(Part 2) Top products from r/philosophy

I recommend the Wadsworth website. This link is to their timeline series:
http://www.wadsworth.com/philosophy_d/special_features/timeline/timeline.html
They also have by topic and by philosopher.
Another good website, mentioned by others, is Squashed Philosophers, but it has a different purpose (to skim original works).

If you prefer audiobooks, there's a good lecture series, Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition:
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=470
You probably don't need the whole 84 lectures, just a few of the bigger names like Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein will give you a solid foundation.

For books, Philosophy Made Simple is a solid entry level intro,
http://www.amazon.ca/Philosophy-Made-Simple-Richard-Popkin/dp/0385425333

I also like from Socrates to Satre
http://www.amazon.com/Socrates-Sartre-Philosophic-Quest/dp/0553251619
Which goes in for just a few big names, and has a companion tv show.

There's no definitive anything, and probably better than these that I'm not aware of, but a good approach is to graze a little from a few different introductory books, aiming to familiarise yourself with terms and names - and then graze again to get a slightly deeper insight into how they connect etc.

If you are interested in learning philosophy then, ostensibly, you already have some big questions floating around up there. Ask yourself what interests you. Language? Ethics? Epistemology? I would first familiarize myself with some basics here and here but then from there, you should just start digging in.

Now, some authors will be inaccessible if you don't have a firm grasp of the historical tradition of philosophy cough Heidegger cough but you can do just fine with others.

Plato is fine to start with but if you really want to be captivated and excited, you have to start with Nietzsche. He is implicitly answering philosophers like Plato and Descartes but again, as long as you have a rudimentary understanding of them, it's doable. You can do more detailed analysis later.

Nietzsche's writing is full of passion and sets out to undermine every assumption behind Western philosophy. He tackles morality, epistemology, language, aesthetics, and just about everything else. He'll motivate you to get into the rest of tradition so that you have a more contextual understanding of where is he writing from.

I recommend:

Kaufman's Nietzsche

and

Beyond Good and Evil

I don't where you can find it, but his essay, On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense is fantastic, if not just for the first few paragraphs.

I'd actually recommend watching through the documentary in the link above as a halfway decent introduction to the main themes relevant to studying Nietzsche in an easily digestible format.

As far as books go, afaik most philosophy courses on Nietzsche start out with Beyond Good and Evil. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is his self-designated magnum opus, though I recommend having some background knowledge of its context before attempting to scale it. My personal favorite, Gay Science, is a wonderfully thought-provoking and entertaining read.

There are also plenty of good commentaries and biographies around. A classic would be Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. It's a bit old, but I wouldn't hold that against it. Kaufmann can of course be accused of revisionism, but his influence in presenting some of the first analyses encompassing Nietzsche's entire work as well as rehabilitating his academic respectability post-WW2 is seminal. Some others over here might have hints on more current biographies worth checking out. Also, most translations of Nietzsche's original works have decent commentaries with them, I'd look out for RJ Hollingdale's and Kaufmann's versions in particular.

Good luck with your pursuit of philosophy :)

Edit: typo (or two)

I'm not /u/hungrystegosaurus, but here are a few personal suggestions:

Philosophy on the whole -- Copleston is the standard and for good reason

Early Greek philosophy -- Nietzsche has a relatively accessible and worthwhile overview on many Greek sages that I found to be a supremely helpful, though controversial, introduction

Plato -- Very, very tough to recommend any good introduction to his work taken holistically, but I'll go out on a limb and recommend something Straussian, which is a little tough for a first-timer but grounds Platonic philosophy in living moral and political issues OP is likely more familiar with. Shorter dialogues like the Meno and the Apology might also be worth checking out

Aristotle -- Forget the abstruse metaphysics; stick with the ethics. The Cambridge intro is adequate

Renaissance / Enlightenment philosophy -- Not my primary interest, but rather than plunging into Kant, try something like the Novum Organum by Bacon, which is an admirably clear laying-out of the Enlightenment project, written without impenetrable jargon and in a digestible aphoristic style

Nietzsche -- Most anything by Kaufmann will do, but this is a nice piece

Heidegger -- Richard Polt's introduction

Existentialism in general -- Not a written reference, but this video lecture series by Solomon, an excellent UT philosophy professor, makes for a nice companion

Contemporary philosophy -- /u/ReallyNicole, one of this subreddit's moderators, would be able to offer a ton of great introductory material. She's sort of a pro at linking to articles

This is barely scratching the surface, but scratching the surface is more than enough. If OP can get through even half of this material in a year or two's time, he'll be well on his way to developing his philosophical faculties and familiarity.

