(Part 3) Top products from r/askphilosophy

A book that might interest you and him is Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man. Marcuse was a Marxist thinker, and he wrote that book as a criticism of what the individual has become in advanced industrial society. He is a clear and entertaining writer, and he has a lot of examples to support his ideas.

A much harder book from a non-Marxist perspective is Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason. Cavell is a tricky writer--he's hard to read quickly, and he doesn't have totally organized arguments. Nonetheless, he talks a lot about what it means to be human and what it means to deny one's own or another's humanity. I'd only recommend this book if your partner knows something about philosophy already.

Then there is a thinker like Emmanuel Levinas, who writes about how it is to experience other people. He's also a bit tough to read, but he has a fascinating and highly influential idea of our ethical responsibility to other people. His classic work is Totality and Infinity.

Existentialism talks a great deal about what it is to be human. The thinker Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that there is no human nature, only a human condition. His big book is Being and Nothingness.

The German thinker Hannah Arendt might just be the closest fit to your partner's interest. She wrote a book called The Human Condition that is all about what it means to act.

One last suggestion: it's not quite philosophy per se, but if your partner is interested in technology and media and the effects it has on people, then Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man might be a good gift. McLuhan is not a hard writer, and he has short chapters. He's a bit of a funny writer though, not only because he makes jokes but because he sometimes makes claims without even an attempt to back them up. However, the book is a blast for someone who is interested in how, say, the electric lightbulb changed human life. Of the books I've mentioned here, it's probably the easiest read.

Hope those suggestions help. By the way, if you could give a sense of your partner's education level it would help. As I said, the Cavell book is probably best for someone who has studied philosophy in depth already. On the other hand, I think a beginner could get into McLuhan and work through Marcuse.

>Perhaps they predate the official establishment of the "divide", but, then again, so do Nietzsche and Hegel, as well as Green and Bradley, and nobody seems to have any trouble assigning those to the continental and analytic traditions, respectively. Am I missing something?

It's anachronistic to assign these philosophers to the continental or analytic traditions. It is true that Nietzsche had more of an influence on the continental tradition, but the British Idealists don't neatly fall in line with either tradition, and Hegel was influential in both.

>as best I can tell, the division is purely political and not grounded in any substantial difference of either focus or methodology.

Belief that the division is unsubstantial is currently fashionable, although people generally admit that methodology and focus are different. This belief is just completely and utterly wrong. This honestly feels like an Emperor's New Clothes situation. I couldn't tell you how or historically what exactly happened (entire books have been written exploring the topic), but it seems extremely clear to me that at best, these are separate and mostly non-intersecting philosophical traditions. They are so different that it seems they are in fact entirely different academic subjects. That's not to say that continental philosophy has no intrinsic value, it certainly does, a value which is perhaps best described as some kind of abstract poetry, giving an of impression of insight, or as a kind of writing about certain salient things of interest to that literary tradition. It even has value to analytic philosophy (as do most other academic subjects), but this value is a little like that derived from Eastern philosophy, another separate tradition (even more so) -- it has to first be translated into familiar terms and methodology in order for it to be of any actual use within debates and topics in the contemporary analytic community.

For the most part, continental and analytic philosophers are interested in completely different things, and achieve their ends in extremely different ways. Here's a snapshot of issues analytic philosophers find important or interesting. From what I can tell, continental philosophers have very little to say that would add to current debates or be of any interest to analytic philosophers in any of these topics. Something equivalently true could be said of continental philosophy, that analytics for instance have absolutely nothing to add to the current literature in Speculative Realism, or in continental Christian theology, or whatever. Analytics tend to be rigorous in their arguments, using clearly defined definitions and valid deductions. Clarity of writing is a key virtue of good analytic writing -- there is typically little ambiguity on what a writer meant and said. This allows for cooperative cumulative progress in the formulation and assimilation of results. Continental philosophers tend to write dialectically, often produce large systems and write with what often appears to be deliberate obscurity. Reading continental philosophy can be a frustrating experience for an analytic philosopher, who is trained to discriminate between and be extremely careful with exact wordings, to carefully analyze premises and the formal logical structure of arguments, to be suspicious when this structure is obfuscated and to be skeptical of undefended claims. Analytics in their specialization recognize how monumentally difficult it is to prove even one small claim in one specialty, so they are skeptical of philosophers who make overconfident and sweeping assertions about a vast selection of diverse topics. I understand that analytic philosophy is often considered to be myopic, restricting and irrelevant by continentals. I think that's wrong, and in response I would say that continental philosophy is very bad analytic philosophy. Much is often said about how the two traditions should do more to come together, and I think that's a good end, but this just cannot be done without first recognizing the deep differences that exist between the two traditions.

I would say yes, but with a few caveats. I myself am a bit of an autodidact, and I study philosophy as a hobby in my free time. I am currently a university student who works part time, so I sympathize with your concerns about limited time and energy. Some things I think you should be aware of:

• Studying on your own will be slower and generally less efficient than getting a degree. You won’t have the same obligations or motivators that university students have.

• You will lack access to resources that university students have. This includes both academic material (journals, essays, books) but also an environment with instructors and fellow students to consult when you’re confused.

• You will not have the benefit of writing essays and having them graded by an instructor.

