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Rating: 
Summary: Introduction to Philosophy
Review: Divided into five sections: Introduction (which explains methods of philosophical argument), Philosophy of Religion, Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Mind and Ethics. Each section explains the topic and gives various standpoints that have been taken, often with reference to the included bite-size excerpts (normally about 10 pages) of important writings by famous philosophers. It is accessible to complete beginners, and makes the subject of philosophy much less dautning. The readings are convenient, and save you having to read through a philsopher's entire writing to get to the important bits. The problems are
1. Sober sways readers to his own opinions on arguments that are far from conclusive.
2. He introduces his own terms - The 'Surprise Principle' and 'The Only Game in Town Fallacy' - Better if he used terms that are more widely accepted.
3. It is called 'Core Questions', but it is questionable whether either the issues of religion or the mind are questions in philosophy at all anymore, or if the former is part of theology and the latter science. Still, useful introduction and more interesting and modern than the usual chronological introductions, like Copleston or Russell
Rating:
Summary: Dude, it's core questions, and there's, like, an apple core!
Review: My philosophy teacher brought that up, and our class snickered cynically. "Snickered cynically" - is that college kids for you, or what? Hey, maybe I (a college kid myself) am being cynical now. Touchez??
Seriously, this book is a great introduction to philosophical problems. The contents are divided into four major sections, aside from a brief section introducing the reader to deductive, inductive, and abductive arguments: 1). arguments for and against the existence of God, 2). Can we really know anything, and if so, how do we know it?, 3). How is the mind related to the body, and do we have free will?, and 4). Ethics. Sober takes an essentially unbiased approach to all arguments for and against each perspective concerning each topic. There are arguably exceptions, however - for instance, I received a hint of bias from Sober toward a functionalist/identity theorist account of mind and brain (although he did admit there seems to be something special about conscious experience, or "what it's like," that this type of explanation doesn't account for). Also, Sober is clearly against subjectivism in ethics (and I totally agree with him, here).
I think Sober's explanations of some concepts are more laborious than they need to be. I don't mean to sound flip, but I typed up a study guide (in complete sentences and paragraphs, mind you) in which I summarized between 50-60 pages of Sober's section on ethics into a nice 10-page, 12-font, single-spaced, packet.
I'm surprised Sober didn't devote any space for a lecture on consciousnes (i.e. qualia, etc.) in the section on philosophy of mind. This is easily one of the more difficult, and unresolved problems for scientists - I'd assume philosophers are still talking about it, too.
If you're interested in some philosophical issues, and aren't taking a university course for which a broadly-scoped textbook like this is mandatory, then you're likely going to want to seek out information more specified to your particular area of interest (i.e. philosophy of mind). However, if you'd like a basic "lay of the land" concerning the general questions modern philosophers explore, and the methods with which they attempt to do so, then this book is a welcome read.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe I'm being too harsh?
Review: Sober's Core Questions in Philosophy is an introductory text to philosophy and includes a brief introduction to the different types of arguments philosophers use (deductive, inductive and abductive), which is followed by sections on philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Each section is made up of a number of "lectures", followed by review questions, problems for further thought, and then by some readings from prominent philosophers, and suggested further readings.
Sober is generally clear and communicative. One controversial idea introduced early on in the book is a sort-of "only-explanation" fallacy (where I suspect that reference to prior probability would be preferable; though Sober has produced some clear and critical writing elsewhere on objective prior probabilities, and a detailed treatment of philosophy of science and probability, which seems a speciality of Sober, is beyond the scope of an introduction). This putative fallacy (which is not obviously a fallacy) seems referred to rather glibly in order to avoid discussing some of the most sophisticated arguments for the existence of God in his section on philosophy of religion. This section in particular seems facile, and some of the objections to the cosmological and teleological arguments seem inadequate in light of modern developments of these arguments. Nevertheless this section is quite comprehensive in scope, covering the old ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God, Pascal's wager and the argument from evil against the existence of God. The section on epistemology may be the clearest in the book, but it is also the shortest, and includes discussions of Descartes's foundationalism, the reliability theory of knowledge and Hume's problem of induction. The lectures on philosophy of mind, in my opinion, lack depth and detail with respect to the particular theories of the mind/body relationship. The lectures on the mind/brain identity theory and functionalism are, in my opinion, too short, and there is no discussion of non-reductive materialism at all. But the discussion on freedom and determinism in this section is better (even though I disagree with him - as usual!). The section on ethics covers the important theories, including the divine command theory, ethical relativism, utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. This series of lectures ends off with a discussion of "Aristotle on the Good life".
In conclusion, the layout of the book and the style of Sober's writing are very nice. In terms of content, the book covers a wide range of topics, but some parts are better than others. Of the twenty-one readings included, some are among the most influential, but others seem less important. The discussion in philosophy of religion seems comprehensive in scope but ignoring the most important modern work; in epistemology, too short; in philosophy of mind, lacking in parts; and in ethics, Ok. If you are particularly interested in one or two of the topics covered, I would suggest introductions devoted to those topics alone.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Sober has -elsewhere- done sophisticated work (with which I still disagree) on some areas I've found treated problematically here; I have also not compared Sober's introduction to any other available; and maybe I expect too much from what is intended to be a general introduction to philosophy.
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Summary: anthology and textbook, all in one
Review: Sober, an influential philosopher of biology and science at UW-Madison, offers a clear and intelligible introduction to philosophy in this book. Chapters on religion, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics et al., are all remarkably clear and cogently argued. Just as valuable as Sober's lucid lectures are the sections of primary text that he liberally excerpts. Generous portions of Sartre, Plato, Descartes, and Mill make this text a good way to get a feel not only for the questions philosophers face, but the enormously varied styles with which they have approached and written about them.
Rating:
Summary: anthology and textbook, all in one
Review: Sober, an influential philosopher of biology and science at UW-Madison, offers a clear and intelligible introduction to philosophy in this book. Chapters on religion, ethics, epistemology, metaphysics et al., are all remarkably clear and cogently argued. Just as valuable as Sober's lucid lectures are the sections of primary text that he liberally excerpts. Generous portions of Sartre, Plato, Descartes, and Mill make this text a good way to get a feel not only for the questions philosophers face, but the enormously varied styles with which they have approached and written about them.
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