To recommend motherfucking Being and Time or the Critique of Pure Reason (without supplemental aids, no less) to a 17-year-old novice is so egregiously, maddeningly, ball-shrivelingly stupid and such wholly, purely, offensively bad advice that I honestly wouldn't mind seeing /u/JamieHugo permanently banned from this subreddit for corrupting the youth.

It's hard to say, but this is probably your best bet:

http://www.amazon.com/Source-Book-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/0691019649

The guy is somewhat of a God in China, as he translated all of these texts into English himself. If nothing else, that is a major achievement, as it gives you a clean interpretation of the major Chinese writers where the translation of key terms remains the same.

That being said, his footnotes don't really fill you in on how to really understand the texts - they're helpful, but you might need other companion books. To get a full understanding, you'll certainly need to read other texts. But, having all major Chinese works in one place, all translated by the same author, AND for the translations to be pretty decent, makes it a must-by for someone serious about Chinese philosophy.


Might be able to torrent it too - I dono.

EDIT: companion texts that are good: A short history of Chinese philosophy (Feng You Lan), or A history of Asian thought (probably a bad title), by Bernard Schwartz (google the author to find it). Both good, i really like Schwartz, but Feng You Lan's is more introductory.

Thank you. I read your first article and thought you might like this book:

Philosophy in the Flesh

This may sound like word salad, but I can expand anything if you're interested. I'm someone who is trying to explain philosophy itself. One thing I conjecture is that evolutionary mechanisms operating on thermodynamically-driven self-organizing structures will eventually "carry up" the fundamental logical properties inherent in the Universe to the neurological level - where they can then manifest in our awareness as logic and math as we know them. That is, as structure evolves through biological complexity - some fundamental logic of the Universe must be there somehow. Our neurological architecture then allows extrapolation from these fundamentally embodied aspects to the symbolically represented and conceptualized "ideals" we have like perfect circles and real numbers and so on, which are entities that don't really exist as upsetting as this idea is to most mathematicians.

The book I linked makes a very cool, but hard to convey point, but once you realize the implications it's pretty amazing. Our thinking is based on the senses we have. We basically have models of the world in our heads that are the same as the way we experience the world - the neurology of experience is the same as thinking, essentially (e.g. you can get better at piano by practicing in your mind because you can "re-experience" it).

Language, then, is a metaphorical way of expressing our sense-based models of the world, which is why language is filled with metaphors of time, spacial orientation/relationships, sequences, and so on. I really can't do justice to the idea quickly, but it's a quite profound realization to have in your toolbox.

> It does not fly in the face of physics, it is physics. If you consider for a moment that currently accepted physics isn't entirely accurate and more of an approximation, you should also be able to consider that there is more to the equation than what is currently being taught.

I have an degree in physics from an elite school, where I won an award for my performance in physics. From this same school, I also have an honors degree in philosophy - where I focused primarily on philosophy of science.

I don't know how to be any more clear about this. I have studied the shit out of both the actual physics and the philosophy of science that you are totally mangling when you say stuff like:

> It does not fly in the face of physics, it is physics. If you consider for a moment that currently accepted physics isn't entirely accurate and more of an approximation, you should also be able to consider that there is more to the equation than what is currently being taught.

All I can think of is the quote from Isaac Asimov:

> My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

You have yet to read, obviously, about any of realism, positivism, anti-realism, agential realism or any rigorous philosophy of science. You are taking a pretty "anti-realist" stance - which, again, is not terribly popular. And I am saying, time and time again, you are not even really doing so very well. Not only am I denying that the anti-realist stance is a very good one, I am saying that, even if it were, you are not doing a very good job of defending it. Your entire argument, at this point, is coming down to the exact same argument as the one people use when the criticize evolution or global warming for being "just theories."

Relativity is never going to be overturned - at least not the features of it we are discussing here tonight. Ever. End of story - full stop.

We may learn of theories that augment or supplement relativity, for instance, a way to unify relativity and quantum gravity - that explain areas that are currently not covered by relativity, such as where it breaks down, but for the cases that relativity covers now, it covers it with literally perfect accuracy. Check out the "fine structure constant." It has been measured to resolutions that approach theoretical limitation.

