(Part 2) Best thought philosophy books according to redditors
We found 313 Reddit comments discussing the best thought philosophy books. We ranked the 113 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
David Chalmers's newest book Constructing the World takes up this challenge, particularly in the vein of Rudolf Carnap's Aufbau.
Here's the link to his book.
And here you can listen to the audio files of his 2010 John Locke lectures from which it came. In the first lecture he also talks about other contemporary philosophers who are working on projects to establish a universal logic to construct the world with a finite number of fundamental concepts, so that might give you some additional resources.
edit: added a few words to clarify
Academic philosopher here. This is a good guide for those interested in the history of philosophy, but a great deal of contemporary philosophy (including my own subfield, philosophy of mind) is not, for the most part, directly concerned with the great philosophers of history. I think someone who was interested in understanding certain problems - consciousness, linguistic meaning, the basis of ethical truth - could bypass much of the history of philosophy to begin with. That might be especially useful for those more familiar with reading scientific papers and disinclined to engage in interpreting older texts. They would certainly miss out on some historical context, but as I said, a lot of contemporary work only loosely touches on that in any case. Someone who wanted to try this approach could start by picking up a text like James Rachels' Problems From Philosophy for a topic-based overview of major debates, or start with an introductory text directly focusing on a particular issue, such as Alter and Howell's A Dialogue on Consciousness.
Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" might be decent places to start familiarizing yourself with analytic philosophy after the demise (in effect) of logical positivism.
I've seen it work in smaller group orgs (50-100) of highly self-organizing people.
Works just fine when the processes for conflict resolution are well defined.
Most people are on rails when it comes to thinking, I'd say. And just follow orders, avoiding really considering things themselves. Straight up avoiding picking and choosing what works for them, and just leaning into what's acceptable culturally, but never going further.
They take on, or buy, half-assed mutant ideas of others and never invent or create their own mental toolkits. Education is just memorizing a set of symbols that describes an idea in an efficient abstract way.
Folks do that a lot at school. Then time passes, and that framework no longer makes sense. And we're where we are now: lots of people with no ability to think outside the symbols they memorized in college or some other formative stage.
In those cases, you can't just dump a management structure like this on people.
I applaud the efforts of groups that work through the pain. Individuals need to focus on taking the hardest job of all: defining oneself on their own terms, and stop regurgitating other people's frameworks (pushed by the bourgeois academic class).
This is the best book on the subject that I've come across:
https://www.amazon.com/Education-Critical-Consciousness-Bloomsbury-Revelations/dp/1780937814
Kastrup has written some really interesting books on his ideas along these lines. One I especially like is Why Materialism Is Baloney, in which he argues that a form of idealism is a more rational and skeptical worldview than materialism.
Okay. Here's some books and stuff. The first is co written by the most famous ethicist alive.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199603693/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
https://www.amazon.com/Value-Reality-Desire-Graham-Oddie/dp/0199562385/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435241913&sr=8-1&keywords=Value%2C+Reality+and+Desire
https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Normativity-Christine-M-Korsgaard/dp/052155960X/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466476980&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=thesources+of+normativity
http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/chang/Papers/Railton-MoralRealism.pdf
http://davidobrink.com/publication/autonomy-ethics
http://law.huji.ac.il/upload/WOE.pdf
I think the question "why should I do good?" can be interpreted in a couple of ways.
One might interpret the question as saying something like, "I don't give a shit about other people; convince me to do good instead of completely ignore the needs and wishes of others!" If you're in that kind of situation - if you don't actually care about anybody or anything but yourself - then I don't think I philosophy can do much to help you. Maybe you're a psychopath.
A different way to interpret the question is something like this: you may care very much about other people and try your best to be a nice and friendly person, but there are times when the demands of morality can be extremely daunting - you might find yourself in a situation where you feel morality requires you to risk your job, your fortune, your relationships, or even your life. In these situations, it's pretty understandable for someone to ask himself, "Should I sacrifice so much for this 'moral' compulsion I feel?"
