Цитаты из книги What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

Everybody dies, but not everybody agrees about what death is. Some believe they will survive after the death of their bodies, going to Heaven or Hell or somewhere else, becoming a ghost, or returning to Earth in a different body, perhaps not even as a human being. Others believe they will cease to exist -- that the self…

The nine problems we'll consider are these: Knowledge of the world beyond our minds Knowledge of minds other than our own The relation between mind and brain How language is possible Whether we have free will The basis of morality What inequalities are unjust The nature of death The meaning of life They are only a…

The main concern of philosophy is to question and understand very common ideas that all of us use every day without thinking about them. A historian may ask what happened at some time in the past, but a philosopher will ask, "What is time?" A mathematician may investigate the relations among numbers, but a philosopher…

Philosophy is different from science and from mathematics. Unlike science it doesn't rely on experiments or observation, but only on thought. And unlike mathematics it has no formal methods of proof. It is done just by asking questions, arguing, trying out ideas and thinking of possible arguments against them, and…

This is a direct introduction to nine philosophical problems, each of which can be understood in itself, without reference to the history of thought. I shall not discuss the great philosophical writings of the past or the cultural background of those writings. The center of philosophy lies in certain questions which the…