Feature Summary

New to This Edition

• 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

Features

• 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."