How you understand morality can affect your answer to this question. If it turned out that the demands of "morality" were nothing more than what the majority of your culture currently expects you to do, then I think it would be quite reasonable to say, "If that's what morality is, then fuck morality! I'm not going to sacrifice my life (or job, relationships, etc.) just because people expect me to do such-and-such!" (EDIT: Note that I'm not saying it would then be reasonable to act like a total jerk. You might still continue to be a nice and generous person, but not because "morality" demands it.)
The question now becomes whether there is some explanation of morality which wouldn't give you that reaction.
This is basically what Christine Korsgaard calls 'the normative question'. I think she does a great job of articulating it in her book The Sources of Normativity. Her newer book Self-Constitution explores very similar themes. Maybe you will find them interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/052155960X/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_1
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Constitution-Identity-Integrity-Christine-Korsgaard/dp/0199552800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418020161&sr=1-1&keywords=self-constitution
>why should I continue to strive to selfless?
Don't conflate being selfless with doing the good/right/moral thing. For example, in situations where fairness is a chief concern (like sharing a pie amongst a group of people), doing the right thing isn't a matter of being selfless, but is rather a matter of treating everybody equally - including yourself. Even in the situations I discussed above (where you might feel that morality requires you to make a huge sacrifice), I don't think being selfless is a good attitude to have.
Dying won't result in not thinking: because you're not a spacetime body ('avatar'), you are an eternal mathematical (dimensionless) mind connected to a body with a brain, and senses. Therefore death won't result in 'not thinking' -- thinking never stops! (Although the quality of thought, and whether your thoughts are conscious or subconscious, can certainly change.)
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Thought-Mind-Matters-Truth-ebook/dp/B076MTJQS6
>What is this and how does it work?
The phenomenological reduction is the turning of our attention to how we are experiencing, and to how things appear in experience. Once one has turned their attention to the how of their experiencing, they can start to do phenomenology, and describe their experience.
In order to get to this stage where one can be in a position to adequately describe their experience one has to put aside, suspend, or bracket what is referred to as the natural attitude. The natural attitude refers to any beliefs, judgements, opinions, or theories, that we have which go beyond what is immediately given to us in experience - and thus aren't useful for us in describing experience. The central attitude we take which goes beyond direct lived experience is that we live in a real world. That the objects that we perceive exist out there in the world, and continue to exist when we aren't perceiving them. When one returns to their rice boiling on the stove for example, it isn't a surprise that the rice has now cooked, because it is assumed that when we weren't perceiving the rice, it continued to exist and cook. Likewise if one comes across a bear in the wild one does not start to ponder whether or not the bear is something that actually exists, rather we act as if it does exist, and run the hell away from it. So we bring many beliefs, judgements, opinions, or theories about how things work, to our experience, whether they are based on science or common sense, and these are all collectively referred to as the natural attitude. Importantly this natural attitude goes beyond what is directly given in experience. Whether or not the rice continues to exist or not when we don't perceive it, or whether or not the rice we experience on the stove is real or a hallucination, are questions that go beyond what is immediately given in experience. But since the aim here is to describe experience itself, we must put aside the natural attitude and any assumptions it brings to the table. This process of bracketing the natural attitude is called the epoché (a Greek word for suspension of belief - pronounced ep-okay).
>Why does Husserl think it is the necessary first step in the practice of phenomenology?
It is a necessary first step because to engage in phenomenology is to describe experience as experienced, and in order to do that we have to put aside things that don't aid us in our descriptions, such as metaphysical questions about the nature of reality. This putting aside of things that go beyond what is immediately given in experience is the phenomenological reduction.