Despite this, I still think there is a lot to be gained from self study. You have the freedom to pursue whatever you want, and you can go at a pace that’s comfortable to you. Plus there’s something to be said about challenging yourself and doing constructive things in your free time.

It may be best to start with introductory texts like Copleston’s history to get a general idea for each philosopher and to find what interests you. If you are still interested in the thinkers you mentioned, you should move on to primary sources. I’d recommend the following reading plan which should cover some of the “essentials” and has a sort of progression from one thinker to the next:

1. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle
   
2. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings by Descartes
   
3. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals by Hume
   
4. Critique of Pure Reason by Kant
   
   These four books will give you a solid foundation in western philosophy. You have the fundamental ideas and questions from the Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle, rationalism from Descartes, empiricism from Hume, and the synthesis of the two in Kant. Moving on:
   
   
5. Logical Investigations by Husserl
   
   
6. Being and Time by Heidegger
   
   
7. Being and Nothingness by Sartre
   
   These three cover your interests in phenomenology, from its foundations in Husserl, to Heidegger’s magnum opus, to Sartre’s interpretation and his development of existentialism. Finally we have:
   
   
8. Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer & Adorno
   
   
9. Speech and Phenomenon by Derrida
   
   These two cover Horkheimer & Adorno’s critical take on enlightenment rationality and Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserlian phenomenology.
   
   None of these books are particularly easy (especially Husserl and Heidegger), but I encourage you to try! Take it one book at a time, read slow and take notes, and consult the IEP and SEP if you’re confused, watch YouTube lectures, or ask on this subreddit.
   
   Good luck!

>I didn't know continental vs analytical terms are outdated.

Dated perhaps isn't the right term, but just know that they do have certain limits.

As for post-WWII philosophy, there's a lot, but I'm going to let you know that much of it can't be well-understood without a basic understanding of Heidegger, much of whose thought was pre-WWII. His best known work is Being and Time, but it's one of the most challenging texts in the western canon. For an easier introduction to prep you for it, I'd recommend some of his early lecture material, such as The Hermeneutics of Facticity and The History of the Concept of Time. This could just be me, but I've found his lectures to be generally easier than his primary texts. If you want to trace the development of his thought, much of which was post-WWII, the Basic Writings anthology has a number of essays by him. While nothing really eclipsed Being and Time, much of his later thought is still studied. I'd say the most significant work of his later career was his Contributions to Philosophy, which took the form of briefer aphorisms and anecdotes, more similar to Nietzsche in style, but still grounded in much of his own thought and terminology.

If you want to move away from Heidegger, some of the big texts would be Gadamer's Truth and Method (Gadamer was a student of Heidegger's, so the former's thought is very deeply influenced by the latter), Sartre's two texts Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is a Humanism (note the similarity to Sartre's title with Heidegger's Being and Time, and also note that Heidegger would respond rather critically to Sartre's Existentialism with an essay in the Basic Writings), and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (a key feminist work heavily influenced by Sartre and Heidegger).

Beyond this my knowledge is a bit scattered, as I've only just completed undergrad. I really would recommend David West's text as a decent overview that will guide you in what the key texts are, as well as good secondary sources. I've not brought up Derrida, who was also huge, as well as Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Michel Foucault and Charles Taylor just to name a few. On top of those, there's a ton of pre-WWII stuff that's hugely important for understanding these thinkers, such as the ideas of Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, and the whole field of psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung and Lacan). Then there's postmodernism, postcolonialism, the various strands of feminism, and tons more. The more I type, the more I'm just reminding myself how little I know about this area (even though it's the area I'm most interested in).

Let me know if there's anything more you need to know or if you want to know a decent secondary source.

This is a good introductory essay by Nick Bostrom from The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence. And this is a relevant survey essay by Drew McDermott from The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.

If folks aren't taking well to the background reading, they might at least do alright jumping to Section 5 from the Descartes' Discourse (they can use this accessible translation). One little snippet:

>I worked especially hard to show that if any such machines had the organs and outward shape of a monkey or of some other animal that doesn’t have reason, we couldn’t tell that they didn’t possess entirely the same nature as these animals; whereas if any such machines bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated as many of our actions as was practically possible, we would still have two very sure signs that they were nevertheless not real men. (1) The first is that they could never use words or other constructed signs, as we do to declare our thoughts to others. We can easily conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words that correspond to bodily actions that will cause a change in its organs (touch it in one spot and it asks ‘What do you mean?’, touch it in another and it cries out ‘That hurts!’, and so on); but not that such a machine should produce different sequences of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence—which is something that the dullest of men can do. (2) Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would be bound to fail in others; and that would show us that they weren’t acting through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular disposition for each particular action; hence it is practically impossible for a machine to have enough different •organs to make •it act in all the contingencies of life in the way our •reason makes •us act. These two factors also tell us how men differ from beasts [= ‘non-human animals’].

That sets the stage for historically important essay from Turing of Turing-Test-fame. And that essay sets up nicely Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. Scientific America has two accessible articles: Searle presents his argument here, and the Churchland's respond.

As always, the SEP and IEP are good resources for students, and they have entries with bibliographies on consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, AI, computational theories of mind, and so on.

There are countless general introductions to philosophy of mind. Heil's Philosophy of Mind is good. Seager's introduction to theories of consciousness is also quite good, but maybe more challenging than some. Susan Blackmore's book Conversations on Consciousness was a very engaging read, and beginner friendly. She also has a more textbook-style Introduction that I have not read, but feel comfortable betting that it is also quite good.

