Swinburne, Richard - Faith and Reason

Faith and Reason is the final volume of a trilogy on philosophical theology. The first volume, The Coherence of Theism, was concerned with what it means to say that there is a God, and whether the claim that there is a God is internally coherent. It argued that the claim was not demonstrably incoherent, that it was proper to look for evidence of its truth, and that evidence that it was true would be evidence that it was coherent. The second volume, The Existence of God, was concerned with evidence that the claim was true. It was concerned to assess the force of arguments from experience for and against the existence of God. It argued that, although it could not be proved conclusively that there was a God, on balance the various arguments taken together showed that it was more probable than not there was a God. Faith and Reason is concerned with the relevance of such judgements of probability (either the particular judgement which I reached, or a different one—e.g. that it is very improbable that there is a God) to religious faith.

Swinburne, Richard - The Existence of God

The Existence of God is a sequel to The Coherence of Theism, published in 1977. The Coherence of Theism was concerned with what it means to say that there is a God and whether the claim that there is a God is internally coherent. The Existence of God is concerned with whether the claim is true; it is concerned to assess the weight of arguments from experience for and against this claim, and to reach a conclusion about whether on balance the arguments indicate that there is a God or that there is not. The present book assumes that the claim that there is a God is not demonstrably incoherent (i.e. self-contradictory), and hence that it is proper to look around us for evidence of its truth or falsity. For argument in justification of this assumption I must refer to the earlier work. However, it is in no way necessary for a reader to have read the earlier work in order to understand this one; nor, with the exception just described, does this work in any way presuppose the results of the earlier one.

Swinburne, Richard - The Coherence of Theism

By a theist I understand a man who believes that there is a God. By a 'God' he understands something like a 'person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe'. Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all in the above sense theists. Many theists also hold further beliefs about God, and in these Christians, Jews, and Muslims differ among themselves; and yet further beliefs, in which some members of each group differ from others. Christians assert, and Jews and Muslims deny, that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Roman Catholics assert, and Protestants deny, that Christ is 'really' present in the bread consecrated in the Mass. With beliefs of the latter two kinds this book is not concerned. It is concerned solely with the central core of theistic belief, that God exists, that there is a God.

Abbey, Ruth - Nietzsche’s Middle Period

Looking back on his earlier writings, Nietzsche suggests that the beginning of the middle period marked his apprenticeship as a genealogist of morals: “My ideas about the provenance of our moral prejudices . . . found their first brief and tentative formulation in a collection of aphorisms called Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits.”¹

Sklar, Lawrence - Philosophy of Physics

The demarcation of the natural sciences from philosophy has been a long and gradual process in Western thought. Originally, inquiry into the nature of things consisted in an amalgamation of what would now be thought of as philosophy: general considerations of the broadest sort about the nature of being and the nature of our cognitive access to it, and what would now be considered to be the specific sciences: the amassing of observational fact and the formulation of general and theoretical hypotheses to explain it.

Stich, Stephen P. - Deconstructing the Mind

Developing and defending a philosophical position is a bit like weaving an intricate piece of fabric. When things go well, each strand of the argument adds strength and support to the others, and gradually interesting patterns begin to emerge. But when things go poorly—when one of the strands breaks—it sometimes happens that the entire fabric begins to unravel. A little gap becomes a big gap, and soon there is nothing left at all.

Small, Robin - Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship

Friedrich Nietzsche and Paul Rée were close friends for about seven years. Although they saw little of each other for long periods during that time, maintaining their friendship through correspondence, their personal interaction was the crucial element. Rée later told a friend that Nietzsche was much more important in his letters than in his books, and more important again in conversation than in letters.¹

Armstrong, David Malet - Universals: An Opinionated Introduction

The topic of universals is a very old one. It goes back to Plato at least, perhaps to Socrates, perhaps to even earlier times. Those contemporary philosophers who pay the matter attention often speak of the Problem of Universals. So let me begin by saying what the problem is. It may turn out that it is really a pseudo-problem. That was the opinion of Wittgenstein and his followers, for instance. Quine is not far from thinking the same. But whether it is a real problem or not should not be decided in advance.

Dretske, Fred - Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes

A dog bites your neighbor. That is a piece of canine behavior, something the dog does. It is something that happens to your neighbor. Clyde loses his job and Bonnie gets pregnant. These are things that happen to them, not things they do. These things may happen to them, as with your neighbor, because of something they did, or failed to do, earlier, but that is a different matter.

