Part 1. The Search for Signposts Chapter 1. Directions Chapter 2. Do Ideas Get Out Of Date? Chapter 3. What is Research? Chapter 4. Clashes of Method Chapter 5. What is Matter? Chapter 6. Quantum Queries Chapter 7. What is Progress? Chapter 8. Perspectives and Paradoxes: Rousseau And His Intellectual Explosives Chapter 9. Mill And The Different Kinds Of Freedom Chapter 10. Making Sense Of Toleration PART 2. Tempting Visions of Science Chapter 11. The Force of World-Pictures Chapter 12. The Past Does Not Die Chapter 13. Scientism; The New Sedative PART 3. Mindlessness and Machine Worship Chapter 14. The Power-Struggle Chapter 15. Missing Persons Chapter 16. Oracles PART 4. Singularities and the Cosmos Chapter 17. What Kind of Singularity? Chapter 18. Can Intelligence be Measured? Chapter 19. What is Materialism? Chapter 20. The Cult of Impersonality Chapter 21. Matter and Reality Chapter 22. The Mystique of Scientism Chapter 23. The Strange World-Picture Conclusion: One World but Many Window
The last major book from one of Britain's most respected and popular female philosophers, Mary Midgley. What Is Philosophy for? asks the big questions at the heart of philosophy and doesn't shy away from coming up with some unsettling answers
Mary Midgley is Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Philosophy, Newcastle University, UK. One of the leading moral philosophers of the 20th century, Midgley has written extensively on human nature, science, ethics, animals, and the environment. Her books include Beast and Man, Heart and Mind, Animals and Why They Matter, Are You an Illusion? and Wickedness.
Engaging and accessible, this vigorous swansong exemplifies many of
Midgley's virtues, and revisits many of her favourite themes ...
[it helps] us to see that many of our problems arise from trying to
fit everything into a single explanatory template, rather than
realising that one and the same reality can be understood from
irreducibly different points of view.
*The Tablet*
Her final answer to the question “What is philosophy for?” is that
its aim is not at all like that of the sciences. Scientists are
specialists who study parts of the world, but philosophy concerns
everybody. It tries to bring together aspects of life that have
previously been unconnected in order to make a more coherent
world-picture, which is not a private luxury but something
essential for human life.
*Philosophy Now*
[This] is a book that not only illuminates the dangers and
shortfalls of contemporary unrestrained faith in scientific and
technological supremacy, it also accentuates the integrating
qualities of philosophy which are necessary to achieve a more
exhaustive view of the world and its complexities.
*Ethical Theory and Moral Practice*
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