Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments - Hardcover

Schick, Theodore; Vaughn, Lewis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767420500 ISBN 13: 9780767420501

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education, 2002

Synopsis

Doing Philosophy helps students understand the nature and purpose of philosophical inquiry by explaining what philosophical problems are, how they can be solved, and why searching for solutions is important. By acquainting students with philosophical theories and the thought experiments used to test them, this text fosters active learning and helps students become better thinkers.

About this title

From the Publisher:

New sections on logical inference, informal fallacies, and the problem of perception broaden the scope of the text and give students additional tools to follow philosophical arguments and construct their own
Expanded discussions of Searle's Chinese room, non-reductive materialism, the nature/nurture debate, agent causation, the closest continuer theory, the divine command theory, the process of ethical decision making, the Kalam cosmological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the evolution/creationism controversy, and the problem of skepticism address topics at the forefront of current research
New "Thought Probes" throughout each chapter (rather than just at the end of each section) challenge students to conduct their own thought experiments
New readings, including works by Nozick, Taylor, Turing, Davis, Blatchford, Stace, Kurzweil, Johnson, and Martin
New biographical boxes provide personal background on important philosophers covered in the text
More than 75 thought experiments describe the possible situations in which a particular theory should hold, encouraging students to examine both the theory and the thought experiment.
A coherent theoretical framework aids students in their understanding of contemporary and traditional philosophical problems.
A selection of classic and contemporary readings at the end of each chapter provides context for the philosophical theories and thought experiments. Each set of readings concludes with a piece of fiction which revisits many of the philosophical questions examined in the chapter.
Chapter introductions explain the philosophical problem being explored, define key concepts, and identify chapter objectives.
Self-contained sections within each chapter include their own summary, study questions, discussion questions. Additional pedagogy includes a list of suggested readings at the end of each chapter and a running glossary throughout the text.
An energetic writing style, creative examples and exercises, and appealing quotations and illustrations make this text truly "student-friendly."

About the Author:

Theodore Schick received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Brown University. He is currently professor of philosophy at Muhlenberg College where he has served as Director of Academic Computing, Director of Freshman Seminars, Director of the Muhlenberg Scholars Program, and Chair of the Philosophy Department. He is the author of Doing Philosophy: An Introduction through Thought Experiments, the editor of The Philosophy of Science: From Positivism to Post-modernism, and has published articles in several fields of philosophy including: philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, meta-philosophy, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. He has also contributed to a number of volumes in Open Courts Philosophy and Popular Culture series as well as Blackwells Philosophy for Everyone series.

About this edition

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0767420500
• ISBN 13: 9780767420501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 576