mdcms/modern-philosophy/pages/further-reading.md

title	section-id	sort	author	created	modified	language	description
Further Reading	conclusion	110	Prof. James Okafor	2026-03-12 09:00	2026-04-18 10:00	en	Annotated reading list for each section of the book.

Further Reading

What follows is a selective guide to further reading, organised by chapter. The aim is to provide accessible entry points into the primary literature and the best secondary sources, not to be exhaustive.

Epistemology

What is Knowledge?

• Edmund Gettier, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ (1963) — three pages that changed the field. Available freely online.
• Alvin Goldman, ‘What is Justified Belief?’ (1979) — the classic statement of reliabilism
• Ernest Sosa, A Virtue Epistemology (2007) — sophisticated virtue-theoretic approach
• Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa and Matthias Steup, ‘The Analysis of Knowledge,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — comprehensive and freely available

Perception and Reality

• John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II (1689) — the original representative realist account
• George Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) — more accessible than the Principles
• A.D. Smith, The Problem of Perception (2002) — thorough survey of the main positions

Reason and Rationalism

• René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) — the canonical starting point
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding (1704, pub. 1765) — rationalist response to Locke
• Laurence BonJour, In Defense of Pure Reason (1998) — contemporary defence of a priori knowledge

Empiricism

• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) — accessible presentation of Hume’s empiricism
• A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) — logical positivism’s most readable statement
• W.V.O. Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (1951) — influential attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction

Scepticism and Its Responses

• René Descartes, Meditations (1641) — source of the dream argument and evil demon
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (1951) — the hinge propositions account
• Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (1984) — the most serious treatment of scepticism as a genuine challenge

Theories of Truth

• William James, Pragmatism (1907) — accessible statement of pragmatist truth
• Paul Horwich, Truth (1990) — the minimalist theory
• Michael Lynch, True to Life: Why Truth Matters (2004) — accessible defence of truth pluralism

Metaphysics

Existence and Being

• Bertrand Russell, ‘On Denoting’ (1905) — the theory of descriptions
• W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (1953) — ontological commitment and naturalism
• David Armstrong, Universals: An Opinionated Introduction (1989) — accessible introduction to the universals debate

Identity and Persistence

• Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984), Part III — the most important modern treatment of personal identity
• David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) — four-dimensionalism and modal realism
• Eric Olson, The Human Animal (1997) — defence of animalism

Causation

• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 7 (1748)
• David Lewis, ‘Causation’ (1973) — the classic counterfactual account
• Judea Pearl, Causality (2009) — the interventionist framework with formal rigour

Free Will and Determinism

• Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (1983) — the consequence argument
• Harry Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’ (1969) — Frankfurt cases
• P.F. Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (1962) — the reactive attitudes

Philosophy of Mind

• David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (1996) — the hard problem and property dualism
• Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (1991) — the deflationary/illusionist view
• Frank Jackson, ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’ (1982) — Mary’s room

The Nature of Time

• J.M.E. McTaggart, ‘The Unreality of Time’ (1908) — the A-series/B-series distinction
• D.H. Mellor, Real Time II (1998) — B-theorist account
• Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time (2011) — comprehensive

Ethics

Foundations of Ethics

• J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977) — error theory
• Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions (1998) — quasi-realism
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), Section 4 — reflective equilibrium as method

Consequentialism

• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863) — the canonical text, short and readable
• Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (1979) — applied consequentialism
• Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism (1982) — the integrity and agent-centred objections

Deontological Ethics

• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) — the source
• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) — rights as side constraints
• Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Trolley Problem (1985) — the doing/allowing distinction

Virtue Ethics

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics — Book I (eudaimonia), Book II (virtues as means), Book VI (practical wisdom)
• G.E.M. Anscombe, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958) — the essay that launched the revival
• Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (1999) — best systematic contemporary account

Applied Ethics

• Peter Singer, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ (1972) — the drowning child argument
• Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (1983)
• Frances Kamm, Morality, Mortality, 2 vols. (1993, 1996) — fine-grained applied deontology

Political Philosophy

• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971) — the most important work in twentieth-century political philosophy
• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) — libertarian response
• Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ (1958) — negative vs positive liberty

Non-Western Philosophy: Entry Points

The main text is weighted toward the Western analytic tradition. The following provide accessible entry points into other traditions:

• Mark Siderits, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy (2003) — Buddhist no-self and personal identity
• Bryan Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (2011)
• Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought (1987) — Akan philosophy
• Jonardon Ganeri, The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance (2012) — Indian philosophy and analytic philosophy in dialogue