Searle's, Dennett's and Chalmer's books on consciousness are all good and influential and somewhat partisan to their own approaches. And Kim's work is a personal favorite.

(sorry for the broad answer--it's a very broad question!)

Sartre presented a lecture called "Existentialism and Humanism," which can now be found in print as Existentialism is a Humanism. It's almost like an Existentialism manefesto, per se. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus is a good treatise on existentialism (Absurdism, really, but it'll do).

I would not hesitate to start reading fiction novels that have Existentialist themes. Camus' The Stranger, Sartre's Nausea, and Dostyevsky's Notes From the Underground are just a few that will find your studies well.

As for secondary literature, the only text I can knowledgeably recommend is Existentialism For Dummies, as I'm currently working my way through it. It's actually not as bad as you might think coming from the "For Dummies" series. It doesn't go too in-depth, and ideas are very concise and oftentimes humorous.

I have also heard good things about David Cogswell's Existentialism For Beginners, though I have never read it myself.

If your niece feels comfortable with this level of writing and philosophical examination, it is almost imperative to read Kierkegaard's Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, and Sartre's Being and Nothingness, among others. It is good to have some background understanding of Kant and perhaps have a few essays by Schopenhauer under your belt leading up to the more rigorous academics like Heidegger and Hegel.

Good luck, and happy reading!

Wow ... yes, with the caveat that I'm far from the best historian on these boards. Maybe /u/wokeupabug or /u/Son_of_Sophroniscus can do better. Many students find the Nicomachean Ethics clear, philosophically informative, and stimulating for advice about how to live your life. But there are accessible and interesting passages from most of his works. One good approach is to use an Aristotle reader, since the editor will have selected appropriate texts already. I read Ackrill's A new Aristotle reader as an undergraduate and liked it, but you should shop around for more informed suggestions.

I like the idea of reading Aristotle alongside contemporary commentary. Here I'm even more hesitant to make my own recommendations, but I found Lear's Aristotle: The desire to understand extremely interesting and easy to follow.

One thing to bear in mind is that there are many good contemporary philosophers from whom you can learn as well. David Lewis, Saul Kripke, Judy Thompson, and David Kaplan are a few known for admirable clarity and depth of thought. It's hard to go wrong with their articles, with the exception that some are on technical or esoteric topics, so if it looks foreboding just skip it.

u/LeeHyori provides a great outline of the main aspects of logical positivism, e.g. the verification principle, so I won't bother addressing the 'what is logical positivism' question in detail. (The only things I would add are things like a general tendency towards: reductionism, formalism, a Wittgensteinian metaphilosophy, support of the sciences and unifying them, etc). What I want to bring up is about the objections to LP and positivists today, like Dennett.

>From my understanding, it was because their main idea seemed contradictory ("only verifiable things can be true" is itself not verifiable).

Aside from the self-refuting nature of the verification principle that you point out here, there were other problems as well, such as the theory-ladenness of observation, consequent problems with logical positivism's reductionism and empiricism (e.g., observation/protocol statements are not purely empirical), the holistic nature of confirmation, the [difficulties defining what an analytic statement is/the circular nature of the concept] (http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html), and the apparent irreducibility of the sciences. So you're right that LP suffered tremendously by relying on a self-undermining theory of meaning, but there were other serious problems, which gave rise to a ton of awesome new literature on the subject.

>However, has there been any prominent philosophy that has grown out of logical positivism that is in itself a stronger version of the positivist's philosophy?

I don't think anyone that famous became more positivist, in the sense of embracing a more extreme verification principle, but Dennett has said publicly he is kind of a closet verificationist - examples of which are in [Consciousness Explained] (http://www.amazon.ca/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661). He talks for instance about how his analysis of the inverted qualia argument supports "the shockingly "verifications" or "positivist" view that the very idea of inverted qualia is nonsense--and hence that the very idea of qualia is nonsense" (p.390 in my edition). He also mentioned we're all verificationists in some sense, using the example of impossible-to-detect gremlins in the engine of your car - but here he seems to be more saying the obvious claim that we need evidence to verify hypotheses, not that unverifiable = nonsense.

In any case, Dennett's definitely one of the biggest philosophers still writing today who inherited the positivist tradition, and if we can still use the term I'd say he's one of the most positivist philosophers alive.

There's probably a few ways you could go about expanding your knowledge base. The two that seem most fruitful are

1. Reading for a deeper understanding of the topics that you're already familiar with.
   
   
2. Ranging more broadly into other areas that may interest you.
   
   If (1), then I'd probably suggest one of two courses. Either, (a) read the stuff that influenced the existential thinkers that you've listed, or (b) read some literature dealing with issues related to the thinkers you've listed.
   
   For (a) I'd suggest the following:
   
   

• Anything by Kant
  
• (In the case of Kierkegaard) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or his Aesthetics
  
• (For Nietzsche) Emerson's essays, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, or Spinoza's Ethics
  
• Maybe some Freud for the later thinkers? Civilization and its Discontents is really good.
  
  For (b) it's really a mixed bag. I'd suggest going through the SEP articles on the thinkers you've listed and looking into some good secondary literature on them. If you're super interested in Nietzsche, I'd definitely suggest reading Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality. I really couldn't tell you more unless you told me something more specific about your interests.
  
