Twenty Questions : Introduction to Philosophy

Preface.
Introduction.

Part 1 RELIGION AND THE MEANING OF LIFE.

1. Does Religion Give My Life Meaning?

Steven M. Cahn Religion Reconsidered. John Powers Some Important Buddhist Doctrines. Ramakrishna Many Paths to the Same Summit. Keiji Nishitani What Is Religion? Lao Tzu A Taoist View of the Universe. Friedrich Nietzsche God is Dead. Friedrich Nietzsche The Anti-christ. bell hooks Love as the Practice of Freedom. H. L. Mencken Memorial Service. Albert Camus The Absurd. Mary Daly The Leap Beyond Patriarchal Religion.

2. How Do I Know Whether God Exists?

St. Augustine Faith and Reason. Saint Anselm The Ontological Argument. Saint Thomas Aquinas Whether God Exists. William Paley The Teleological Argument. David Hume Why Does God Let People Suffer? Immanuel Kant Proving the Existence of God by Way of Morality. Fyodor Dostoevsky Rebellion. Søren Kierkegaard The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason. William James The Will To Believe. Natalie Angier I'm No Believer. John Wisdom Gods. Rg Veda Hymn of Creation. John Bishop Alternatives to the Omni-God.

Part 2 SCIENCE, MIND, AND NATURE.

3. What Does Science Tell Me About the World?

Carl Hempel The Deductive-Nomological Model of Science. Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Karl Popper Science Conjectures and Refutations. Evelyn Fox Keller Feminism and Science. Richard Feynman Seeking New Laws of Nature. Sandra Harding An Epistemological Problem for Feminism.

4. Which Should I Believe Darwin or Genesis?

The Bible Genesis. Charles Darwin The Descent of Man. Duane T. Gish Creationist Science and Education. Philip Kitcher Against Creationism. Michael Ruse Is Evolutionary Theory a Secular Religion? Cory Juhl The Fine-Tuning Argument. Daniel C. Dennett Show Me the Science.

5. How Is My Mind Connected to My Body?

René Descartes Mind as Distinct From Body. Gilbert Ryle The Concept of Mind. William Lycan Robots and Minds. John R. Searle The Myth of the Computer. Elizabeth V. Spelman Woman as Body. Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch The Embodied Mind.

Part 3 THINKING AND KNOWING.

6. What Do I Know?

Plato The Myth of the Cave. René Descartes Meditation. Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass. Jorge Luis Borges The Circular Ruins. Bertrand Russell Appearance and Reality. John Locke Where Our Ideas Come From. George Berkeley To Be Is to Be Perceived. Lorraine Code What Can She Know?

7. Does Language Make Me Think the Way I Do?

Jonathan Swift Getting Rid of Words. Ludwig Wittgenstein Meaning as Use. Benjamin Whorf Language, Thought, and Reality. George Orwell Newspeak. Steven Pinker The Language Instinct. Stephanie Ross How Words Hurt. Lewis Carroll Humpty Dumpty.

Part 4 THE DILEMAS OF PERSONHOOD.

8. Who Am I?

John Perry The First Night. John Locke Of Identity and Diversity. David Hume Of Personal Identity. Meredith Michaels Persons, Brains, and Bodies. Justin Lieber How To Build a Person. Simone de Beauvoir I Am a Woman. Robert Wachbroit Genetic Encores The Ethics of Human Cloning. Jean Bethke Elshtain To Clone or Not to Clone.

9. Why Are My Emotions Important to Me?

Aristotle On Anger. René Descartes The Passions of the Soul. David Hume On Pride. William James What Is an Emotion? Annette Baier Important Feelings. Jean-Paul Sartre Emotions as Transformations of the World. Robert C. Solomon Anger as a Way of Engaging the World. Plato Two Speeches on Love. Robert C. Solomon What Love Is.

10. How Should I Feel About Abortion and Embryo Research?

Susan Tracy The Abortion. Judith Jarvis Thompson A Defense of Abortion. Alice Walker Right to Life What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman? Sidney Callahan The Moral Duty to the Unborn and Its Significance. Dena S. Davis Stem Cells, Cloning, and Abortion Making Careful Distinctions. The President's Council on Bioethics The Moral Status of the Embryo. Daniel Callahan The Puzzle of Profound Respect Human Embryo Research. Mary B. Mahowald and Anthony P. Mahowald Embryonic Stem Cell Retrieval and a Possible Ethical Bypass. Senator Sam Brownback Can Fetuses Feel Pain?

