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Knowledge, Reality, and Value
- A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy
- Narrated by: Nathan Nguyen
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
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Publisher's summary
The world's best introduction to philosophy, Knowledge, Reality, and Value explains basic philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, such as: How can we know about the world outside our minds? Is there a God? Do we have free will? Are there objective values? What distinguishes right actions from wrong actions? The text clearly explains the most important arguments about these things, and it does so a lot less boringly than most books written by professors.
“My work is all a series of footnotes to Mike Huemer.” –Plato
“This book is way better than my lecture notes.” –Aristotle
“When I have a little money, I buy [Mike Huemer’s] books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” –Erasmus
Contents
Preface
Part I: Preliminaries
1. What Is Philosophy?
2. Logic
3. Critical Thinking, 1: Intellectual Virtue
4. Critical Thinking, 2: Fallacies
5. Absolute Truth
Part II: Epistemology
6. Skepticism About the External World
7. Global Skepticism vs. Foundationalism
8. Defining “Knowledge”
Part III: Metaphysics
9. Arguments for Theism
10. Arguments for Atheism
11. Free Will
12. Personal Identity
Part IV: Ethics
13. Metaethics
14. Ethical Theory, 1: Utilitarianism
15. Ethical Theory, 2: Deontology
16. Applied Ethics, 1: The Duty of Charity
17. Applied Ethics, 2: Animal Ethics
18. Concluding Thoughts
Appendix: A Guide to Writing
Glossary
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, where he has taught since the dawn of time. He is the author of a nearly infinite number of articles in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy, in addition to seven other amazing and brilliant books that you should immediately buy.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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About Behaviorism
- By: B.F. Skinner
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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About Behaviorism is about the controversial philosophy known as behaviorism, written by its leading exponent.
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Refreshing and concise
- By Autumn and Sam on 07-30-22
By: B.F. Skinner
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The Dream of Reason, New Edition
- A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
- By: Anthony Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Anthony Gottlieb
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. Author Anthony Gottlieb looks afresh at the writings of the great thinkers, questions much of conventional wisdom, and explains his findings with unbridled brilliance and clarity. From the pre-Socratic philosophers through the celebrated days of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, up to Renaissance visionaries like Erasmus and Bacon, philosophy emerges here as a phenomenon unconfined by any one discipline.
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Bias spoils the work.
- By MC on 08-21-20
By: Anthony Gottlieb
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Deep Thought
- 42 Fantastic Quotes That Define Philosphy
- By: Gary Cox
- Narrated by: Richard Mitchley
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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As Douglas Adams points out, if there is no final answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" 42 is as good or bad an answer as any other. Indeed, 42 quotes might be even better! Gary Cox guides us through 42 of the most misunderstood, misquoted, provocative, and significant quotes in the history of philosophy, providing witty and compelling commentary along the way.
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Best philosophy intro ever
- By Fabian on 04-14-18
By: Gary Cox
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Philosophy of Mind
- An Audio Guide
- By: Edward Feser
- Narrated by: Andrea Powell
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lively and entertaining introduction to the philosophy of mind, Edward Feser explores the questions central to the discipline, and relates them not only to the human brain and its capacity for thought, but also to the increasing sophistication of artificial intelligence. This in-depth primer is an account of all the most important and significant attempts that have been made to answer the riddles of consciousness and thought.
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Author is a Christian apologist, and it shows
- By David Penn on 08-30-15
By: Edward Feser
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The Dream of Enlightenment
- The Rise of Modern Philosophy
- By: Anthony Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Anthony Gottlieb
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Dream of Enlightenment, Anthony Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of thought, taking us to northern Europe in the wake of its wars of religion and the rise of Galilean science. In a relatively short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy.
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Enlightenment meets Neuroscience
- By Rodger on 12-05-19
By: Anthony Gottlieb
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Mind and Cosmos
- Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
- By: Thomas Nagel
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete.