  If (2), then I suppose I'd suggest one of the following:
  
  
• Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy for a good, broad introduction to Chinese Thought
  
• The Analects of Confucius. This translation is excellent
  
• A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
  
• Heidegger's Being and Time
  
• Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
  
• Some of Rilke's work
  
• Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life
  
  Again, it's hard to give you better directions without more information on what you're actually interested in. I've just thrown a bunch of stuff at you, and you couldn't possibly be expected to read, say, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation over break and be expected to really understand it.

> I just see it as a distraction instead of addressing the specific points being made.

There are very real differences between the analytic and continental approaches to philosophy, as well as which thinkers are most seriously and most often discussed in their respective traditions. These trends are not accidental.

>so I'm suspicious that the author Rosen is using that "continental" label to obfuscate a text to lend itself to his own beliefs and principles.

The Mask of Enlightenment is not primarily political.

>so already I'm beginning to feel suspect on how honest the author is with his interpretation of the text.

There's really no better way to judge a text by singling out one Amazon reader review.

>I first recommend people to read any material for themselves and try to convey their own understanding as best they can.

This isn't good advice. Nietzsche is easy to read but it's tremendously difficult to get a holistic grasp on his ideas and their significance and implications. Once you read the primary material, you'll need a guiding hand to help make sense of the text -- trying to "convey your own understanding as best you can" isn't going to cut it.

Bias is ever present, but if one wants a good introductory text of Nietzsche that's admirably neutral, Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist would make a fair compromise.

It sounds like you're interested in Chinese (and eastern) philosophy and thought. I'd recommend starting with this:

An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, Karyn Lai, Cambridge (2008).

And then seeing which schools of thought you are most interested in. Certain schools of thought are more of a hot topic right now than others, particularly in ethics and political philosophy, so which one you end up liking will affect what you have to work with. I don't want to mention ones that are a particularly big deal for fear of biasing you. You can explore these further than Lai's book describes by using this:

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, P.J. Ivanhoe, Bryan W. Van Norden, Hackett (2006).

I am not very familiar with Chinese Philosophy though, so I would cross check these recommendations with somebody actually involved in the subject. It is a dying field in the west so it would be great if you ended up interested in pursuing it so we can win some great thinkers back and do some cool collaborative research.

Philosophy is a big field, and without good guidance it's really difficult to make progress. Thus, if you're really interested in the subject I recommend eventually taking classes. You don't need to be enrolled in a University to take classes; there are many online courses available. For example, Shelly Kagan and Tamar Gendler (both excellent teachers, as well as first-rate researchers in their sub-disciplines) teach online philosophy classes through Open Yale Courses. iTunes U has some good stuff too; you can search around for particular topics that might interest you.

As for books, I recommend starting with something accessible, like Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy. Depending on your interests, you might also enjoy Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. In all cases, though, I recommend having some guidance as you read, which would require some kind of teacher, as in the online resources I mentioned above.

Thanks for mentioning you're seventeen; it does make a difference (to my mind!). M'colleagues below have recommended some pretty heavy reading, which I don't think is what you're really looking for on the face of it. If I were to recommend a book about philosophy to a seventeen-year-old, I wouldn't recommend a textbook, I'd recommend the following:

Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar. This is a book of jokes about philosophy. They're not very funny, but it's a good way to learn some ideas. Doesn't talk about people (old dead white men, for the most part); focuses on ideas.

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten. This is a little less frivolous; it's 100 little thought experiments. I'd say this is a bite-at-a-time book; read one, put the book down and think about it for a bit, then read another. I really enjoyed this.

Philosophy 101. This little volume is a pretty decent intro to some of the key ideas and thinkers of philosophy. No, it's not a textbook and it's not written by a professional philosopher, which is why I've recommended it. Its mistakes are small enough that if you get interested and start reading some more about the topic you'll pick up where the author went wrong pretty quickly. Again, this is a bite-at-a-time book.

Hope that helps, and of course if you find an idea and you have questions about it: ask away. :)

Take a look at Jonathan Lear's introduction to Arsitotle, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand CLICK HERE. It is written in plain and claer langauge - there is no better intro imho and he has a chapter on A's ethics and a short but extreamly helpful section on "Happiness" or flourishing (eudaimonia is the Greek word). Having said that, you are very close; the only think I would say is that the virtuous person would do what is right, after much practice, without having to really think it through; and not out of fear of consequences, but because it is good/right in and of itself. Also, that little voice usually tells you then it would be wrong (Socrates said he had such a little voice, he called it his daimon), but that is not the same as knowing what is actually right. The practice of virtue is positive, meant to build up character in such a way that flourishing ("happiness") continues. Hope this helps!

Peter Singer, to me, is the absolute clearest writer in philosophy, and I think he has an incredible knack for interesting theses. As a result, I think you can start pretty much anywhere with him.

I do work in ethics, metaethics, and applied ethics, though. The two articles I see referenced over and over again are "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" and "Ethics and Intuitions". The former is a valid, tight, and incredibly fun-to-discuss argument about how we should donate all unnecessary funds to end abject poverty. The latter is an evolutionary debunking argument against intuitions and in favor of the practical reason that standard utilitarian views use. If you're into the former, he wrote a very accessible book recently, stemming from lectures at Yale, called The Most Good You Can Do, which I can recommend to pretty much anyone as an easy and provocative read. But if you're interested more in the theoretical stuff, as in how objective ethics is and how much it might regulate our lives, check out The Expanding Circle.