At this point it might help to say something about why one might want to do phenomenology in the first place. Why might one want to describe experience as it is experienced. I think this quote from Shaun Gallagher's book Phenomenology will help to answer to this question:
>Consciousness is like our window onto the world. Of course we are usually interested in the things we perceive through that window; maybe we are fascinated with the stuff that we find around us. But how do we know that we are getting a good view through our window? For example, what if the window is dirty, or colored, or distorted. What if the way the window is designed, or the window frame, keeps us from seeing everything we want to see. The phenomenologist suggests that before we study the things that we see when we look outside the window, we should first be concerned about the condition of the window – whether it’s dirty, colored, distorted, or structured in such a way that it gives us only poor access to the objects on the other side of it. Returning from the metaphor, the phenomenologist thinks that the first step in understanding the basis for knowledge is to study the conditions imposed by consciousness – and specifically the structural features of consciousness, the way it works, and perhaps the systematic distortions that might bias it.
>What are some reasons why one might disagree with Husserl, even while remaining sympathetic to the general idea of phenomenology?
One way that someone might disagree with Husserl, in terms of the general approach of phenomenology is to claim that phenomenology is a form of introspectionist psychology and is thus subject to the same criticisms of introspectionism. This is an approach Daniel Dennett seems to take. Husserl was also an anti-naturalist, that is he didn't think science was the only valid form of knowledge. In this line he didn't think (phenomenal) consciousness could naturalised, briefly because consciousness, specifically the transcendental ego, is not something that is part of the world but is taken for granted by it. So one might want to disagree with this view, be a naturalist but also use some of the techniques that phenomenology has developed, such as the phenomenological reduction. This would allow one to bring a methodology to the description of experience in for example neuroscientific experiments whilst also being a naturalist, and something like this is held by neurophenomenology. Whether or not phenomenology can be naturalised is still a subject of debate. Here's a talk from the phenomenologist Dan Zahavi who goes into this issue.
For further reading i'd check out the SEP article on Husserl, there is a section on the epoché and the phenomenological reduction. There is also an [IEP article on the phenomenological reduction](https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-red/. And for a short introduction to phenomenology Gallagher's Phenomenology and Zahavi and Gallagher's The Phenomenological Mind and Gallagher's Phenomenology are quite good.
It depends on who you ask, Hubert Dreyfus is a top Heidegger scholar and has an English commentary called Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I.
"One cannot simply choose whatever one's starting positions are arbitrarily. After all, I cannot simply say "I believe I'm the most important thing in the world, so I can justifiably steal from you or harm you for whatever purpose."
>Well why not?
If your moral theory compels you to accept an ethical proposition such as "I value myself and not others in such a way that I can (for example) permissibly torture you to death for the pleasure I derive from it" then that counts against the plausibility of your ethical theory. It's a huge bullet to bite. I'm not saying you're being inconsistent by adopting such a starting position and following through with it. But consistency isn't the only metric by which we can evaluate moral theories.
>I've not ever seen a good argument that objective, universal values exist. Or that values exist outside of our own choices at all.
I can recommend some well regarded stuff. Enoch's [Taking Morality Seriously](https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Morality-Seriously-Defense-Realism/dp/0199683174) Shafer-Landau's [Moral Realism: a Defense] (https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-Defence-Russ-Shafer-Landau/dp/0199280207/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNVDTNHGJW3FHXNR8821), Oddie's [Value, Reality and Desire] (https://www.amazon.com/Value-Reality-Desire-Graham-Oddie/dp/0199562385/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496676933&sr=1-1&keywords=Value+reality+and+desire), Huemer's [Ethical Intuitionism] (https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0230573746&pd_rd_r=0X50H65ZP0KD630TPQGQ&pd_rd_w=imPRX&pd_rd_wg=uCVqd&psc=1&refRID=0X50H65ZP0KD630TPQGQ), Parfit's [On What Matters] (https://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-Three-Derek-Parfit/dp/0198778600/ref=pd_sim_14_19?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0198778600&pd_rd_r=S7VW3J457CTBW6RT503R&pd_rd_w=Gz5f7&pd_rd_wg=Vrfn0&psc=1&refRID=S7VW3J457CTBW6RT503R)
Wedgwood's [The Nature of Normativity] (https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Normativity-Ralph-Wedgwood/dp/0199568197), Cuneo's [The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism] (https://www.amazon.com/Normative-Web-Argument-Moral-Realism/dp/019958138X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496678105&sr=1-6&keywords=terence+cuneo).
