| 'Can we know that we're not prisoners in Plato's Cave, or deceived by Descartes' demon, or brains in a vat, or victims of the Matrix?' In this highly readable and intellectually stimulating account of Western philosophy since Plato, Timothy Chappell uses the problem of the 'inescapable self' or 'egocentric predicament' as the springboard to explore fundamental aspects of philosophy: knowledge of self, ethical objectivity and altruism, the rift between mind and world, and the problem of free will.
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