Overall, if you're interested in almost any applied ethical debate, Singer has written something relevant. You might just start there out of interest. But I really don't think you can go wrong with anything.

I used a Tomassi textbook for PL which was fantastic. Logic is THE best life skill there is.

As for where to begin philosophising, have a dabble in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and see what you like, what you don't like, and come back here and request recommendations on certain topics. Lewis' Modal Realism is fantastic, you'll love it. It seems absurd at first, but the deeper you dig the stronger it gets. IMO, anyway.

Enjoy!

Well, obviously you should give Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a thorough read.

A modern philosopher well known for his attempts at reviving virtue ethics is Alasdair MacIntyre - his seminal book on the subject is After Virtue.

Also, another philosopher, with virtue ethics in the baggage, who's more politically oriented would be Martha Nussbaum. She's noted for going on about her 'capabilities approach' for many years, and some people regard this as an equally viable political option to utilitarian/liberal minimal states or Rawlsian social democracies. The literature on the approach is rather massive, so I'd go give the SEF page on the subject a go for starters, as she also makes very compelling arguments strengthened by interdisciplinary research with experts from other fields.

Also, I highly recommend [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Political-Philosophy-Will-Kymlicka/dp/0198782748/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414771070&sr=1- 1&keywords=contemporary+political+philosophy), as it has great chapters on communitarianism and citizenship theory, which draws heavily on the Aristotelian legacy - the citizenship theory chapter being especially great, since Kymlicka there points out how difficult it turns out to be trying to cultivate civil virtues in modern societies.

EDIT: grammar.

Frederick Copleston's history of philosophy is one of the most reputable histories of philosophy available, and the first volume covers ancient Greek philosophy.

I have a word of advice about this particular history of philosophy. I started off buying just the volume on the ancient Greeks, thinking that that would be all I needed. Well, over time, I gradually bought more and more volumes, each time thinking it would be nice to have this or that volume.

Long story short, I ended up buying each volume individually, which was more expensive than if I had just bought the newer editions which each contain three volumes in one book. I'm referring to these:

Book 1, Volumes 1-3

Book 2, Volumes 4-6

Book 3, Volumes 7-9

So, if you're the sort of person who buys a lot of philosophy books, like I am, you should probably just buy those three now and save yourself a bunch of money.

If you're sure you'll only buy the one book, on the other hand, you can go ahead and buy this, which will be cheaper in that case:

Volume 1: Greece and Rome

Let me know if you have any questions.

I think the best place to begin is Volume I of A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, covering ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Not that I don't recommend the other eight volumes as well—it does enjoy, the back cover tells me, "universal acclaim as the best history of philosophy in English"—but it's particularly important to understand the issues and ideas of philosophy in classical antiquity because of the degree to which it sets the agenda for all subsequent Western philosophy.

I agree with /u/thud_mancake about the importance of reading primary texts, and there I'll limit myself to two recommendations. First, the four dialogues of Plato often published together under the title The Trial and Death of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Second, Utopia by Thomas More.

This book, "Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar" is very helpful for understanding basic philosophy concepts through jokes. I read it when I was younger and it was very entertaining to read, not overwhelming or intimidating, and pretty funny also.

https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Platypus-Walk-into-Understanding/dp/0143113879

There's a massive amount of relevant philosophy. If your professors are talking about Foucault and existentialism then I guess there are some trends in psychology that I am not very familiar with - I thought most of psychology was making undergraduates fill out forms and then generalizing from that to all of humanity. In any case, I can't help you much down the Sartre/Camus track because that's not my bailiwick.

I can point out a few areas of inquiry, though. The two most obvious are philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology.

Phil mind is fucking huuuuuuuuge. Interestingly enough the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn't have an entry for it, so I'll link to a random relevant article from which you can follow footnotes/related pages at the bottom/etc. and also the IEP's Mind & CogSci category whicih you can browse through. You could also take that course you're thinking of taking or pick up an intro book - the second, third, fifth, and sixth books on Amazon.com when I search "philosophy of mind" seem pretty good, although I've only read one of them.

Philosophy of psychology is big too. It also overlaps with phil mind. In any case, although I haven't read them, these two books from José Luis Bermudez seem pretty good:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Psychology-Contemporary-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0415275954
http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Psychology-Contemporary-Readings-Routledge/dp/0415368626/

Tim Williamson has a rather personal and informal recounting of the resurgence of metaphysics in the past ~50 years

http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/35835/How_did_we_get_here_from_there.pdf

I don't know any particular historical books/papers about the history of metaphysics since Kant, but the first step would probably involve reading about German Idealism (as a direct reaction to Kant). Sadly, I don't know much about German Idealism, so I don't have any good books to recommend.

German Idealism heavily influenced British Idealists like Bradley, whom the early analytic philosophers (Russell and Moore) were reacting against. At this point, you could read Scott Soames's Philosophical Analysis in the 20th Century for a history of early analytic philosophy.