And here's some free papers you can read (too lazy to name them all, sorry):
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Boyd5/publication/240034001_How_to_Be_a_Moral_Realist/links/556f6f4308aec226830aab09/How-to-Be-a-Moral-Realist.pdf
http://www.academia.edu/4116101/Why_Im_an_Objectivist_about_Ethics_And_Why_You_Are_Too_
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=433000088031098030104101075089022124028072042008084011092124087113084016108098084005098003032035018116033080110110127020085084106080012039033080068103113067015099089032030091083096096084064089109093065079071016028099008078093021125125068072101086002&EXT=pdf
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=207103102008006126082026003080087077015002001000090086121025066112086090029103080091030096049125038001052020081100031102121000046002046043009065006112075102115099049080048111067091106094117103109111097113120126103124079110093018090122114122112110007&EXT=pdf
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~umer/teaching/intro181/readings/shafer-Landau2005EthicsAsPhilosophyADefenseOfEthicalNonnaturalism.pdf
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11245-016-9443-7?author_access_token=R2EN7zieClp6VWWEo8DyZPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6_LyD8T3yNLLNQUBcKQRpfV5lbirZE36eSIc6PLipzIUjIvQrTe9aO4meFw0oJ_Dp784B0R9TnA9qTFaNLe9oWPQUaroxf3o-BsITKWjp_6Q%3D%3D
http://www.owl232.net/5.htm
>Maybe. But if so then what are these properties?
Moral realists are traditionally divided into two camps on this. Moral Naturalists take moral properties to be natural properties, and Moral Non-Naturalists take moral properties to be sui generis, irreducible, that they cannot be wholly understood in natural terms, that moral properties supervene on the natural. (This is a woefully rough outline: here's a good place to read about the difference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/. And here's an attempt to describe what non-natural moral properties are: http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/INP.pdf
>And what is "good" and "bad". I've not seen a definition that doesn't just feel arbitrary.
It has been argued that it is precisely that these things cannot be defined that makes them what they are. See the non-naturalism SEP entry above in the section on Moore's Open Question Argument and this for more responses: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/#OpeQueArg
>And even if it's possible to believe in objective values one way or the other - the fact is that no-one's come up with an ethical system that's so convincing everyone agrees.
True, but disagreement about x doesn't necessarily mean right answers are impossible to derive.
>And the objective fact is that at present different people have different values (and good luck trying to get them to change!)
True again, but we can test the reasons why they hold these values.
"But even slaughtering a final generation is better than breeding and slaughtering generations in perpetuity."
>I think that if we're making that decision on animals behalf, without asking them - then that's still domination.
Slaughtering them? Sure is. I'm not saying that's the best solution. Just better than what we're doing now. That's how bad it is now.
>That's the thing I can't see any relation with animals at present that isn't some kind of domination.
That's why some vegans basically want to leave them be. Other vegans will argue having pets is ok, so long as the pet is amenable to being domesticated, like dogs seem to be, and provided we can provide them with a good life. In fact, helping animals like these could be argued as being a good thing.
Other vegans will maintain that some animal use is justified, like medical experimentation. (Not all, but some.) Others will argue that even killing animals for food is justifiable, provided a person does this to survive and be healthy -- or if affordable, healthful alternatives are not readily available to them.
>We all die someday. If had to choose between getting killed at 30 or not existing at all, I'd rather die at 30.
Again, this rather misses the point. The question is, is someone justified to kill you at 30 for whatever purpose, provided they were instrumental in bringing you into existence? It doesn't seem so.
