by
BCcampus
Find Materials
AboutHelpContact
AboutHelpContact
Home
Textbook cover

An Introduction to Philosophy

Textbook
|
Philosophy
Textbook cover
PDF (0.94 MB)
Order Hardcopy
About
License
Support

About This Textbook

The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, the goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. Traditional theories of right action is covered in a third of these.

Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so. The end of the ethics sequence addresses social justice, what it is for one’s community to be good. Our sphere of concern expands progressively through these chapters. Our inquiry recapitulates the course of development into moral maturity.

Over the course of the text, the author has tried to outline the continuity of thought that leads from the historical roots of philosophy to a few of the diverse areas of inquiry that continue to make significant contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.

Author
W. Russ Payne
Publish Date
2015
Level
Undergraduate
License
CC BY-NC 4.0

License

This resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

You may:

Share
You may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt
You may remix, transform, and build upon the materila for any purpose, even commercially.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

As long as you follow these terms:

Give credit
You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
Don't use commercially
You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
No further restrictions
You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Other things to know:

  • The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
  • You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
  • No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Additional Support

How do I report an issue with materials?
What can I do with materials under open or Creative Commons licenses?
Do I need permission to use materials from this collection?
I want to offer print copies to my students. Is that allowed?
How do I become a reviewer for a book?

Support

Accessibility Toolkit
Adaptation Guide
Adoption Guide
Self-Publishing Guide

Contribute

Report an Error
Suggest a Textbook
Become a Reviewer

Connect With Us

Get the latest information on news and events by subscribing to the BCcampus newsletter.
Subscribe
Contact Us
Funded by:
Government of BC logo
Designed and developed by:
This site is licensed as CC-BY except where otherwise noted.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.