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Analysis-Twentieth-Century-Volume/dp/069112244X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

A prof of mine recommended Mark Wrathall's "How to Read Heidegger." Its a very quick read (I'm a slow reader and finished it within a day or so) and offers a great introduction to his writing. Each chapter in the "how to read' series attempts to translate an important section or paragraph of a primary text into ordinary language. This kind of layout allows you to deeply read one section and trace it line-by-line with what the commentator interprets. This is especially helpful for Heidegger's language. As far as commentaries of B&T itself go, I've read Dreyfus', Blattner's, Mulhall's, and Gelvin's. While Dreyfus' is much more popular, I think it is one of the weakest on the market now, down there with Mulhall's. The one that helped me to most was by far Gelvin's.

On a side note, remember that the arguments given in B&T are not set forth by logical deduction. You simply can't analyze the book like you can with ones written by authors like Spinoza, where everything logically follows from some beginning. This has lead some people to think that Heidegger is much more difficult than he really is. B&T's philosophical power comes from phenomenology. Thus, what I feel is the best way to read the book is to go through it section-by-section, taking a break every few pages or paragraphs. Between readings, simply live your life as you normally would while keeping Heidegger's notes in the background. Soon enough, his writing has a way of clearing up.

No one of note takes the NAP seriously enough to critique. For example, a rudimentary search on google scholar for "non aggression principle" or "NAP" returns irrelevant results concerning psychology, biology and international relations and inbetween those a few self-published papers by mises libertarians like Kinsella or Block.

The right-libertarian philosopher Matt Zwolinski, associated with the "bleeding heart libertarians" crowd, has a post arguing against the NAP here (and Kevin Vallier here) where he argues that the NAP might simultaneously be too counter-intuitively restrictive and too counter-intuitively permissive a principle, but again, no serious papers on the subject.

A basic point (which Zwolinski partially makes) is that the NAP is either incompattible with the libertarian / anarchocapitalist (or any other political) project, if it can not authorize any initiation of force (where by force is meant acting or threatening to act on another's physical body or some similar day-to-day definition of violence), or insofar as it authorizes the initiation of force in defence of property titles (and construes this force as defensive in the special sense that it responds to an infringement on one's -property- rights and not in the sense that it responds to previously excercised force in the day-to-day sense), it is parasitic on a prior theory of justice (such as a theory of property rights) which must (in order to avoid obvious circularity) make no reference back to the NAP. However arguing for that theory of property rights succesfully would already authorize the use of force in defense of those titles, and thus the NAP would then appear to be redundant within the libertarian project, and more than this, under this interpretation the NAP would be seen to be trivially consistent with any and all political projects. The rawlsian blogger Matt Bruenig sort of makes similar points here. It's obvious the NAP isn't popular with people named "Matt". Yet again, no published papers on this, since academic philosophers don't think this argument requires any special attention to it (i.e., they don't take it seriously enough to write a paper on how wrong it is).

A good critical introduction to libertarianism in general is the fourth chapter of Kymlicka's Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (here is a preview I could find on scribd)

Note: This is generally a very good introduction to polphil, which is sometimes used as a textbook in universities that teach the subject. The chapter on libertarianism introduces the two best arguments for deontological libertarianism, made by Nozick and Gauthier, and then proceeds to outline the major arguments that have been made against them to date. These indicate some serious problems with libertarianism that aspiring libertarians should take care to resolve. It mentions Flew, so you might be interested in subsection 4. "Libertarianism as Liberty". At any rate, it's a book worth reading to acclimate yourself with how polphilosophers argue.

There is also Cohen's "Self-ownership, freedom and equality" and his reply to Narveson. If you are interested but can't find any of those, send a PM my way, and we'll see what can be done to remedy that.

Hegel's really a fan of protestantism....which will shortly become apparent to you. He's also really interested in the french revolution...so that might give you some ideas. If you have any specific questions I can probably help. I found Peter Singer's introduction to Hegel pretty helpful and concise. You can probably find a pdf floating around somewhere on the internet.

I really enjoyed Dennett's Consciousness Explained. Chalmers' The Conscious Mind presents another popular view which, if I recall correctly, opposes Dennett's views. I'm slowly getting into work's by Steven Pinker.

Probably a general Philosophy of Mind reader would also benefit you just to get a good idea of the different views and topics out there within the discipline. I cannot remember which one I read years ago, although if I read one today I'd pick Chalmers' Philosophy of Mind or Kim's Philosophy of Mind.

I have a few suggestions.

The Philosophy Gym has 25 short philosophy things, with pictures and dialogues. Stephen Law also has a lot of other books of similar style that might be worth looking into.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a philosophy joke book, which might be a fun coffee table book.

The Philosophy Bites book has 25 interviews with leading contemporary philosophers.

The Stone Reader has articles by leading contemporary philosophers that were published in the New York Times philosophy column, The Stone.

Hope that helps!

I would caution you about Dennett because, while he is a well-respected and important philosopher, he also write books for a popular audience that are less philosophical in nature.

So I would stay clear of his new atheism stuff, stay away from his beef with Sam Harris (who isn't a philosopher), and try to find lectures where he talks about consciousness (which is his main topic in philosophy).