So, what I am saying to you is this: that space and time are parts are the same, objectively existing reality is really well fucking proven. You can, in fact, measure the fine structure constant with a fucking hydrogen spectrum tube, a strong electromagnet and a diffraction grating, which I have done, personally, in a physics lab, and derive the fine structure constant to alarmingly high resolution with even very crude instruments.

What I am telling you is this: the same equations that give marvellously accurate results in these circumstances are the same equations that have allowed us to engineer and power the computing device you are using, and they also underly and explain how space-time works. I don't know how else to put it. If our description of space-time was inaccurate, we never would have been able to perform the electrical engineering necessary to make nanometer-feature-size microprocessors, the large hadron collider or prototype nuclear fusion plants. Cathode ray tubes would not work. Just tons and tons and tons of modern technology simply would not work.

I cannot make this any more clear: this science is never going to be overturned. It is too well understood. If a paradigm changes (I urge you to read Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions), it will not do so in a way that destroys the space-time identity. It can modify, enhance, or supplement, but it cannot supplant.

Is that making any sense? Just because science is fluid doesn't mean that extraordinarily well supported hypothesis get abandoned. The history of science is that poorly supported ideas get abandoned. I can think of literally no more rigorously proven and tested ideas than E=mc^2, and that is the fundamental basis of understanding spacetime.

Edit / Update: I have re-read your comments. I have to say I have been harsh, and you have been civil, and I apologize for that. Additionally, you are clearly grappling with some very tough concepts and are doing so on your own, or lagely self taught. This is laudable, and I commend you for taking the time and being intellectually curious. What informed my tone, however, was your manner of argumentation - your insistence, basically, that you are right and that the people disagreeing with you don't know anything. If we were in a classroom setting, I would have been more kind and tolerant, because that is the place for airing your opinions and arguing about them in a collegial setting. That is often lost on reddit. That in mind, I really encourage you to read about these topics. You are obviously curious about them, and there is no reason you cannot do this reading on your own and learn all about it.

I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Very-Short-Introduction/dp/0192802836, http://projektintegracija.pravo.hr/_download/repository/Kuhn_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions.pdf and the lecture I linked above. Enjoy!

> But why should a deterministic "choice" be 100% the good one? Or is it, say, deterministically the good one in only 70% of the cases?

If you'd actually like to learn about the ways deterministic and stochastic decision policies work, I recommend AI: A Modern Approach. If you're just saying that a deterministic decision policy of tractable size won't make the optimal choice in all real-world situations, I agree.

But we're not arguing about effectiveness. I can't really discuss the effectiveness of different decision policies establishing a lot of mathematical-ish background; and they're irrelevant to the question of whether contra-causal free will can logically exist.

> what I know as a fact is that I indeed have a true freedom of choice

Sure... the exact same way you know the top yellow line is longer than the bottom one. If a very simple argument shows that your intuition is logically impossible, you should distrust your intuition.

If someone is looking to actually buy the text, I might suggest: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant- Pratical Philosophy.

For $20 more you get Mary Gregor translations for all of,

1. Review of Schulz's Attempt at an Introduction to a Doctrine of Morals for all Human Beings Regardless of Different Religions (1783)
   
2. An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784)
   
3. On the wrongfulness of unauthorized publication of books (1785)
   
4. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
   
5. Kraus' Review of Ulrich's Eleutheriology (1788)
   
6. Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
   
7. On the common saying: that may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice (1793)
   
8. Toward Perpetual Peace (1795)
   
9. The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
   
10. On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy (1797).
    
    Unfortunately you would be loosing the specific introduction by Korsgaard, and gain a more general one by Allen Wood. Both are excellent scholars, but I've heard Korsgaard's introduction can be very helpful to someone first reading Groundwork. So there is that to consider.

>For those interested in Seneca anybody ever, I can highly recommend this superb collection. Reading him played a major part in sparking my interest in philosophy.

FTFY

For those interested in Seneca, I can highly recommend this superb collection. Reading him played a major part in sparking my interest in philosophy.

For those new to philosophy, I'd recommend The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher, as well as Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. I'm not all the way through the second one but it seems interesting. These are fairly simple but interesting introductory books that teach you some of the issues philosophers deal with.

Hope this helps!

