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Full Description
In What Do We Really Know? Simon Blackburn addresses the twenty most-asked philosophical questions, including 'Can machines think?', 'What is the meaning of life?', 'Is death to be feared?', 'Why be good?', 'What am I?' and 'What do we really know?'
Each 3000-word essay examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, and provides answers from history's great thinkers.
Contents
Preface. Am I a Ghost in a Machine? - The search for consciousness. What is Human Nature? - The problem of interpretation. Am I Free? - Choices and responsibility. What Do We Know? - Virtual realities and valuable authorities. Are We Rational Animals? - Reason in theory and practice. How Can I Lie to Myself? - Self-deception, seduction and motivation. Is There Such a Thing as Society? - The individual and the group. Can We Understand Each Other? - Treating words carefully. Can Machines Think? - Artificial intelligence and cognitive powers. Why Be Good? - Annoying behaviour and annoying questions. Is It All Relative? - Problems of toleration, truth and confidence. Does Time Go By? - The strange river of time. Why Do Things Keep on Keeping on? - Problems of constancy and chaos. Why is There Something and Not Nothing? - The strange ways of being. What Fills Up Space? - The curious nature of things and their properties. What is Beauty? - The fatal attraction of things. Do We Need God? - Hope, consolation and judgement. What is it All For? - The pursuit of the meaning of life. What are My Rights? - Positive, negative and natural rights. Is Death to be Feared? - The awful abyss of extinction. Notes. Key Philosophers. Index.
