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0.1 Who is This Book for?

0.1 I wrote this book with three possible audiences in mind: philosophy majors who are taking an upper‐division metaphysics class, students in an entry‐level introduction to philosophy course, and members of the general public who are curious about philosophy and willing to work through this book outside of a classroom.

0.2 I expect that members of the first audience are going to have the easiest time with this book because they already have some philosophy under their belt and so are familiar with philosophical modes of questioning and reasoning. They will also have the guidance of a professional philosopher to help address their questions, clarify what they might be confused about, and suggest further things to think about beyond what I have the space to deal with in this book. But I have done my best to make this book as accessible as possible to budding philosophers and the general public. I have tried to present what is objectively very difficult material in an easy and comfortable way by using down to earth language and a conversational style, and by employing familiar examples to illustrate the theories and arguments discussed. I have also included links to stuff that is online that is relevant or useful to consider as you read through the book.

0.3 Even so, you should expect to work hard as you read this book. Philosophy is not easy, and that is one reason that people have been wrestling with philosophical problems for thousands of years. You can’t expect to read a philosophy book like you would read a Harry Potter novel. Instead, you should plan on periodically pausing after reading a section of the book—maybe even after reading a single paragraph—and then really thinking hard about what you’ve just read. When you pause, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the author trying to prove here?

That is, what conclusion is the author arguing for?

What are the premises he is using to reach this conclusion?

Do the premises really support the author’s conclusion?

That is, if the premises are true, is the author’s conclusion also likely to be true?

Are the premises of the author’s argument true?

If the author’s argument is not a good argument, is there a better argument for the same conclusion?

Are there good arguments against the author’s conclusion?

In short, when working through a book of philosophy you must be a critical reader. You have to be an active participant, rather than a passive absorber of words and ideas. I’ve tried to make things as easy as possible, but I can’t make an intrinsically difficult subject easy. If you aren’t willing to do the work to think through the problems, puzzles, and arguments that will be discussed in the chapters to follow, you should put the book back on the shelf. I sincerely hope you won’t though. The primary value of philosophy can only be seen by someone who has really worked through a philosophical problem.

0.4 Here is a suggestion for how to read this book critically. Read each chapter at least three times, but with deeper critical engagement each time. The first time you read the chapter, read it all the way through so that you get a feeling for the territory it covers. The second time you read the chapter, read it slowly, and pause at the end of each section so that you can write down any questions you might have about what is going on. If there is something that you don’t understand while reading the chapter on this second reading, write down what you think you don’t understand—and also guess what might be going on, and write your guess down too. If you have objections to an argument discussed, jot those down too. The third time you read the chapter, read it with the goal of finding answers to the questions you wrote down. Check to see whether any guesses you made have been confirmed or refuted. There is no guarantee that you will have all of these answers by the third read, but you should have a much clearer understanding of the issues discussed. In short, my recommendation is that you read through this book at three least times: first as a tourist, second as a detective, and third as a judge who compels the witnesses to answer your questions.

0.5 I will occasionally raise questions that I do not attempt to immediately answer. When this happens, I invite you to pause and consider these questions before reading further. How might answering them one way rather than another affect the arguments you are considering?

0.6 I have tried to make this book as accessible as I can. This is why I have made an effort to minimize the use technical jargon. But occasionally the introduction of technical terminology is important, and so sometimes I introduce some. My view on technical jargon is this: in every field, whenever it is feasible to avoid using technical phrases and stick instead to ordinary words, this is what you should do. Technical jargon should be viewed as a necessary evil, and like all necessary evils, it should be tolerated only when genuinely necessary, or at the very least, only when it is too cumbersome or annoying to do without it.

0.7 There are three situations in which it is a good idea to introduce technical jargon. First, sometimes using technical terminology lets you avoid writing out the same complicated sentences over and over again. In short, when you need an abbreviation, a bit of technical jargon can be useful. Here’s a paragraph in which the introduction of some technical terminology would have been very helpful:

A lot of people want to know what makes a life worth living. Some people think that a person’s life is worth living if and only if that person experiences a greater amount of pleasure than pain throughout the course of her life, and that a life is better or worse to the extent that the balance of pleasure over pain is higher or lower. But I think that the theory that a person’s life is worth living if and only if that person experiences throughout her life a greater amount of pleasure than pain, and that a life is a better or worse life to the extent that the balance of pleasure minus pain in that life is higher or lower, is a false theory. Here is an argument against the theory that a person’s life is worth living if and only if that person experiences throughout her life a greater amount of pleasure than pain, and that a life is a better or worse life to the extent that the balance of pleasure minus pain in that life is higher or lower. Suppose there is a person who spends the entirety of his life isolated from other human beings, acquires no interesting knowledge, and participates in no worthwhile activities, but derives a lot of pleasure from scratching himself. This person never experiences any pain. This person has a life that is barely worth living—few of us would switch places with him because we correctly think that our life is a better life. But the theory that a person’s life is worth living if and only if that person experiences a greater amount of pleasure than pain throughout the course of her life, and that a life is better or worse to the extent that the balance of pleasure over pain is higher or lower, implies that this person has a great life. So, the theory that that a person’s life is worth living if and only if that person experiences throughout her life a greater amount of pleasure than pain, and that a life is a better or worse life to the extent that the balance of pleasure minus pain in that life is higher or lower is false.

What a cumbersome paragraph to read! (It wasn’t much fun to write either.) Even if the argument contained in this paragraph is a great argument, it is really hard to figure out what that argument is because you have to keep reading the same long chunk of words. Some way of abbreviating that long chunk would help. To see this, check out this paragraph:

I trust that you see that the second paragraph is much easier to read and understand because I introduced a bit of technical jargon, specifically, the word “hedonism.” So sometimes technical terminology is necessary (or at least extremely helpful!) because it serves to abbreviate. But the jargon will be useful only if you also commit to remembering what that jargon abbreviates. So, when you come across any technical jargon, please commit yourself to remembering what it means! It will make your trek through this book more straightforward. (That said, there is a glossary at the end of the book that you may consult if you forget.)

0.8 A second reason to introduce technical terminology is that sometimes there isn’t an unambiguous word or phrase in ordinary language to use, and it can be really annoying to have to constantly use an ambiguous word and then continually remind the reader which meaning you intend. A lot of words in English have more than one meaning. Most of the time this is harmless. Sometimes it is even humorous. Suppose I say to you, “I left most of my clothes at the bank.” You might be really weirded out, at least until I clarify that I meant “river bank.” Suppose I then say to you, “I put most of my money in the bank.” You might think that I am not too bright—who buries their wallet before swimming in the river?—until I clarify that I meant “financial institution where one can deposit and withdraw money.” “Bank” is ambiguous and so you had to exert some mental energy to figure out what it meant each time it was used. I’d prefer that your mental resources don’t get used up, because you’ll want to use them thinking about philosophy instead of about what words mean. Of course, the example I just gave was kind of silly, but technical words can be useful when ambiguity is important to avoid. (We’ll see this lesson in action in Section 7.3).

0.9 There’s a third reason to introduce technical jargon, but I am going to ask that you wait until Section 2.10 to think about it. I promise I will talk about it there.

0.10 In general, when I introduce a word or phrase that is being used in a technical sense, I will italicize the first use of that word and then provide an explicit technical definition. And, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a good idea to memorize the technical jargon when it first appears so you don’t waste precious brain power remembering definitions when you should be working through philosophical puzzles.

0.11 I have also minimized the use of variables in this book. A variable is a device that people use to precisely speak in highly general terms. Sometimes philosophers use them unnecessarily, and that can result in unfortunate sentences such as, “All persons P have inherent dignity.” In that sentence, the addition of a variable “P” for persons is pointless. But sometimes introducing variables can help make an idea easier to understand. In those cases, the introduction of variables is like the introduction of technical jargon, and its introduction is justified in a similar way. Here’s an example to illustrate this. Consider the following sentence: “Every positive real number is the sum of two other real numbers such that both of them are smaller than it but one of them is bigger than the other one.” That’s a pretty clunky sentence, and it’s nowhere near as clunky as sentences like this could get. If we rewrite this with variables and use the standard technical jargon from arithmetic (“+” for “sum” and “>” for “greater than”), we get a clearer sentence: “For every positive real number n, there are two positive real numbers l and m such that l+m=n, n>l, n>m, and m>l.” I will do my best to not subject you to sentences with variables in what follows. But when I do use variables, it is because I want to speak generally yet clearly at the same time, and the easiest way to do this is with them.

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