PREFACE
You learn a lot about your subject when you set out to introduce the range of it to people who are approaching it for the first time. That is a good part of the reason I set out to write an introduction to contemporary philosophy.
After a while, as you do the detailed work of professional research, you risk losing sight of the forest for the trees. Stepping back for a bit, to think again about the shape of the subject and where your own work fits into it, allows you not just to rediscover connections but also to make new ones. That is why undergraduate teaching is so invigorating.What I have tried to write is a reliable and systematic introduction to the central questions of current philosophical interest in the English-speaking world. (I have also pursued some less mainstream questions because I think they should be more mainstream!) A philosophy textbook can't be a record of current answers to the central questions, because philosophy is as much about deepening our understanding of a question as it is about finding an answer. So my task has been to prepare the reader to enter into contemporary debates by delineating the conceptual territory within which the many answers currently in play are located. I hope I have succeeded in making it possible for a newcomer to navigate that territory and that I have also made the navigation seem engaging, for that will mean that some of my readers will want to read more deeply in the subject. An introduction can be the beginning of a lifelong romance.
I find I have now taught philosophy on three continents, and it is astonishing how the same questions arise in such culturally disparate circumstances. I am grateful to all of my students, in Ghana, in England, and in the United States: Almost every one of them has taught me a new argument or—what is much the same—shown me an old one in a new light. This book is dedicated to them.