing Reality of Basic Beliefs | |
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| The Foundations of Knowledge | |
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| Empiricism and rationalism | |
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| The foundations of knowledge | |
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| Evidentialism | |
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| The Principle of Belief Conservation | |
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| Belief conservation and radical skepticism | |
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| Belief conservation and source skepticism | |
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| The basic status of belief conservation | |
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| Evidentialism refuted and revised | |
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| William James on Precursive Faith | |
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| Leaps of Faith | |
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| What Is the Good? | |
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| What Is Good? | |
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| A Basic Approach to Ethics and Morality | |
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| Defining the Good in the Context of Life | |
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| Three Views on Evaluative Language | |
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| The philosophy of noncognitivism: The boo/yay theory | |
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| Ethical subjectivism | |
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| Moral objectivism | |
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| Objectivism and the moral skeptic | |
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| Teleological Target Practice | |
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| Happiness, Excellence, and the Good Life | |
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| Memo to the Modern World | |
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| The Idea of Good: A Short Course in Options | |
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| Divine Command Theory | |
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| Social Contract Theory | |
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| Utilitarianism | |
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| Deontological Theory | |
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| Sociobiological Theory | |
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| Virtue Theory | |
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| Four Dimensions of Human Experience | |
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| The intellectual dimension | |
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| The aesthetic dimension | |
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| The moral dimension | |
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| The spiritual dimension | |
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| The Ultimate Context of Good | |
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| Ethical Rules and Moral Character | |
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| Commandments, Rules, and Loopholes | |
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| The Golden Rule and what it means | |
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| The precise role of The Golden Rule | |
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| Character, Wisdom, and Virtue | |
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| Can Goodness Be Taught? | |
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| What am I? -- A test of character | |
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| What should I do? -- A test of action | |
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| The answer to our question | |
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| Are We Ever Really Free? | |
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| Fate, Destiny, and You | |
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| The Importance of Free Will | |
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| Foreseeing the Future: The Theological Challenge to Freedom | |
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| What Will Be Will Be: The Logical Challenge to Freedom | |
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| Robots and Cosmic Puppetry: The Scientific Challenge to Freedom | |
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| Standard Views of Freedom | |
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| God, Logic, and Free Will | |
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| The Theological Challenge answered | |
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| The Logical Challenge answered | |
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| The Modern Scientific Challenge | |
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| Scientific Determinists | |
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| Libertarians | |
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| Compatibilism | |
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| Which approach is the right one? | |
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| Just Do It: Human Agency in the World | |
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| Some Wisdom about Freedom | |
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| The Big Picture | |
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| How to Be an Agent and Get More than 15 Percent | |
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| The Incredible, Invisible You | |
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| What Is a Person? | |
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| Guitars, Ghosts, and People | |
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| Glimpses of the Mind | |
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| Philosophical Views of the Person | |
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| Monism | |
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| Dualism | |
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| The Contenders | |
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| Interactionism | |
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| Epiphenomenalism | |
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| Parallelism | |
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| Narrowing the Options | |
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| The Case for Materialism | |
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| The Positive Arguments | |
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| The man-is-an-animal argument | |
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| The artificial intelligence argument | |
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| The brain chemistry argument | |
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| The Negative Arguments | |
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| The superfluity argument | |
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| The mystery objection | |
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| The problem of other minds | |
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| A Verdict on the Materialist Case | |
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| The Case for Dualism | |
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| The Natural Belief in Dualism | |
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| I'm a Soul Man | |
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| The introspection argument | |
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| The discernibility argument | |
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| The Cartesian argument | |
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| The Platonic argument | |
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| The parapsychology argument | |
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| The need for evidence | |
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| What's the Deal with Death? | |
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| From Dust to Dust: Fear and the Void | |
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| The Final Exit and the Four Fears | |
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| Fear of the process of dying | |
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| Fear of punishment | |
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| Fear of the unknown | |
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| Fear of annihilation | |
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| Philosophical Consolations on Death | |
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| Don't Worry, Be Happy | |
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| The stoic response to fear of the process | |