The difference between things we do and things that happen to us feels familiar enough. As Richard Taylor (1966, pp. 59-60) observes, it underlies our distinction between the active and the passive-between power, agency, and action on the one hand and passion, patience, and patient (in the clinical sense) on the other. For that reason alone it is tempting to use this distinction in helping to characterize the nature and structure of behavior. With certain clarifications and refinements (a business that will take the rest of this chapter to complete), I think this is indeed a useful basis of classification.

Schacht, Richard - Nietzsche

Nietzsche presents a problem to many English-speaking philosophers. Schooled in the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Mill, and strongly influenced by the examples of Moore and Russell, Ayer and Quine, and Ryle and Austin, they commonly find it hard to know what to make of what they find when they open one of his books and begin to read. His prose is lucid and free of cumbersome phraseology and obscure terminology, quite unlike that of most German philosophers from Kant and Hegel to Husserl and Heidegger; but there are few extended, systematic discussions of particular topics and issues to be found in them. They consist instead for the most part in collections of relatively short reflections (often of an aphoristic nature), the drift of which is frequently unclear, and the connections between which are often loose if not simply non-existent.

Skorupski, John - A History of Western Philosophy: 6: English-Language Philosophy 1750 to 1945

David Hume (1711-76) stands eminent among the shapers of modern thought. He and Kant (1724-1804) were the supremely great philosophers of the enlightenment--yet both sowed seeds from which the romantic reaction to enlightenment would grow.

Campbell, John - Reference and Consciousness

It is experience of the world that puts us in a position to think about it. Without experience, we would not know what the world is like. Those who have experiences of which we know nothing may be able to think in ways of which we know nothing. Those who do not have our experience of the world will not be able to think of it as we do. These points show up even at the simplest levels.

Mellor, D.H. - Real Time II

Like its ancestor, Real Time, this book is about such of the metaphysics of time as follows from settling the basis in reality of our distinctions between past, present and future. One way and another that covers most of time’s metaphysics, including the following questions. What makes a statement that something is past, present or future true or false? What is it to have the thoughts that such statements express, and why do we have them? How do we know when they are true: what tells us whether something is past, present or future? Why do we only ever act and have experiences in the present, affect what is future and see what is present or past? Could there be exceptions to this: could a time machine let us see the future or affect the past? What, even in time machines, makes everything outside us keep moving from our future to our past via our present, i.e. what makes time flow? What has the flow of time to do with change, why has it no spatial analogue, and what does this fact tell us about how time differs from space? All these questions will be answered in the course of settling the status of past, present and future.

Price, Huw - Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time

SAINT AUGUSTINE (354-430) remarks that time is at once familiar and deeply mysterious. “What is time?” he asks. “If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not.”¹ Despite some notable advances in science and philosophy since the late fourth century, time has retained this unusual dual character. Many of the questions that contemporary physicists and philosophers ask about time are still couched in such everyday terms as to be readily comprehensible not only to specialists on both sides of the widening gulf between the two subjects—that in itself is remarkable enough—but also to educated people who know almost nothing about either field. Time is something rather special, then. Few deep issues lie so close to the surface, and fewer still are yet to be claimed by a single academic discipline.

Searle, John R. - Mind: A Brief Introduction

There are many recent introductory books on the philosophy of mind. Several give a more or less comprehensive survey of the main positions and arguments currently in the field. Some, indeed, are written with great clarity, rigor, intelligence, and scholarship. What then is my excuse for adding another book to this glut? Well, of course, any philosopher who has worked hard on a subject is unlikely to be completely satisfied with somebody else's writings on that same subject, and I suppose that I am a typical philosopher in this respect. But in addition to the usual desire for wanting to state my disagreements, there is an overriding reason for my wanting to write a general introduction to the philosophy of mind. Almost all of the works that I have read accept the same set of historically inherited categories for describing mental phenomena, especially consciousness, and with these categories a certain set of assumptions about how consciousness and other mental phenomena relate to each other and to the rest of the world.