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Intellectual honesty at its finest
- By Alice Walker on 02-15-18
By: Thomas Nagel
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The Problems of Philosophy
- By: Bertrand Russell
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Problems of Philosophy discusses Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy and the problems that arise in the field. Russell's views focus on knowledge rather than the metaphysical realm of philosophy. The Problems with Philosophy revolves around the central question that Russell asks in his opening line of Chapter 1 - Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
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Either be smart or be not smart
- By Gary on 01-18-18
By: Bertrand Russell
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Proving History
- Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
- By: Richard Carrier
- Narrated by: Richard Carrier
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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This in-depth discussion of New Testament scholarship and the challenges of history as a whole proposes Bayes's Theorem, which deals with probabilities under conditions of uncertainty, as a solution to the problem of establishing reliable historical criteria. The author demonstrates that valid historical methods - not only in the study of Christian origins but in any historical study - can be described by, and reduced to, the logic of Bayes's Theorem. Conversely, he argues that any method that cannot be reduced to this theorem is invalid and should be abandoned.
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Good Book, Difficult Format
- By Erin Branscome on 08-21-15
By: Richard Carrier
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The Devil's Delusion
- Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions
- By: David Berlinski
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Militant atheism is on the rise. In recent years, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have produced a steady stream of best-selling books denigrating religious belief. These authors are merely the leading edge of a larger movement that includes much of the scientific community. In response, mathematician David Berlinski, himself a secular Jew, delivers a biting defense of religious thought.
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Riddled With Problems
- By Ben on 11-01-13
By: David Berlinski
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Great work, mediocre audio version
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What listeners say about Knowledge, Reality, and Value
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- Faycal Ikhouane
- 02-18-24
Decent book, speculative field
The author presents some philosophical issues that he considers important in his field and provided a relatively clear introduction to them. He stresses that - against the views of some - philosophie did evolve, and that many issues debated in today's philosophy were not debated some centuries ago. Whilst this is true, my feeling - after having lestened to the audiobook - is that the process of producing philosophical thinking did not change: using logic alone. Let me give an example: to study the issue of the existence or non-existence of God, logical arguments are used, and the result - as the author sees is - is that the issue can neither be proved nor disproved. This is the ways things were centuries ago, although with different - or similar - arguments. There is no mention in the book of the huge advances of the history of religions: based on documentary and archaeological evidence - amongst many other fields - the history of religions describes how religious ideas evolved through time and space, and by slow accumulation of evidence it becomes clear that the idea of a God or divinity is a human product (see for instance "Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses" by Mircea Eliade).
Regarding the issue of determinism we have to differentiate between physical objects and biological ones. The study of physics was once part of philosophy (in Ancient Greece); this is no longer the case. Physics is a specialized field of which the standard philosopher knows little and it would be fair not to take the views of the philosophers on the subject any seriously. When we talk about determinism for biological beings, part of the field is tackled by evolutionary biology and its mathematical description, whilst the part relative to us today mainly comes from religious sources (free will against an all-mighty God). Since the history of religious has already solved the issue of the non-existence of God, this issue of determinism applied to the human will decays.
The last reduct where philosophy may still breathe is the field of Ethics. Even here, there are subfields that are emerging with scientific methods (history of ethics, objective relationships between societies and the ethical beliefs they hold, etc). To me, what is miore interesting is to understant how we get the equilibria within societies between the different factions that hold different views about ethics, than get involved in the opinions of each of the factions participating in these equilibria. This said, it seems unavoidable that some debate will arise and that some arguments will have to be presented by these different factions; so it seems that philosophy still have some room in modern society.
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- Nicholas Valiarde
- 04-03-24
Narration was entirely too fast
The book itself was a good overview of the current state of philosophy, with a fair grounding in foundational principles of logic and key definitions explained. While the author offers some conclusions that I believe are founded on flawed propositions—pace, Huemer, especially regarding the nature individual identity—the candid writing style and careful explanations makes this a good selection for a layperson's introductory philosophy textbook.
However the narration for this book was conducted at a pace incompatible with its information density. I wound up slowing the playback speed—and just accepting the occasional skipping that came along with that—for the entire book, up to .75% of the original speed for some especially challenging passages, and I would often have to back up and listen again to entire logical chains because I had been whisked through them too quickly. Listener, be advised: this recording is not the 11-hour experience implied by the raw playback time.
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