Since the Kierkegaardian corpus is so thematically wide-ranging, I would recommend flipping through The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard or, even better, The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard. Find the areas of his thought that interest you most, and read the works associated therewith. E.g., for his treatment of existential despair, read The Sickness Unto Death; for his theory of the three stages of life or “existence spheres,” read Either/Or, Stages on Life’s Way, and Concluding Unscientific Postscript; and so on.

Otherwise, Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Repetition, The Concept of Anxiety, Postscript, Works of Love, and The Sickness Unto Death all have their merits.

Or you could start with an anthology. This is a good one.

Finally, for general intros to his work I would recommend C. Stephen Evans’ Kierkegaard: An Introduction and M. Jamie Ferreira’s Kierkegaard.

I also enjoyed The Passion Of The Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. Personally, I think that Tarnas did of better job than Russel at giving context to the philosophical frameworks that these guys were working within, but that's just my opinion (I've read both books). Russell comes across like a professor giving you his specific interpretation - hence the bias slant - where as Tanas seems able to give you a little more perspective - not that I'm attempting to claim that he is completely without bias, himself.

You might also what to look into Sophie's World.

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger may be a good one for your purposes. There is a talk by him on the basic ideas here.

Though he would probably not describe it this way, I think his view has a lot of similarity with buddhist psychology. One way of thinking about meditation is as a technique for learning to be more aware of the medium of your experience, making it less 'transparent' (in Metzinger's sense) and therefore reducing the illusion of selfhood. But just loosing the illusion isn't enough to be happy. You have to develop compassion as well.

Author here. Let me start:

First software company I founded develops software components for other programmers:
https://www.gemboxsoftware.com/

Our customers include NASA, MS, Intel, and US Navy:
https://www.gemboxsoftware.com/company/customers

Second company I co-founded screens programmers before interviews:
https://www.testdome.com/

We are used by Paypal and Ebay, among others.

I finished computer science at University of Zagreb.

I high school, I won 1st place at national computer science competition in 1997. Because of that I attended Central European Olympiad in Informatics, where I got a bronze medal:
https://svedic.org/zeljko/Competitions/ceoi_medalja.jpg

I have also been part of Croatian team at IOI in Capetown:
https://svedic.org/zeljko/Competitions/ioi_team.jpg

Here is my Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zeljkos/

I don't work in AI, I got the idea while reading Peter Norvig's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597

Hope I changed your mind about how certain you can be about something just based on the first feeling. My about page was one click away.

Although I really know programming and sell my software to thousands of companies, I have to admit I don't see how that makes my article more or less credible. It is a philosophical text, not text about software. I think you made "Appeal to Authority" logical fallacy:

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/21/Appeal-to-Authority

Every article should be judged by its arguments, not the credibility of the author.

The Philosophy Book is great fun for getting your feet wet with both the history and ideas of philosophy. It keeps the topics exciting and informative.

The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher is a fantastic book for a beginning philosopher. It explores some really deep topics in a very accessible way. Even if you don't understand all the explanations, the stories will really make you think (and you can mess with your friends by asking them what they would do). Good luck!

Well educated people don't see it happening. Hedges and Wolin have spoken about this topic at length.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069114589X

If revolution is going to happen its going to happen elsewhere first, former national security advisors are worried about the non north american peoples primarily but they are going full blown into 'protect the rich' mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

As a philosophy major, I am trying to get my younger brother (11 years old) more interested in philosophy, or at least more knowledgable about philosophy so I got him a copy of Action Philosophers. Its a big comic book, and its super easy to read and I just answer questions for clarifications and explanations. I was actually thinking about this yesterday.

I've been looking at this book as a way to introduce my kids to logic and critical thinking: The Fallacy Detective.

Also, if you haven't seen the philosophy comics, they are worth a look. These are really more for teenagers I think, but they look really good.

• Action Philosophers!
  
• Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
  
  There are a lot more than just these if you look around, but I think these are a good start.

If you want a shorter, concise but very good introduction try Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction by Samir Okasha. I found it very useful at university. (www.amazon.co.uk/Philosophy-Science-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192802836)

> wouldn't pure logic be the goal of rational thought?

What do you mean by "pure logic"?

It's not true that brain function consists of two distinct parts, one that is based on emotion and the other that is based on pure logic. On the one hand, emotion plays a larger role in thought that is usually recognised. Descarte's Error, by
Antonio Damasio talks about this.

