An Introduction to Philosophy

Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Common thought science and reflective thought. 3. Problems touching the external world. 4. Sensations and things. 5. Appearances and realities. 6. Problems touching the mind. 7. Mind and body. 8. How we know there are other minds. 9. Other problems of world and mind. 10. Some types of philosophical theory. 11. Realism and idealism. 12. Monism and dualism. 13. Rationalism empiricism criticism and critical empiricism. 14. The philosophical sciences. 15. Psychology. 16. Ethics and aesthetics. 17. Metaphysics. 18. The philosophy of religion. 19. Philosophy and the other sciences. 20. Why we should study the history of philosophy. 21. Some practical admonitions. Index.

An investigation into the origin of words however interesting in itself can tell us little of the uses to which words are put after they have come into being. If we turn from etymology to history and review the labors of the men whom the world has agreed to call philosophers we are struck by the fact that those who head the list chronologically appear to have been occupied with crude physical speculations with attempts to guess what the world is made out of rather than with that somewhat vague something that we call philosophy today. (jacket)