Knowledge, Reality, and Value
by Michael Huemer
Status: Finished on 12/28/2021
Rating: 5/5
Summary
This book offers an informal introduction to philosophy. The words of the title correspond to epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. These are the topics of the book’s central chapters. Huemer attempts to summarize every important argument on the topics that he covers, but is explicit on where he stands on the issue. His tone is often self-congratulatory, mocking, and condescending (e.g. “you are probably very confused”). This can be irritating, but definitely makes the book more engaging to read.
It’s all much denser than a typical non-fiction book, so it is not worth trying to summarize it. Here are some ideas Huemer covers, and how I read his viewpoint (note the legend in the top-right):
My Own Background in Philosophy
The value of this book probably depends on the depth of your philosophical background. This is intended as a Philosophy 101 textbook, so if you were a philosophy major in college, it might be less useful to you. Personally, I took a few philosophy courses during college (applied ethics, logic, philosophy of law, and political philosophy). I have read a handful of random philosophy books, but they have mostly focused on applied ethics and political theory.
I still have had lots of previous exposure to many of these topics through conversations and private pondering. In particular, I’ve spent tons of time thinking about skepticism, theism, personal identity, and meta-ethics. Coming into this book, I thought of myself as having pretty sophisticated views on all of those topics, though well-below that of say, a typical philosophy graduate student.
If you are like me, I highly recommend this book.
My Reactions
I found this book moved my thinking on several important issues. These included:
- Increasing my confidence in the existence of the external world (from the discussion of the falsifiability of a fake reality);
- Decreasing my confidence in atheism (from the discussion on fine tuning);
- Decreasing my belief in the importance of rigorous definitions (a theme throughout the book); and
- Decreasing my tendency to dismiss strong intuitions (a theme throughout the book).
The parts of the book that I found most difficult to follow were the sections on:
- Free will;
- Personal identity; and
- Metaethics.
With respect to free will, this might just reflect my lack of background and interest. However, on personal identity and metaethics, I just wasn’t convinced by many of Huemer’s conclusions. I would be interested in reading a back-and-forth between him and another philosopher on those topics.