11. What Is the Meaning of Death?

Plato The Death of Socrates. Chuang-Tzu A Taoist on Death. Thomas Nagel Death. James Rachels Active and Passive Euthanasia. Bonnie Steinbock The Intentional Termination of Life. Patricia Mann Meanings of Death.

12. How Should I Respond to War or Terrorism?

Saint Thomas Aquinas Whether It Is Always Sinful to Wage War. Hannah Arendt Power and Violence. George W. Bush Address to the Nation, September 11, 2001. John Dear The Experiments of Ghandi Nonviolent in the Nuclear Age. Richard Falk Defining a Just War. Richard Deats In War Truth is the First Casualty. Claudia Card Questions Regarding a War on Terrorism. Mumia Abu-Jamal War Against Terror or War to Govern the World?

13. How Does Racism Affect My Life?

Jean-Paul Sartre Anti-Semite and Jew. Laurence Thomas What Good Am I? Shelby Steele I'm Black, You're White, Who's Innocent? Anthony Appiah But Would That Still Be Me? Elizabeth V. Spelman The Erasure of Black Women.

Part 5 LIVING A GOOD LIFE.

14. Why Shouldn't I Be Selfish?

Ntozake Shange get it and feel good. Plato The Ring of Gyges. Epicurus The Pursuit of Pleasure. Thomas Hobbes People are Selfish. Adam Smith Compassion. Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene. Stephen Jay Gould So Cleverly Kind an Animal. Tara Smith Individual Rights, Welfare Rights. James Rachels Ethical Egoism. Jim Holt The Life of the Saint.

15. Can There Be Sexual Equality?

Plato The Equality of Women. Aristotle The Inequality of Women. Immanuel Kant The Inequality of Women. John Stuart Mill The Subjection of Women. Marilyn Frye Sexism. Natalie Angier Monogamy vs. Promiscuity Putting Evolutionary Psychology on the Couch. Sarah McCarry Selling Out.

16. What Is the Right Thing for Me to Do?

The Bible The Ten Commandments and The Sermon on the Mount. Confucius The Analects. The Koran The Unjust. Aristotle Happiness and the Good Life. Immanuel Kant Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism. Friedrich Nietzsche The Natural History of Morals. A.J. Ayer Emotivism. Simone de Beauvoir Freedom and Morality. Jonathan Bennett The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn. Claudia Card One Feminist View of Ethics. Bob Kane Through the Moral Maze.

17. I Like It, but Is It Art?

Aristotle The Nature of Tragedy. David Hume Of the Standard Of Taste. Leo Tolstoy What Is Art? The Hayes Commission The Motion Picture Production Code. Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer The Culture Industry. Arthur C. Danto The Art World. Kathleen Higgins from The Music of our Lives. Mary Deveraux The Male Gaze.

Part 6 JUSTICE AND RESPONSIBILITY.

18. Am I Free to Choose What I Do?

Aristotle Voluntary and Involuntary Action. Baron d'Holbach Are We Cogs in the Universe? Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight of an Error. John Hospers Meaning and Free Will. Jean-Paul Sartre Freedom and Responsibility. B.F. Skinner Freedom and the Control of Men. Bob Kane The Significance of Free Will Old Dispute, New Themes. Iris Young Oppression.

19. What Do I Justly Deserve?

Plato Does Might Make Right. Thomas Hobbes Justice and the Social Contract. John Stuart Mill A Utilitarian Theory of Justice. John Rawls Justice as Fairness. Robert Nozick The Principle of Fairness. David Brooks Triumph of Hope over Self-Interest. Peter Singer Rich and Poor. Iris Young The Myth of Merit. Amartya Sen Property and Hunger. Malcolm X Human Rights, Civil Rights. Cheshire Calhoun Justice, Care, and Gender Bias.

20. How Should I Make (and Spend) Money?

Confucius On Business. Adam Smith Benefits of the Profit Motive. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The Immorality of Capitalism. Milton Friedman The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits. Ford Motor Company The Ford Pinto Memo. Peter Singer Ivan Boesky's Choice. William Greider Crime in the Suites. Jim Hightower SweatX is Chic. World Trade Organization On Intellectual Property. Corey Bergstein Downloading in Canada. Joanne Ciulla Honest Work. Patricia H. Werhane A Bill of Rights for Employees and Employers. Robert C. Solomon Making Money and the Importance of the Virtues. Joseph Campbell Follow Your Bliss.

Credits.