>Equally there's plenty of people who know that they're about to give birth to a child with a life threatening disability, who still choose to make that life anyway. If we don't give farm animals that same choice then we ARE treating animals differently to humans.
In this case, the parents aren't really giving that child a choice. They are making the choice to bring a child into existence. Furthermore, it doesn't seem we have an ethical obligation to bring children into existence. Perhaps it's a permissible option, but it doesn't seem to be a duty. After all, I could have a child and probably provide her a good life. But if I get a vasectomy, that doesn't make me akin to a murderer. Non-existing beings cannot make choices, and they cannot be harmed.
>I don't personally think it's a bad thing to do that. But I do think that it's not possible to come up with a plan for agriculture that doesn't involve humans making decisions on animals behalf - either slaughtering them or placing further restrictions on their freedom than they have already.
Which supports the idea that we shouldn't bring them into existence in the first place.
Edit: fixed a link. And fixed "non-natural terms" to read "natural terms".
Last year I started making etched copper wrist watches. I was about to scale up to a small business and start producing them in large enough quantites to sell, and then we suddenly did a huge house extension and the contractors took over my basement workshop for eight months. I never picked it up again after the job was done...but in the last few weeks I started looking over my old notes. Maybe I'll give it another go.
Maybe. I dunno. I also just wrote a book (nonfiction) and I'm sketching out a followup book...and I've never recorded the last musical piece I composed, and my wife has me on the hook to build a platform bed for the bedroom, so I have lots of projects in my queue.
There's a lot of renewed interest in logical positivism these days. E.g., from David Chalmers, Michael Friedman...
It's a much more sophisticated philosophy than the caricatures suggest. There's been a polemic interest in caricaturing logical positivism since it was the movement we were supposed to be distancing ourselves from through the mid-to-late twentieth century. But as this polemic interest fades into history, there's naturally an increasing interest in more nuanced engagements with the movement.
People have trouble accepting this because our culture teaches us that materialism and scientism are the default truth. We're taught that the consciousness is entirely dependent on the body, or more specifically, the brain, because science can't observe anything beyond that. There's no objective truth to this view; it's only the assumption of our culture. If history had gone differently, our culture could just as easily assume the opposite.
There are tons of flaws in the ucchedavada view. Look up the hard problem of consciousness. Read about the shortcomings of materialism and physicalism. Subscribe to r/ScientismToday. There is a book called Why Materialism is Baloney. I haven't read it myself, and I think it supports a tirthika view, but it could still be interesting for you to read. The guy who wrote it also has a YouTube channel.
>Basically what I am making this post for is, is there good verifiable evidence of past lives and consciousness going from one body to the next after death. Help me understand rebirth past a metaphorical sense if I am able.
There's much evidence for rebirth in the form of personal testimony, but nothing that can compel folks who only believe in science. Past life experiences aren't consistent and repeatable enough for that to happen. In order for anyone to believe in rebirth, they have to be okay with the idea of believing in something that isn't scientifically verified.
In general, to believe in anything spiritual you needs three points.
>Please do not say that Buddha was an extraordinary being that could see past this realm of existence into others. This feels the same to me as him having psychic powers (Angulimala story.) This feels the same to me as people developing Pyrokinesis and things like telepathy. It feels like it is not at all real or likely in this existence. As always good points will be considered.
I used to be a materialist and skeptic, and now I believe psychic powers and other things. There is no scientific proof that it's real; it's something that gradually becomes plausible as you're exposed to testimonies. I'll just share this one video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0yB_yUPiOc
Sounds like it could be something by John Searle, maybe this book?: https://www.amazon.com/Minds-Brains-Science-Reith-Lectures/dp/0674576330
For 'radical' interventions on the notion of love, I would look into Alain Badiou's In Praise of Love, or bell hooks's All About Love.
I see you're still having trouble reading posts. You'll get it next time, champ. It doesn't seem to take much to boggle your mind.
