Abstract

There are certain questions that lie at the heart of our existence: Who are we? What is this life in which we find ourselves engaged? Is “reality” as intelligible as what is before our eyes, or is there something more beyond? Philosophers have, in response to these questions, tended to favor one of two antithetical approaches: an understanding of the material world through the lens of science or a model based on the existence of a spiritual realm, a world beyond the senses.Although Nicholson does not claim to disprove a materialist account of reality, he argues that our allegiance to certain commonsense assumption about ourselves and the world—that, for example, we are rational and purposive creatures; that some courses of action are truly better than others; that human experience, on the whole, is basically trustworthy—involves us implicitly in a worldview that is spiritual in its basis, nonmaterialistic at the core.Nicholson's book is a philosophically astute exploration into the nature of human existence. In presenting the topic, he examines at length issues in ethics, philosophy of the mind, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. He introduces readers to such concepts as mind-body dualism, moral relativism, logical positivism, naturalism, and reductionism as well as to the key thinkers in these debates, from the ancient Greek philosophers to Hume, Ayer, Searle, and Swinburne.