On the other hand, the "non-emotional" aspects of brain function are hardly operating by "pure logic". For one thing, so much of our reasoning is subconscious (See Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson), and even when we explicitly reason through some argument, that's still sitting on top of a lot of subconsicous evaluation of the correctness of the points, using processing that isn't based on logic. A lot of reasoning seems to be pattern matching, making analogies, manipulating mental models, etc.

That a person can learn to avoid so-called logical fallacies (or cognitive biases) does not mean that the (fallacy-free) reasoning they are performing is a matter of "pure logic".

.

> By "more complex", I'm inferring that from the programmers perspective, logic may seem an easier puzzle to solve than decision making based on modifiers like superstition, hatred and passion and that you could infer that it is a more evolved form of problem solving.

There's never any reason to assume that anything that was in fact more complex would be better at a stated goal.

Honestly... I quite enjoyed DK publishing's 'The Philosophy Book'.

It's a broad overview primer on philosophy as it evolves... and while it doesn't really get deep on philosophy in general, it does do a good job of introducing you to a broad range of ideas and allows you an understanding of how philosophy in general has evolved across the centuries.

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explained/dp/0756668611

And from there, when you read the books from the philosophers introduced by 'The Philosophy Book', you'll get a much better sense of the context of their works.

As I said in my Hume comment, a good biography is often the best way to get to know a philosopher. Particularly when their own writings are difficult. Ray Monk's is a very good one for Wittgenstein.

I think S. Blackburn's Think is an excellent introduction to some of the major areas in philosophy. You might also what to look at some of the philosophical books in the "Very Short Introduction" series, for example the Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Philosophy of Science and Free Will ones, which as you can guess are good places to start.

A book I quite enjoyed as an introduction to the great philosophers was The Philosophy Book, which not only gave clear descriptions of each of the philosophers' views, but also often gave a clear flowchart summary of their arguments.

This post is quoting Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test, verbatim. It's a pretty awesome read.

Weiskrantz L. - Some contributions of neuropsychology of vision and memory to the problem of consciousness - chapter 8 of "consciousness in contemporary science" edited by Marcel and Bisiach esp pp 186-190

see also

Weiskrantz L. - "Blindsight: A case study and implications"

you might be able to find a pdf..

Referenced in Dennett's "Dismantling the witness protection program - 2. Blindsight: Partial zombiehood?", chapter 11 pp 322-333 of "Consciousness Explained"

Richard Popkin's intro book Philosophy Made Simple is a pretty good resource I've found.

http://www.amazon.ca/Philosophy-Made-Simple-Richard-Popkin/dp/0385425333

Oriental is usually considered derogatory. Eastern philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Asian philosophy... This is the book I had in college, that I still think is pretty good. http://www.amazon.com/Source-Book-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/0691019649/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416496265&sr=8-3&keywords=Chinese+philosophy

Throw in Sophie's World, arguably the best education fiction philosophy book for an intro. Essentially reads as a History of Philosophy 101 textbook framed in a narrative that has it's own philosophical twist and turns, which helps drive home the material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_World
http://www.amazon.com/Sophies-World-History-Philosophy-Classics/dp/0374530718

For that age group, the hive mind usually recommends Gaarder's Sophie's World. I prefer Scruton's An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy.

This is the best place to start:
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius

You need to read Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained (1991). That is the best treatment I've ever read about it.

If you're interested in Consciousness read Thomas Metzinger's new book The Ego Tunnel. You can thank me later.

>If I’m going to want to learn philosophy, I’m going to have to open a book and do it myself.


Hey, good for you! I'm working through Philosophy Made Simple.

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Made-Simple-Complete-Important/dp/0385425333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519172180&sr=8-1&keywords=philosophy+made+simple

So far as I can tell it is doing a pretty good job of covering the basics.

Also, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I agree a bad teacher does tend to put people off.

Check out The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.

As a metaphor, I agree with The_Absurdist that the world could be considered the canvas, and to quote an old Hollywood adage, you have to work to "leave your mark." But yes, it is up to you to decide what type of mark you leave, and how you leave it.

Watchmen and Philosophy is a fantastic book.

It sort of reminds me of Action Philosophers in that it presents philosophical concepts in the least boring way possible. I like it.

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

If phenomenology of time peaks your interest, Edmund Husserl speaks about "Internal Time Consciousness." The sort of "how?" of experiencing time.

