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Understanding Philosophy

Kurt Mosser

4.9/5 (25258 ratings)

Description:The word philosophy elicits many different reactions: Some people are intrigued, some are intimidated, some are fascinated, and a few may even run screaming from the room. Some think philosophers are just a bunch of old guys with beards, sitting around pondering questions that have no answers. Although this picture contains an element of the truth, it is far from the whole picture of what philosophy involves.After just a bit of reflection, we can see that philosophy explores questions that affect us all. Life presents us with issues that provoke confusion, wonder, surprise, and consternation, and it is precisely these matters that philosophers explore. Some are rather uncontroversial: Why is one painting regarded as great art while another is not? If I have a little extra money, is there anything wrong with giving it to someone who could use it? Yet before long, questions begin to emerge that have a great deal of significance for our lives. Does God exist? How do I know the things I claim to know? Should abortion be legal? Should there be restrictions on who can vote, and if so, what should those restrictions be?Philosophy offers us a rare opportunity to step back from the duties and obligations of our busy lives and investigate important but difficult questions. It may not always provide answers to these questions; indeed, some would suggest that when a question does get answered, it is no longer of interest to philosophers. Surely it would be more efficient if we could just find all the correct answers to our questions and move on, but the kinds of questions philosophers explore rarely lead to such a result.That does not mean, however, that we cannot learn a lot by examining our beliefs and the reasons we maintain those beliefs. We may even, on occasion, find ourselves changing our minds. Yet philosophers insist that the real value of such an examination is to teach us about ourselves so that we understand what is important to us. Critical inquiry into our beliefs gives much greater insight into what we think and believe; as philosophers often say, only a belief that we are willing to submit to critical inquiry is the kind of belief worth having.In what follows, we will look at several important areas of philosophical inquiry: what we can know (epistemology), what the most general truths are (metaphysics), what we may hope for (religion), what is beautiful (aesthetics), what we ought to do (ethics), and the meaning of life. Although this hardly exhausts what philosophers are interested in, these topics will give us a good idea of what kinds of answers philosophers have offered to those questions for which human beings have always sought answers. We will also discover that these questions will continue to be asked and that much of the value in philosophical inquiry will be found in thinking very hard about things that are of the utmost importance to all of us.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Understanding Philosophy. To get started finding Understanding Philosophy, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: —

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Release: 2014

ISBN: 162178116X

Description: The word philosophy elicits many different reactions: Some people are intrigued, some are intimidated, some are fascinated, and a few may even run screaming from the room. Some think philosophers are just a bunch of old guys with beards, sitting around pondering questions that have no answers. Although this picture contains an element of the truth, it is far from the whole picture of what philosophy involves.After just a bit of reflection, we can see that philosophy explores questions that affect us all. Life presents us with issues that provoke confusion, wonder, surprise, and consternation, and it is precisely these matters that philosophers explore. Some are rather uncontroversial: Why is one painting regarded as great art while another is not? If I have a little extra money, is there anything wrong with giving it to someone who could use it? Yet before long, questions begin to emerge that have a great deal of significance for our lives. Does God exist? How do I know the things I claim to know? Should abortion be legal? Should there be restrictions on who can vote, and if so, what should those restrictions be?Philosophy offers us a rare opportunity to step back from the duties and obligations of our busy lives and investigate important but difficult questions. It may not always provide answers to these questions; indeed, some would suggest that when a question does get answered, it is no longer of interest to philosophers. Surely it would be more efficient if we could just find all the correct answers to our questions and move on, but the kinds of questions philosophers explore rarely lead to such a result.That does not mean, however, that we cannot learn a lot by examining our beliefs and the reasons we maintain those beliefs. We may even, on occasion, find ourselves changing our minds. Yet philosophers insist that the real value of such an examination is to teach us about ourselves so that we understand what is important to us. Critical inquiry into our beliefs gives much greater insight into what we think and believe; as philosophers often say, only a belief that we are willing to submit to critical inquiry is the kind of belief worth having.In what follows, we will look at several important areas of philosophical inquiry: what we can know (epistemology), what the most general truths are (metaphysics), what we may hope for (religion), what is beautiful (aesthetics), what we ought to do (ethics), and the meaning of life. Although this hardly exhausts what philosophers are interested in, these topics will give us a good idea of what kinds of answers philosophers have offered to those questions for which human beings have always sought answers. We will also discover that these questions will continue to be asked and that much of the value in philosophical inquiry will be found in thinking very hard about things that are of the utmost importance to all of us.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Understanding Philosophy. To get started finding Understanding Philosophy, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Understanding Philosophy

Understanding Philosophy

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