TheSingingPsychologist 2004-12-23
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
My philosophy teacher brought that up, and our class snickered cynically. "Snickered cynically" - is that college kids for you, or what? Hey, maybe I (a college kid myself) am being cynical now. Touchez??
Seriously, this book is a great introduction to philosophical problems. The contents are divided into four major sections, aside from a brief section introducing the reader to deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments: 1). arguments for and against the existence of God, 2). Can we really know anything, and if so, how do we know it?, 3). How is the mind related to the body, and do we have free will?, and 4). Ethics. Sober takes an essentially unbiased approach to all arguments for and against each perspective concerning each topic. There are arguably exceptions, however - for instance, I received a hint of bias from Sober toward a functionalist/identity theorist account of mind and brain (although he did admit there seems to be something special about conscious experience, or "what it's like," that this type of explanation doesn't account for). Also, Sober is clearly against subjectivism in ethics (and I totally agree with him, here).
I think Sober's explanations of some concepts are more laborious than they need to be. I don't mean to sound flip, but I typed up a study guide (in complete sentences and paragraphs, mind you) in which I summarized between 50-60 pages of Sober's section on ethics into a nice 10-page, 12-font, single-spaced, packet.
I'm surprised Sober didn't devote any space for a lecture on consciousnes (i.e. qualia, etc.) in the section on philosophy of mind. This is easily one of the more difficult, and unresolved problems for scientists - I'd assume philosophers are still talking about it, too.
If you're interested in some philosophical issues, and aren't taking a university course for which a broadly-scoped textbook like this is mandatory, then you're likely going to want to seek out information more specified to your particular area of interest (i.e. philosophy of mind). However, if you'd like a basic "lay of the land" concerning the general questions modern philosophers explore, and the methods with which they attempt to do so, then this book is a welcome read.