Kim, Jaegwon - Philosophy of Mind

In coping with the myriad things that come our way at every moment of our waking life, we try to organize them into manageable structures. We do this by sorting them into groups--categorizing them as "rocks," "trees," "insects," "birds," "cows," "telephone poles," "mountains," and countless other kinds, and describing them in terms of their properties and features, as "large" or "small," "tall" or "short," "red" or "yellow," "slow" or "swift," and so on. A distinction that we almost instinctively, though usually unconsciously, apply to just about everything that we come across is whether or not it is a living thing (it might be a dead bird, but still we know it is the kind of thing that lives, unlike a rock or a pewter vase, which couldn't be "dead"). There are exceptions, of course, but it is unusual for us to know what something is without at the same time knowing, or having some ideas about, whether or not it is a living creature. Another example: when we know a person, we almost always know whether the person is male or female.

The same is true of the distinction between things or creatures with a "mind," or "mentality," and those without a mind. This is probably one of the most basic contrasts we use in our thoughts about things in the world.

Armstrong, David Malet - The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction

The mind-body problem is the problem of what the mind is, what the body is, and, especially, what relation they stand in to each other. This book is based upon lectures that I gave for many years at Sydney University. It is not intended for students who have not yet done any philosophy. For North American students an introductory philosophy course is a desirable preliminary. For British and Australasian students, it is probably best as a second or third year course.


The book has three further features: It is in some degree historical; it is dialectical; and it is opinionated.

Smart, John Jameison Carswell - Philosophy and Scientific Realism

This book is meant as an essay in synthetic philosophy, as the adumbration of a coherent and scientifically plausible world view. A good many philosophers would nowadays question the legitimacy of such an endeavour. It will therefore be as well if I say a few words about the nature of philosophy as I conceive it. No one answer can be given to the question 'What is philosophy?' since the words 'philosophy' and 'philosopher' have been used in many ways. Some people, for example, think of philosophy as offering the consolations of a religion, and of the philosopher as a man who receives with equanimity the buffetings of life. This has very little to do with the way in which academic people, including myself, use the word 'philosophy'. I do not feel particularly unqualified to be an academic philosopher because I am not 'philosophical' when I am bowled out first ball at cricket. As I propose to use the word 'philosophy' it will stand primarily for an attempt to think clearly and comprehensively about: (a) the nature of the universe, and (b) the principles of conduct.

Heil, John - Philosophy of mind: a contemporary introduction

Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound when no one is around to hear it? The question is familiar to every undergraduate. One response is that of course the tree makes a sound—why shouldn’t it? The tree makes a sound whether anyone is on hand to hear it or not. And, in any case, even if there are no people about, there are squirrels, birds, or at least bugs that must hear it crashing down.

Consider a more measured response, versions of which have percolated down through successive generations of undergraduates. The tree’s falling creates sound waves that radiate outwards in a spherical pattern. If these sound waves are intercepted by a human ear (or maybe—although this is more controversial—the ear of some non-human sentient creature) they are heard as a crashing noise. If the sound waves go undetected, they eventually peter out. Whether an unobserved falling tree makes a sound, then, depends on what you mean by sound. If you mean “heard noise,” then (squirrels and birds aside) the tree falls silently. If, in contrast, you mean something like “distinctive spherical pattern of impact waves in the air,” then, yes, the tree’s falling does make a sound.

McGinn, Colin - The Character of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

Of what nature is the mind? This question identifies the philosophical topic with which we are to be concerned. But the question needs some refinement and qualification before it gives accurate expression to the range of issues with which the philosophy of mind deals.

Hannan, Barbara - Subjectivity and reduction: an introduction to the mind-body problem

One's life, from beginning to end, is a sequence of subjective experiences. Because we are so utterly accustomed to being selves, unified centers of subjectivity, we seldom pause to reflect on how mysterious and intriguing is this phenomenon of subjective consciousness. Sometimes, however, perhaps in a moment of extraordinarily intense subjective experience, the wonder of being a conscious self can strike a human being with compelling force.

Casati, Roberto & Varzi, Achille C. - Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation

Thinking about space is, first and foremost, thinking about spatial things. The book is on the table; hence the table is under the book. The cake is in the tin and the tin is in the kitchen; hence the cake is in the kitchen. Sometimes we talk about things going on in certain places: the concert took place in the garden; the game was played at Yankee Stadium. Even when we talk about empty places—spatial regions that are not occupied by any macroscopic object and where nothing noticeable seems to be going on—we typically do so because we are planning to move things around or because we think that certain events did or could occur in certain places as opposed to others. The sofa should go right here; the accident happened right there. Spatial thinking, whether actual or hypothetical, is typically thinking about spatial entities of some sort.

