Core Questions in Philosophy

Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, USA. His most recent book is The Design Argument (2018).

Preface Part I: Introduction 1. What Is Philosophy? 2. Deductive Arguments 3. Inductive and Abductive Arguments Part II: Philosophy of Religion 4. Aquinas’s First Four Ways 5. The Design Argument 6. Evolution and Creationism 7. Can Science Explain Everything? 8. The Ontological Argument 9. Is the Existence of God Testable? 10. Pascal and Irrationality 11. The Argument from Evil Part III: Theory of Knowledge 12. What Is Knowledge? 13. Descartes’ Foundationalism 14. The Reliability Theory of Knowledge 15. Justified Belief and Hume’s Problem of Induction 16. Can Hume’s Skepticism Be Refuted? 17. Beyond Foundationalism 18. Locke on the Existence of External Objects Part IV: Philosophy of Mind 19. Dualism and the Mind/Body Problem 20. Logical Behaviorism 21. Methodological Behaviorism 22. The Mind/Brain Identity Theory 23. Functionalism 24. Freedom, Determinism, and Causality 25. A Menu of Positions on Free Will 26. Compatibilism 27. Psychological Egoism Part V: Ethics 28. Ethics—Normative and Meta 29. The Is/Ought Gap and the Naturalistic Fallacy 30. Observation and Explanation in Ethics 31. Conventionalist Theories 32. Utilitarianism 33. Kant’s Moral Theory 34. Aristotle on the Good Life