Try this: http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Introduction-Analytical-Reasoning/dp/019979622X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1421025284&sr=8-10&keywords=critical+thinking
Recommended for those with misunderstandings or misgivings about a-priori rationalism : http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Pure-Reason-Rationalist-Justification/dp/0521597455
Yeah, something like that. A really detailed understanding of what he has in mind is wrapped up with his theory of intentionality, which is intricate enough that he wrote a whole book on it (creatively titled Intentionality). The quick-and-dirty version of his view is that we should distinguish between two different sorts of intentionality (i.e. representation): as-if intentionality and original intentionality. He thinks that most familiar instances of intentionality are as-if intentionality. When we say the pattern of pixels that looks like this
>cat
represents an actual cat in the world, we're talking about as-if intentionality. There's nothing intrinsic about that pattern of pixels (or about any words) that makes them about the little furry creature that lives in my house. The symbol gains its representative power in virtue of our interpretive practices: 'cat' represents a cat only in virtue of the fact that we impose some "conditions of satisfaction" on that symbolic pattern, conferring a kind of "second hand" representative capacity on the world via our interpretation of it.
As-if intentionality, then, only exists because of the practices of beings with original or intrinsic intentionality: i.e. conscious beings. He thinks that our mental states, in contrast to things like words, represent the world intrinsically--they're "about" other things just in virtue of what they are. He thinks that our mental states' original intentionality derives from their qualitative or phenomenal character: my idea (or concept) of a cat is about cats in virtue of the fact that I have a bunch of cat-centric impressions, ideas, and conscious experiences that are all keyed to that mental representation.
So the sense in which digital computers can never "understand" Chinese in the relevant way is deeply tied to the fact that they're not conscious. For Searle, genuine (that is, semantic) understanding consists in the ability to confer as-if intentionality on otherwise inert symbols. Only those things that have phenomenal experiences can do that, because only those things have mental states with intrinsic intentionality.
This lets him give a completely a priori argument against strong AI. I have incorrigible first-person access to my conscious experiences, and I can just immediately see that they have semantic content, because when I think about the word 'cat,' it conjures up all sorts of qualitative experiences I've had with cats. This means that however my brain works, I just know it's doing something more than just manipulating symbols. Digital computers are (by definition) pure symbol-manipulation engines, so I know a priori that my brain is doing something that digital computers by definition can't do. Therefore, a computer program can never constitute a mind like mine. QED.
And a good collection of responses to Strawson's paper http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Its-Place-Nature-Physicalism/dp/1845400593
If you're looking for contemporary works, recent (and quite different) defenses of rationalism in philosophy can be found in Lawrence Bonjour's In Defense of Pure Reason and Robert Brandom's Reason in Philosophy.
A good book on the subject you bring up is Self-Constitution by Christine Korsgaard, a moral philosopher at Harvard. She argues that reason is the tool by which we determine whether our actions are good or bad, and that this process of reason is the constituting action of the creation of our own identities. That is to say, we are moral individuals to the extent that we use reason to make decisions about our actions. Conversely, when we allow our actions to be dictated by irrational animalistic emotional drives, we are acting outside the realm of reason and therefore outside of morality and outside of individuality. This perspective does not reject the value of emotional or sensible experience, but in fact argues that collection of information from the senses is necessary to make moral choices. Logic is the process by which sensible data is converted into moral choices. Emotion is excluded from the decision-making process, not from the information-gathering process. Logic is the tool by which we live morally in the universe, but as Spock said, "logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end."
So with mind uploading, there are actually several procedures we could be talking about. If you're interested in taking an in depth look at some various procedures, Keith Wiley's book A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading is a great place to start.
The Ship of Theseus has already been mentioned. This type of procedure for uploading a mind is called gradual replacement. The procedure where you copy the brain and instantiating a new version of it is called scan-and-copy.
