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The last major book from one of Britain´s most respected and popular female philosophers, Mary Midgley. What Is Philosophy for? asks the big questions at the heart of philosophy and doesn´t shy away from coming up with some unsettling answers

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Why should anybody take an interest in philosophy? Is it just another detailed study like metallurgy? Or is it similar to history, literature and even religion: a study meant to do some personal good and influence our lives?
In her last published work, Mary Midgley addresses provocative questions, interrogating the various forms of our current intellectual anxieties and confusions and how we might deal with them. In doing so, she provides a robust, yet not uncritical, defence of philosophy and the life of the mind.

This defence is expertly placed in the context of contemporary debates about science, religion, and philosophy. It asks whether, in light of rampant scientific and technological developments, we still need philosophy to help us think about the big questions of meaning, knowledge, and value.

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Part 1. The Search for Signposts

Chapter 1. Directions
Chapter 2. Do Ideas Get Out Of Date?
Chapter 3. What is Research?
Chapter 4. Clashes of Method
Chapter 5. What is Matter?
Chapter 6. Quantum Queries
Chapter 7. What is Progress?
Chapter 8. Perspectives and Paradoxes: Rousseau And His Intellectual Explosives
Chapter 9. Mill And The Different Kinds Of Freedom
Chapter 10. Making Sense Of Toleration

PART 2. Tempting Visions of Science

Chapter 11. The Force of World-Pictures
Chapter 12. The Past Does Not Die
Chapter 13. Scientism; The New Sedative

PART 3. Mindlessness and Machine Worship

Chapter 14. The Power-Struggle
Chapter 15. Missing Persons
Chapter 16. Oracles

PART 4. Singularities and the Cosmos

Chapter 17. What Kind of Singularity?
Chapter 18. Can Intelligence be Measured?
Chapter 19. What is Materialism?
Chapter 20. The Cult of Impersonality
Chapter 21. Matter and Reality
Chapter 22. The Mystique of Scientism
Chapter 23. The Strange World-Picture
Conclusion: One World but Many Window

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Midgley, Mary
Mary Midgley (1919 - 2018) was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University, UK until she retired in 1980. One of the leading moral philosophers of the 20th century, Midgley wrote extensively on human nature, science, ethics, animals, and the environment. Her books include Beast and Man, Heart and Mind, Animals and Why They Matter, Are You an
Illusion? and Wickedness. She published her final work What is Philosophy For? with Bloomsbury.

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