Spinks, Lee - Friedrich Nietzsche

Despite the fact that he was a late-nineteenth-century thinker, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) provided arguments that challenge and undermine many of the assumptions that we still hold dear today. It is difficult for us to imagine a world without common sense, the distinction between truth and falsehood, the belief in some form of morality or an agreement that we are all human. But Nietzsche did imagine such a world and he also argued that we should write and think in such a way that we would realise this world.

Snooks, Graeme Donald - The laws of history

Philosophers and scientists down through the ages have grappled with the polarizing concepts of the eternal and the ephemeral in human society. Some identify the ephemeral with everyday reality and the eternal with an underlying process of systematic change, while others see the eternal reflected in a changeless ‘reality’ lying behind the ephemeral appearances of the everyday. Most, however, appear content with the appearances of a surface reality.

Those who seek the eternal in changeless forms—in an ideal world—see change either as the annihilation of a past ideal or as the way to a future ideal. As ideal forms can only be explored metaphysically, these philosophers seek a knowledge of the eternal through imagined ‘laws’ of destiny. Their ideas are translated into action by attempting either to eliminate change, or to exploit it to achieve their vision of a better world. In this they are no friends of the Dynamic Society.

Richardson, John - Nietzsche’s New Darwinism

Most of what Nietzsche says about Darwin and Darwinism is hostile. Indeed the most striking things he says reach the pitch of denunciation and personal insult. He likes to call Darwin "mediocre," and attacks Darwinism on a host of theoretical and evaluative grounds.

But I think this pointed animosity is—here as often elsewhere in Nietzsche's campaigns—misleading. He is so eager to distinguish himself, because he knows how much he has taken over from Darwin—how big a part of his own view, this Darwinism looms.

Poellner, Peter - Nietzsche and Metaphysics

This book offers a critical interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought on two traditionally central disciplines of philosophy: epistemology and metaphysics. It will confine its field of study largely to what is perhaps not entirely appropriately called Nietzsche's 'mature' philosophy, which is contained in his writings produced after 1882, that is, in the third and final major phase of his philosophical career.¹ It is during this period that he developed most of the ideas which are usually associated with his name and for which he is best known.

Cottingham, John - A History of Western Philosophy: 4: The Rationalists

Confronted with the bewildering complexity and variety of philosophical theories, the student turns with relief to labels and pigeonholes. By classifying philosophers into 'movements' and 'schools of thought', we seem to have hope of discerning some pattern in the tumultuous flow of ideas. But later, on closer acquaintance with the texts, doubts creep in. Do the authors fit the stereotypes? Have we achieved order only at the cost of oversimplification or caricature?

Irwin, Terence - A History of Western Philosophy: 1: Classical Thought

This book introduces some of the issues of philosophical interest in Classical thought, in the 1,100 years or so from Homer to Saint Augustine. It is therefore concerned primarily with Greek philosophy--that is, philosophical thought expressed in the Greek language--and its immediate descendants.

Sober, Elliott - Philosophy of biology

We talk of stars evolving from red giants to white dwarfs. We speak of political systems evolving toward or away from democracy. In ordinary parlance, "evolution" means change.

If evolution is understood in this way, then the theory of evolution should provide a global account of cosmic change. Laws must be stated in which the trajectories of stars, of societies, and of everything else are encapsulated within a single framework. Indeed, this is what Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) attempted to do. Whereas Charles Darwin (1809-1882) proposed a theory about how life evolves, Spencer thought he could generalize Darwin's insights and state principles that govern how everything evolves.

Judson, Lindsay (ed.) - Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection of Essays

Aristotle begins his Physics, and thus his studies in natural science generally, with a chapter on method. Further remarks on this subject are added at crucial junctures later in the work, particularly in the subsequent chapters of Book I and in Book IV. This concern with method in the Physics is just one prominent example of the explicit and self-conscious attention to method which is displayed in nearly all of Aristotle's major works. Among other things, this interest reflects the lively concern, and the lively disagreement, among philosophers and scientists in Aristotle's own day not only about positive doctrine in various areas but also about the proper method or methods to use to reach such doctrine.¹

Nadler, Steven (ed.) - Causation in Early Modern Philosophy: Cartesianism, Occasionalism, and Preestablished Harmony

Questions about the nature of causal relations occupy a central position in early modern philosophy. The prominence of this topic in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought can, in large measure, be traced to a specific historical problem: the need to reconcile an emerging scientific view of the natural world -- mechanistic physics -- with traditional beliefs about the relation between God and his creation.