He was one of 240 academics to sign a letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission opposing 'radical gender orthodoxy', published in The Sunday Times. [10] He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. [2] He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 [3] and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008. [4] Being an infidel, that is, just having no faith, I do not have to prove anything. I have no faith in the Loch Ness Monster, but do not go about trying to prove that it does not exist, although there are certainly overwhelming arguments that it does not. [8] What's the point of a philosophy book presenting complicated subjects if the author can't even explain them well or in a simple way?

Gibbard ("Improving Sensibilities") argues that an expressivist cannot do everything in terms of sentiments, only, but needs to appeal to stances of agreeing and disagreeing with sentiments. Who am I? What is the world? Does god exist? Do I have a free will? These are questions every single one of us has asked himself in the course of his life: some only to consider them as unimportant and forget about them, others countless times, dwelling on possible answers and becoming more and more fascinated with them. If you are one of the latter - and I certainly am - this is a book for you.Letters: Harsh judgments on the pope and religion". The Guardian. London. 15 September 2010 . Retrieved 16 September 2010. Truth (1999) (edited with Keith Simmons) – from Oxford Readings in Philosophy series. ISBN 0-19-875250-4. proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my

I retain my 3-star rating because well-read philosophiles won't find anything new or challenging while neophytes will need a supportive reading environment (instructor/classmates). In short, it might be a bit too "hard" for an introduction but not hard enough for more advanced students.My favorite part of this book has to be the chapter on God. I found it brilliant and rewarding. It has none of the faults that plague the other chapters. The flow of information seems perfect with one argument leading seamlessly into another with just the right amount of commentary in between. It also has some real gems from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that are sure to delight the skeptics and non-believers amongst you. This brilliant observation by Wittgenstein takes the cake, however: "A nothing works just as well as a something about which nothing could be said." Although SB tries to be objective, he is quite clearly not sold on theology and its claims, so you religious folks have been warned. Here at last is a coherent, unintimidating introduction to the challenging and fascinating landscape of Western philosophy. Written expressly for "anyone who believes there are big questions out there, but does not know how to cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist. . . I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing Tl;dr This book does a few things very well but sadly, its flaws outnumber its merits marring what would otherwise be a great introduction to philosophy. I still recommend it but with caveats.

This is one of the many books about philosophy as a whole without a clear point to it. Besides illustrating how philosophy is hypothetically useful to create a better society overall. Which is an unproven claim he is making. So it does start on a false premise unfortunately. But following that premise he does go into some interesting quotes from old philosophers that make you think. But... Dreier's chapter ("Another World: The Metaethics and Metametaethics of Reasons Fundamentalism") provides a fruitful starting point. Dreier asks how we should we explain the connection between normative thought and action and considers, in the light of this issue, the relationship between Scanlon's view, according to which "there are irreducible, non-natural normative facts . . . about normative properties" (p. 155), and quasi-realism. Let's assume that someone who thinks that she ought to perform an action, φ, will, if she is rational, also intend to φ. Call this thesis practicality. This thesis may seem obviously true. But Dreier rightly insists that even obvious truths may be in need of explanation, and that practicality is a case in point. One might suggest that practicality simply follows from the essence of rationality, but Dreier proposes -- plausibly, to my mind -- that we should find a deeper explanation for how the different requirements of rationality hang together. He writes: Written with exemplary concision and with conviction that philosophy needn't be an ethereal subject, alienated from practical concerns."-- Booklist Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countriesI'm not sure this is the type of book that'd garner a second listen from most readers unless there was something you didn't quite understand, but that's just my opinion and I can't speak for anyone else.

Philosophy is often dismissed as a purely academic discipline with no relation to the "real" world non-philosophers are compelled to inhabit. Think dispels this myth and offers a springboard for all those who want So, that whole chapter is devoted to semi-dismissing some of the weaker arguments FOR the existence of God. Some people will be delighted and encouraged by the conclusions that the author shepherds us towards, but religious people, agnostics, free-thinking philosophers and even open-minded atheists (I know there are some) will be disappointed. Whoever you are, whatever you believe, you have to admit that there are zero bomb-proof arguments for or against the existence of God. From a religious point of view, that can only be a good thing. Evidence of God's existence would remove the need for faith, and with it all those meritorious benefits of faith-based belief. If there were any bomb-proof arguments against God, then we wouldn't keep getting fed with all the weaker arguments. This book reads like a supplementary textbook for an introductory philosophy class, in that it's not detailed or deep enough to be a primary textbook but also not casual or light enough to be a popular introduction to philosophy. It is a bit too heavy for the layman, for whom this book was intended, but too shallow for those with a decent understanding of the subject. The chapter on free will discusses the possibility of a predetermined fate like voiced in countless religious texts: Do we have a choice in what we do or is it only the result of cultural conditioning? Can we really blame a murderer for killing someone if he had a depression? In this chapter I first encountered the belief that reducing people to predetermined and conditioned factors objectivies them, taking away their humanity.He was one of 55 public figures to sign an open letter published in The Guardian in September 2010, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK, [9] and has argued that "religionists" should have less influence in political affairs. [8] What do we really know? -The Big Questions of Philosophy" – (2009) from Quercus. ISBN 978-1-78087-587-3. Timothy Havener (27 April 2012). "The Great Debate - Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong? (FULL)". Archived from the original on 15 March 2013 . Retrieved 10 February 2018– via YouTube. The examples or analogies that SB employs to explain involved ideas or difficult concepts are not always helpful and in a couple of instances, they even compounded my confusion. On the whole, a lot of the chapters didn't seem coherent enough for you to be sufficiently confident about your understanding of the different topics. I often found it hard to explain what I had just read to someone else. I think all of these reasons make this book a rather dull reading for those that aren't deeply interested in philosophy. SB, to his credit, has managed to keep the reader sufficiently engaged by keeping the difficulty of the content just out of reach. This can be frustrating for casual readers but if you're interested in the subject, it pushes you to actively think about what you are reading even though you don't quite get it eight times out of ten.