Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

An introduction to philosophy organised around problems rather than history, written for readers with no background. Blackburn presents philosophy as reflection on the ideas we already live by, and works through eight topics: knowledge, mind, free will, the self, God, reasoning, the world, and what to do. Each chapter starts from a classic text, most often Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume or Kant, and then tests the argument. Readers meet Cartesian doubt and the evil demon, the mind-body problem and the problem of other minds, determinism and responsibility, personal identity over time, the cosmological and design arguments, Hume on miracles, the problem of induction, the gap between appearance and reality, and finally the sources of ethics. The tone is lively and conversational, but the arguments are pressed hard, and Blackburn often takes a side, usually a broadly Humean one.

It teaches how to think through a philosophical argument, not just what famous people believed, and it remains one of the clearest problem-based introductions in English.