Problems from Philosophy

James Rachels was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. He wrote The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism, Can Ethics Provide Answers? And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, Problems from Philosophy, and The Legacy of Socrates: Essays in Moral Philosophy. Stuart Rachels retired from teaching philosophy in 2024. He has revised several of James Rachels’ books, including The Elements of Moral Philosophy and The Right Thing to Do. He also wrote The Best I Saw in Chess: Games, Stories and Instruction from an Alabama Prodigy Who Became U.S. Champion.

I have long used James and Stuart Rachels excellent reader for my ethics courses. It contains a fantastic sampling of essays by leading philosophers in most of the key areas in ethics. This newest edition preserves all that is best about earlier editions, while adding some very contemporary and relevant updates. These are much needed, and I will surely be using this latest edition in my courses.

• Preface About the Fifth Edition 1. The Legacy of Socrates 1.1. Why Was Socrates Condemned? 1.2. Why Did Socrates Believe He Had to Die? 2. God and the Origin of the Universe 2.1. Is It Reasonable to Believe in God? 2.2. The Argument from Design 2.3. Evolution and Intelligent Design 2.4. The First Cause Argument 2.5. The Idea That God Is a Necessary Being 3. The Problem of Evil 3.1. Why Do Good People Suffer? 3.2. God and Evil3.3. Free Will and Moral Character 4. Do We Survive Death? 4.1. The Idea of an Immortal Soul 4.2. Is There Any Credible Evidence of an Afterlife? 4.3. Hume’s Argument against Miracles 5. The Problem of Personal Identity 5.1. The Problem 5.2. Personhood at a Time 5.3. Personhood over Time 5.4. Bodily Continuity 5.5. Memory 6. Body and Mind 6.1. Descartes and Elizabeth 6.2. Materialist Theories of the Mind 6.3. Doubts about Materialist Theories 7. Could a Machine Think? 7.1. Brains and Computers 7.2. An Argument That Machines Could Think 7.3. The Turing Test7.4. From Eliza to LLMs7.5. Why the Turing Test Fails 8. The Case against Free Will 8.1. Are People Responsible for What They Do? 8.2. Determinism 8.3. Psychology 8.4. Genes and Behavior 9. The Debate over Free Will 9.1. The Experience of Freedom 9.2. The Scientific Challenge to Free Will 9.3. Libertarianism 9.4. Compatibilism 9.5. Does It Matter if We Lack Free Will? 10. Our Knowledge of the World around Us 10.1. Vats and Demons 10.2. Idealism 10.3. What Evidence for These Views Might Be Like 10.4. Descartes’ Theological Response 10.5. Direct vs. Indirect Realism 10.6. Vision and the Brain 10.7. Conclusion 11. Ethics and Objectivity 11.1. Thrasymachus’ Challenge11.2. Is Ethics Just a Matter of Social Conventions?11.3. Ethics and Science11.4. The Importance of Human Interests12. Why Should We Be Moral?12.1. The Ring of Gyges12.2. Ethics and Religion12.3. Kant on Rationality and Respect12.4. The Social Contract12.5. Morality and Benevolence12.6. Conclusion 13. Government13.1 A Parable 13.2. The Problem of Political Authority13.3. Four Proposed Solutions 13.4. Forms of Government 13.5. Political Philosophies13.6 The Authoritarian Threat13.7 Imperfections in American Democracy14. The Meaning of Life 14.1. The Problem of the Point of View 14.2. Happiness 14.3. Death 14.4. Religion and the Indifferent Universe 14.5. The Meaning of Particular Lives Appendix: How to Evaluate Arguments Notes on Sources Index About the Authors