So I would recommend starting with Daniel Dennett's TED talks, which are much easier and accessible. Here's a good introductory lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYh0lAWCnpI

https://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_dennett


Next, I would try to watch this lecture and see if you can follow it (it's a bit more complicated, but it outlines the debates around consciousness in a similar way to what you might find on the SEP):

https://youtu.be/JoZsAsgOSes

Finally, his book Consciousness Explained outlines his basic approach to consciousness. While not for a general audience, he does clarify and explain his positions well, so it might be worth looking into:

https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518209721&sr=8-1&keywords=consciousness+explained

If however you want to start with (comparatively) easy Aristotle text, you're best bet is probably the Nicomachean Ethics. (And if for some reason you want a comprehensible survey book on Aristotle's work this one is quite good: https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Desire-Understand-Jonathan-Lear/dp/0521347629 )

Ooh, ooh, ooh! I wrote a big chunk of my thesis on exactly this question. However, I'm with /u/TychoCelchuuu on not just giving away all the answers.

Here's a hint: it doesn't really vindicate it at all, but it isn't supposed to. Fodor's RTM presupposes propositional attitude psychology is an accurate characterisation of cognition. RTM is an analysis of how propositional attitude psychology could function at the level of brain/mind processes.

You should definitely read Jose Bermudez's book Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction chapters 2-4. It's the best work on this issue, as far as I am aware.

Soames's History of Analytic philosophy is accesible and language-focused. Could make for a good read, even though it might be a bit challenging. Should be helpful.

I haven't read Ian Hacking's Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy. But I've read many of his books and know that he's an excellent writer. Could be a productive read.

Not who you were responding to, but I really enjoy Heidegger as well. I would strongly suggest How to read Heidegger first before jumping into anything else. I read it first, then read Being and Time and it helped tremendously.

I took two phil of science courses during undergrad. The first covered Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues by Cover, Curd, and Pincock. The second (by a different instructor) covered Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction followed by The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Scientific Background of Modern Philosophy, and more readings from the Cover, Curd, and Pincock book. Though it required more reading, the second was more beneficial and clarified issues brought up in the Cover, Curd, and Pincock book. I hope that helps.

I thumbed through the one on Aristotle. I thought it was entertaining, though not entirely accurate. Symposia, for example, would probably be better understood as "drinking parties," rather than "dinner parties."

I appreciate the joke-approach, e.g. Plato and a Platypus, though I suspect that these sorts of books are more entertaining for philosophers than they are to the general public.

Ok, so assuming I'm mainly interested in viewing this from a more Confucian perspective rather than Buddhist atm, and that I want to firmly start with one book and then either leave it at that or maybe move on to the first more advanced modern suggestion, which one should I read? It sounds like either Van Norden or Philip Ivanhoe just based on the order that you suggested it in.

I think Goldfarb is very thorough, although he can get somewhat dense. Then there's Tomassi, who's more conversational/informal (while still going over mostly the same stuff as Goldfarb). The second is probably more beginner friendly, but it's also quite a bit longer. If you know math, I imagine you would get through Goldfarb pretty well though.

I haven't read that much contemporary political philosophy, but if you're looking for the theoretical part and not a novel I would recommend:Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction by Kymlicka

It's a good place to start, I would think. There are also tons of very good articles on the subject such as Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (note that it's more from a political analyst than a philosophers).

Read this book: [Jonathan Lear's The Desire to Understand] (http://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Desire-Understand-Jonathan-Lear/dp/0521347629)

It is exactly what you want, and a great book.

It seems to me that Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist is the English work most likely to have been translated into Greek. It's worth reading though a little dated, and is pretty easy to understand in English.

I recommend this to all beginners -- I like the Barwise & Etchemendy book because it's aimed at people with no background at all in logic or upper-level math, it's restricted to propositional and first-order logic (which I think logicians of all stripes should know), and it comes with proof-checker software so that you can check your own understanding instead of needing to find someone to give you feedback.

After that, you'll have some familiarity with the topic and can decide where you want to go. For a more mathematical route, I think Enderton (mentioned previously) or Boolos are good follow-ups. For a more philosophical route, I think Sider or Priest are good next steps.

The Logic Book is a good text for FOL and the early theorems of meta-logic (soundness and completeness of propositional and first-order logics). It's somewhat slow going though.

A more mathematically inclined text is Herbert Enderton's Introduction to Mathematical Logic. Enderton goes into more of the meta-logic, including incompleteness, Lowenheim-Skolem, and computability. He also touches on second-order logic toward the end.

Along the lines of meta-logic, Boolos and Jeffrey's Computability and Logic is very good as well. (Er, and Burgess. I can only vouch for the 3rd edition, which is pre-Burgess.)

Given that you're already familiar with FOL, I'd lean toward Enderton or Boolos and Jeffrey with the caveat that The Logic Book has endless practice problems and, iirc, answers to many of them in the back of the book (the others have fewer (but more interesting) problems).

If you want to go beyond FOL, I second stoic9's suggestion of Priest's book.

I found Wrathall to be a great introduction to Heidegger in conjunction with Dreyfus. Wrathall was a student of Dreyfus and they now collaborate on papers and books.

Below is a link to his how to read book on Amazon.


http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Heidegger/dp/0393328805

The most influential philosophy book I ever read was "The Structure of Scientific Revoloutions" by Thomas Kuhn.

This single book affected my worldview more than any other book or course. It deals specifically with the nature and process of scientific revolution, but reaches much further than the title claims. I highly recommend this book.

Edit: Added author

The book you have linked is anthology of texts by various writers whereas Audi's book is a textbook by a single author. So I would imagine it would be easier to follow Audi's book for people that are new to epistemology. I also remember reading some chapters from Richard Feldman's Epistemology in an undergraduate course and they have been quite well written.