If you accept that there has to be some level of continuity (temporal, psychological, etc.) for personal identity to persist, then the scan-and-copy procedure would not transfer personal identity to the new instantiation. It could be possible to transfer personal identity through a gradual replacement procedure, but there would be no way to test. Although others might hold different views than me (e.g. The Fallacy of Favoring Gradual Replacement Over Scan-And-Copy).
Keep in mind that the Ship of Theseus thought experiments generally have to do with object identity, which doesn't really help us understand what it takes to to transfer personal identity. There are a lot of unknowns at this point in the domain of mind uploading.
---
As a side note, I'm working on a series of documents that outlines these topics (among other things). I also introduce some of my own ideas for mind uploading, personal identity, and mind uploading procedures. If anyone is super interested, here's the link to the documents:
Lifetimes Infinity Roadmap Series - Master Document List
Just know that many of the documents are still under development and might be very very messy. If in doubt, just stick to the "draft ready documents". The one on mind uploading is the one I'm working on right now, so be warned :)
You could start with a modern overview and fan out from there (following threads from various references).
Or - obviously - you could start taking some courses (but that's - obviously - not an option for everyone).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuition/
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198807520.001.0001/oso-9780198807520
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-without-Intuitions-Herman-Cappelen/dp/0199644861
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/phpr.12106
"One could say: my love's main enemy, the one I must defeat, is not the other, it is myself, the "myself" that prefers identity to difference, that prefers to impose its world against the world re-constructed through the filter of difference."
From In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou
If you like Harris and Pinker's philosophical stuff, check out John Searle, Noam Chomsky, and Dan Dennett (Dennett wrote a harsh review of Harris' book on free will). They're like Harris and Pinker, but better.
Hm, I enjoyed The Education of Little Tree as a book that is somewhat like Sophie's World, but it's not meant to be a deeply philosophical work.
Check out A Dialog on Consciousness. Disclaimer, I have no idea if it's good, but it's been on my to-read list for a while.
Hey, looking for:
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Introduction-Analytical-Reasoning/dp/019979622X
Thanks in advance.
Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:
Link: Self-Constitution
|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|
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>It isn't.
It is, I think I already linked Strawson's book http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Its-Place-Nature-Physicalism/dp/1845400593
and more reading https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25286-consciousness-and-its-place-in-nature-does-physicalism-entail-panpsychism/
>In that panpsychism denies while reductive physicalism asserts that mental properties are reducible to physical properties.
This formulation of physicalism becomes nonsensical when it rejects a non-reducible phenomenon of the world as being "non-physical" which is why panpsychism is a means of reconciliation by means of elucidating that what we call "mental" is fundamentally physical. In this conception, mental properties cannot be reduced to physical properties because mental properties are identical to physical properties.
>It's quite odd that you bold "exclusively" as if to emphasize that that's what you're saying, but then offer the parenthetical gloss that you're talking about what they "necessarily" do--when what they necessarily do and what they exclusively do are two quite different matters.
You misunderstand, in the sentence "necessarily" is a modification of "exclusively attribute", not of "attribute" alone. It was to explain that panpsychism can exclusively attribute mental states to everything, but does not necessarily do that.
Note that I was responding to a particular claim of yours that property dualism is not a form of panpsychism. For this to be true, panpsychism must exclusively attribute mental states to everything, and it otherwise can be completely compatible with property dualism.
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Education for Critical Consciousness (Bloomsbury Revelations) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780937814/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_k.DEAbHFWGAX4
Rodya mentioned Dreyfus's podcast, I think his book Being in the World is one to the best commentaries around. (not really a synopsis though, but definitely helped my understanding).
I took a semester with him. He's a character, sure. I wasn't that interested after the hype, wasn't a philosophy student. How about his 3 books with this face on the cover- http://www.amazon.com/Intentionality-An-Essay-Philosophy-Mind/dp/0521273021 don't judge a book by the cover?
Plus any student who wasn't a complete half-wit realized he made college more expensive. Look up Searle and rent control.
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