Beginning Metaphysics: An Introductory Text with Readings

This flexible textbook is both an introduction and a reader in metaphysics combining original discussion with selections from primary sources. This text shows that important social, political and moral concerns involve metaphysical questions and that important metaphysical positions have practical implications. It discusses major metaphysical topics such as God, Freedom, Mind, Causality, Value, and Universals as well as important historical and contemporary critiques of metaphysics. Each chapter is followed by selections from classic and contemporary texts, allowing for in–depth study of primary sources.

1. What is Metaphysics?.

2. Metaphysics and Political Philosophy.

Readings: Plato, Crito. Plato, Phaedo. Thomas Hobbes, Selection from The Leviathan. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Introduction. Bertrand Russell, Selection from The Problems of Philosophy.

3. Values and Reality.

Readings: John O′Neill, The Varieties of Intrinsic Value. J. L. Mackie, The Subjectivity of Values. Richard Boyd, How to be a Moral Realist.

4. God and Evil.

Readings: St Anselm of Canterbury, Selection from Proslogion. Thomas of Aquinas, Selection from Summa Theologica. David Hume, Selection from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Gottfried Willhelm von Leibniz, Summary of the Controversy Reduced to Formal Arguments. J. L. Mackie, Evil and Omnipotence. Alvin Plantinga, Was it within God′s Power to Create Any Possible World He Pleased?.

5. Causation and Society.

Readings: David Hume, Selection from Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edward Madden,Third View of Causality. Alan Garfinkel, Ethics of Explanation.

6. Mind and Morality.

Readings: René Descartes, Selections from Principles of Philosophy and Passions of the Soul. Denis Diderot, Selection from Conversation Between d′Alembert and Diderot. Thomas Nagel, What is it Like to be a Bat? John Searle, Is the Brain′s Mind a Computer Program? Paul M. Churchland and Patricia S. Churchland, Could a Machine Think?.

7. Freedom and Responsibility.

Readings: Paul Henri Thiery d′Hollbach, Selection from The System of Nature.

Appendix.

C. A. Campbell, Has the Self "Free Will"?: C. A. Campbell.

Two Concepts of Freedom:William L. Rowe.

Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person: Harry Frankfurt.

Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility:Susan Wolf.

8. Against Metaphysics.

Readings: The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language:Rudolf Camap.

The Four Great Errors:Friedrich Nietzsche.

Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical:John Rawls.

Glossary.

Index.

Heimir Geirsson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Iowa State University. He is the co–editor, with Michael Losonsky, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996) and has published on philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Erkenntnis, and Journal of Philosophical Research.

Michael Losonsky is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is the co–editor, with Heimir Geirsson, of Readings in Language and Mind (Blackwell Publishers, 1996). He has published on contemporary metaphysics in American Philosophical Quarterly, Minds and Machines, Philosophical Review, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophy, amongst others. He has also published on metaphysics in the history of modern philosophy in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Pragmatics and Cognition, among others.