One book that is popular to help understand Nietzsche is Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. It usually comes up on this subreddit when people look for secondary texts on Nietzsche.

One dis-recommendation I would make is Nietzsche: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Tanner. The Oxford University Press "A Very Short Introduction" series is usually excellent, but I was not impressed with this particular title. It was the first book on Nietzsche that I read and frankly I found it pretty useless.

Michael Friedman has a book on the relation between Heidegger, Cassirer, and Carnap (who as a leading positivist was also an empiricist), and how their engagements gave rise to the analytic/continental distinction. I realize this doesn't really speak to the conceptual aspects of your question, but it might be worth a look if you wanted to do more research.

A few places you might think of starting with:
Gary Gutting has some fairly accessible stuff on french philosophy.

Peter Singer has written books on Hegel and Marx that might be helpful.

Philosophies of Mathematics offers a good historical look at the philosophy of math over the course of the 20th century.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic

Peter Singer has a new book out about that called The Most Good You Can Do.

Peter Singer has a book called The Most Good You Can Do which is all about having an impact on how readers live their lives.

I haven't yet read this, but it certainly seems relevant:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812694252

Read an intro to epistemology textbook. This will give you the basics of various theories of knowledge. I really liked this one.

You may find Scott Soames' volumes on the history of analytic philosophy useful.

I think it would be good one.

Peter Singer devotes a chapter to this in Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. If you don't have the book, go to the Amazon link here, open up the book by clicking on it, and go to page 32.

Another book that people recommend is Copleston’s History of Philosophy. The complete set consists of 9 volumes so it’s quite a long read tho.

https://www.amazon.com/History-Philosophy-Vol-Pre-Socratics-Plotinus/dp/0385468431

There is a growing literature on the topic, so you could start by looking at journals (Philosophical Psychology, Mind and Language, and Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology are three you might want to look at). There's also [this collection] (http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Psychology-Contemporary-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0415275954). I also like this book, which is a fairly accessible intro text but not a textbook.

No problem, glad it helped. If you want to know more about the analytic-continental split, Michael Beaney edited the monstrously large Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy some years ago, which includes a few chapters on the origins of the split from the analytic side. I'm not aware of anything similar for the history of continental philosophy, but the major movements to look into for an overview are Phenomenology, Existentialism, Post-structuralism and Critical Theory. A closer examination of the split that's really good is Friedman's A Parting of the Ways. That one can get a bit techical, though, but it's still fairly accessible.

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Readings-Classical-Chinese-Philosophy-Ivanhoe/dp/0872207803/ref=sr_1_1


|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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Feldman's Epistemology is one of the standard intro textbooks.

Duncan Pritchard has a book called What is this Thing Called Knowledge?. I've not read it, but that series is decent, from what I can tell, and Pritchard is one of the foremost epistemologists right now.

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophies-Mathematics-Alexander-George/dp/0631195440

https://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Philosopher-Psychologist-Walter-Kaufmann/dp/0691019835

the main proponent of dualism in contemporary philosophy is david chalmers. his defining work is "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory," but you can also read all of his papers for free on his website. he has also at some points argued for panpsychism, but his core commitments still lie with dualism.

yes, he and his arguments are usually taken very seriously in academic philosophy. for example, here's a video of him at a conference on a boat, with other big name philosophers of mind such as dennett and the churchlands.

i guess i should also mention that the kind of dualism that chalmers argues for is not the classic cartesian substance dualism, but rather a weaker form of dualism called property dualism

here's a useful sep article about dualism

It depends what you're trying to get out of it.

There are literally hundreds of introductory texts for first-order logic. Other posters can cover them. There's so much variety here that I would feel a bit silly recommending one.

For formal tools for philosophy, I would say David Papineau's Philosophical Devices. There's also Ted Sider's Logic for Philosophy but something about his style when it comes to formalism rubs me the wrong way, personally.

For a more mathematical approach to first-order logic, Peter Hinman's Fundamentals of Mathematical Logic springs to mind.

For a semi-mathematical text that is intermediate rather than introductory, Boolos, Burgess, and Jeffrey's Computability and Logic is the gold standard.

Finally, if you want to see some different ways of doing things, check out Graham Priest's An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic.

> What's does the "hard problem" consist of? From what I can tell,
> Chalmers thinks its a confounding problem that we can't understand
> what the experience of feeling pain is like, say, in terms of brain states.

It's more than simply that. But, because consciousness is such a slippery topic to talk clearly about, it's not easy to briefly describe it in a way that communicates the points clearly. Whether you agree with Chalmer's views or not, I think he does a pretty reasonable job of stating the "hard problem" (I read his The Conscious Mind), and his description is pretty lengthy.

> He seems to think that by looking at the brain of a person who's in pain, we should
> be able to know what their experience of feeling pain is actually like. I dont share
> this kind of concern

No he doesn't. It's more the opposite.

> And Chalmers leans toward consciousness being fundamental, I believe

It's not entirely clear what exactly should and shouldn't constitute "fundamental", but I don't think that's true. He's say that it's not something "physical", basically meaning not something that can be understood in structural or functional terms, but that doesn't necessitate it being fundamental.

And BTW I'm not saying I necessarily agree with Chalmers, I'm just trying to clarify what his position is.