The most important, basic, and fundamental questions in philosophy

I'm starting to read a new book this evening. It's called The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All?, edited by John Leslie and Robrert Lawrence Kuhn. It's a collection of essays. I haven't gotten to even the first one yet (still reading the intro stuff), but it did make me think to write this blog post.

There are two questions or issues in philosophy that I think are the most fundamental issues in philosophy. The two most fundamental subjects, broadly speaking, are ontology (what there actually is and why) and epistemology (what we can know and how we can know it).

The most fundamental question in ontology is why anything at all exists. I suppose one might say a more fundamental question than that is whether anything at all exists, and I would agree if I thought that was actually a problem.

The most fundamental question or problem in epistemology is the problem of the criterion. Since the basic questions of epistemology are "What do we know?" and "How do we know it?," and since the problem of the criterion deals with these two questions, I think it is the most fundamental problem in epistemology. There's nothing more basic than that.

I think the most important subject, broadly speaking, in philosophy or any other field of interest is ethics and morality. How should we live? Or is there a "should" at all? Although I think it's the most important issue, I don't think it's the most fundamental since we have to address epistemology before we can even begin to look at ethics and morality.

If I were to design an intro to philosophy class, those are three main sections it would contain. I'd probably begin with epistemology since you need that to address any other subject. Then I'd go to ontology, then ethics. These things are related, though.

In my own intro to philosophy, I don't think we covered ontology at all. At least not as a subject all its own. I mean when we talked about dualism vs. idealism, that was ontology. But we talked about dualism more in the context of the mind/body problem, and we talked about idealism more in the context of epistemology (specifically in the context of the problem of the external world).

In my section on ontology, besides talking about whether anything at all exists, I would probably want to cover what I think are the three or four major worldviews--naturalism, idealism, dualism, and maybe pan-psychism.

And now I think I'll read some in this book, then go to sleep.