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| The natural process argument | |
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| The Necessity Argument | |
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| The Agnostic Argument | |
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| The Two Eternities Argument | |
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| Epicurus' argument | |
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| Materialist Conceptions of "Immortality" | |
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| Social immortality | |
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| Cultural immortality | |
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| Cosmic immortality | |
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| Scientific immortality | |
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| Is There Life After Death? | |
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| Philosophical Doubts and Denials | |
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| The psychological origin argument | |
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| The silence argument | |
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| The trumpet analogy argument | |
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| The brain damage argument | |
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| Arguments for Survival | |
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| Plato's indestructibility argument | |
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| Then nature analogy argument | |
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| The argument from desire | |
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| Moral arguments | |
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| The Light at the End of the Tunnel | |
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| Claims of former lives | |
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| Apparent contact with the dead | |
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| Near-death experiences | |
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| Is There a God? | |
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| Two World Views | |
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| The Lost Beach Ball | |
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| The Great Divide | |
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| The mainline theistic world view | |
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| The naturalistic world view | |
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| How the two world views compare | |
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| The Great Debate | |
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| Theistic Visions | |
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| The Ontological Argument | |
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| Cosmology and God | |
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| A Designer Universe? | |
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| Religious Experience | |
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| The Problem of Evil | |
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| Expectations of Theism | |
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| The Argument from Evil | |
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| The main argument against theism | |
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| The alleged incompatibility of God and evil | |
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| Moral justification for allowing evil | |
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| Moral justification and the atheist's argument | |
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| The theist's claim | |
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| The Great Theodicies | |
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| The punishment theodicy | |
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| The free will theodicy | |
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| The soul-making theodicy | |
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| A fourth combination theodicy | |
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| The Element of Mystery | |
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| The Meaning of Life | |
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| What Is the Meaning of Life? | |
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| The Questions We Can Ask | |
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| Meaning and This World | |
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| Nihilism: The ultimate negativity | |
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| The do-it-yourself-approach to the meaning of life | |
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| God and Meaning | |
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| Pascal's Wager: Betting Your Life | |
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| Blaise Pascal: Philosopher-Genius | |
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| The Wager | |
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| Criticisms of the Wager | |
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| The immorality objection | |
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| The probability assignment objection | |
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| The many claimants objection | |
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| The single case objection | |
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| Choosing a World View Right for You | |
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| Success and Happiness in Life | |
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| What is Enough? The Race for More | |
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| True Success | |
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| The Universal Conditions of Success | |
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| A clear conception of what we want, a vivid vision, a goal clearly imagined | |
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| A strong confidence that we can attain that goal | |
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| A focused concentration on what it takes to reach the goal | |
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| A stubborn consistency in pursuing our vision | |
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| An emotional commitment to the importance of what we're doing | |
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| A good character to guide us and keep us on a proper course | |
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| A capacity to enjoy the process along the way | |
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| A Concluding Note on Happiness | |
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| The Part of Tens | |
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| Ten Great Philosophers | |
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| Socrates | |
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| Plato | |
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| Aristotle | |
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| Saint Thomas Aquinas | |
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| William of Ockham | |
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| Rene Descartes | |
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| Immanuel Kant | |
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| G.W.F. Hegel | |
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| Soren Kierkegaard | |
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| Bertrand Russell | |
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| Ten Great Questions | |
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| Is Philosophy Practical? | |
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| Can We Ever Really Know Anything? | |
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| Is There Ultimately an Objectivity to Ethics? | |
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| Who Am I? | |
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| Is Happiness Really Possible in Our World? | |
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| Is There, After All, a God? | |
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| What Is the Good Life? | |
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| Why Is So Much Suffering in the World? | |
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| If a Tree Falls in the Forest | |
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| Bishop Berkeley speaks | |
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| What's Stronger in Human Life, Rationality or Irrationality? | |
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| Index | |
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| Book Registration Information | |