Used by more than one million students around the world since its original publication, this introductory philosophy
text continues to make a wide range of living philosophical issues accessible. Simplifying the technical language
of philosophy wherever possible, the book sets forth vital questions of contemporary interest against an overall
framework of enduring concepts. Emphasizing personal and immediate questions, the authors approach introductory
philosophy through basic human questions rather than focusing on methodology or the history of thought. Issues
concerning art, history, and education are woven throughout the book.
New sections on philosophy today (Chapter 1); metaphysics and human nature (Chapter 2); functionalism and eliminative
materialism (Chapter 4); what is a value (Chapter 6); space-time and relativity and Darwinism and genetics (Chapter
11); and the nature of faiths and cults and sections (Chapter 17).
Chapter 7, Ethics and Morality, is substantially revised to include new sections on levels of moral development,
classical moral philosophy, natural law ethics, and contemporary principles.
Chapter 8, retitled Individual and Social Morality, now includes an expanded discussion of civil liberties and
a new section on sexual ethics.
Chapter 10, The Nature and Tests of Knowledge, combines previous Chapters 10 and 11, and includes a new section
on objectivism and the nature and types of knowledge.
Table of Contents
Introduction: What Is Philosophy?
1. The Task of Philosophy.
Part I: The Nature of Human Nature.
2. Human Nature: What Is it?
3. The Self.
4. The Mind.
5. The Freedom to Choose.
Part II: The Realm of Values.
6. The Meaning of Values.
7. Ethics and Morality.
8. Individual and Social Morality.
Part III: Knowledge and Science.
9. The Sources of Knowledge.
10. The Nature and Tests of Knowledge.
11. Science and Philosophy.
12. Naturalism.
Part IV: Philosophical Perspectives.
13. Idealism and Realism.
14. Pragmatism.
15. Analytic Philosophy.
16. Existentialism, Phenomenology, and Process Philosophy.
17. The Nature of Religion.