I recommend some books to you:

http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-Dennett/dp/0316180661

http://www.amazon.com/Am-Strange-Loop-Douglas-Hofstadter/dp/0465030785

http://www.amazon.com/The-Minds-Fantasies-Reflections-Self/dp/0465030912

Your sense of self, your "I", your mind, is produced by your brain, which is a physical structure that is not destroyed and remade during sleep. This is why you remember what happened yesterday. "You" are a pile of grey goo in a skull.

OP, I think you might be interested in this book. It was a course text in one of my undergrad courses.

Lakoff & Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought

My favorite has been Wing-Tsit Chan's Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger is supposed to be good.

Just read Seneca Epistles 1 and Episltes 2.

These two include pretty much everything you'll find in Letters from a Stoic, which is one of the best books.

I highly recommend the letters on the Shortness of Life, On the Torment of Death, and On Rest and Restlessness.

You can pretty much ignore ignore anything he has to say about factual aspects of the universe, since by that time the Ionian scientific revolution had already started to fade, so there isn't much of value there, although Seneca tends to take a refreshing humility to the limits of knowledge, although occasionally he over steps the boundaries of what is reasonable to claim to know (specifically about the nature of "Nature").

Like this?

Here

They've gone through the effort of showing why it's worth paying attention to. It's on you to read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Being-Time-Martin-Heidegger/dp/0061575593?pf_rd_mnb=ATVPDKIKX0D34&pf_rd_stb=center-2&pf_rd_rat=0817NMRY4ZRQZM6P18TH&pf_rd_t3r=101&pf_rd_ptd=470938631&pf_rd_ied=507846&tag=buaazs-20&pf_rd_ptd=470938631&pf_rd_ied=507846

all your answers can be found here!

"On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy" might be the place to look for an answer to this question. (I can't vouch for this particular translation; I just found it with a quick google search. The standard translation is probably the one in the Practical Philosophy volume of the Cambridge edition of Kant.)

over9000plateaus has basically got it right, though.

Here you go.

This too.

And this one is probably most important.

Here ya go.

Seneca's Letters From a Stoic.

Have you read Consciousness Explained ?

http://www.amazon.com/Sophies-World-History-Philosophy-Classics/dp/0374530718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1250137948&sr=8-1

https://smile.amazon.com/Pig-That-Wants-Eaten-Experiments/dp/0452287448

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

(just adding some books some may find interesting)

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-Embodied-Challenge-Western/dp/0465056741/

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/

Do you have any sources? I read this biography of Wittgenstein by Ray Monk, and he said it was no longer being published.

Useless, conceited, futurist masturbation.

You want the theoretical framework of AI, go study math and programming, then go read Russell & Norvig, or if you want philosophy without the practicality, Hofstadter.

Abstract:
In this video, Brian of the “distillationsbl” philosophy podcast, reads a selection from "The Essential Kierkegaard" edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. The selection is from Kierkegaard's letters to a Peter Wilhelm Lund, written in his 5th year at Copenhagen University.
Brian draws a connection from Kierkegaard's writing on his confrontation with "the ordinary run of men" and "their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man" to what Brian hypothesizes is a common experience had amongst those that are philosophically inclined.
The "so-called practical life" is something our peers might not recognize as it is 'the water they are swimming in'. For those with a disposition seeking deeper answers, it can be difficult to volitionally return to that state in which the water is indistinguishable from the environment. But that is exactly the skill required in order to attain social well-being and form meaningful relationships.

• more distillationsbl links

>So I was off by ten years?

It's obvious when you ask this question you don't know much history.

>What does your last bit have to do with anything, the bit about soldiers?

You really are out of the loop about what is going on in the world... right now world leaders fear political awakening of the masses of workers of the planet. AKA they fear people challenging corporate power aka the abuses of capitalism.

The (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTIZBCQ79g

Snowden on terrorism/spying.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/sep/25/edward-snowden-treaty-glenn-greenwald-mass-surveillance-terrorism-video

Democracy Inc.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

Intereference in other states when the corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Wars are about profit and ultimately controlling the masses when they figure out how to be political and protect their rights and workers and begin to effect corporate profits. See here:

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137

House and Philosophy

Seinfeld and Philosophy

Batman and Philosophy

World of Warcraft and Philosophy

Watchmen and Philosophy

Final Fantasy and Philosophy

Harry Potter and Philosophy

South Park and Philosophy

The Office and Philosophy

Star Wars and Philosophy

The Simpsons and Philosophy

X-Men and Philosophy

The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy

Family Guy and Philosophy

>So what does science say about human nature? That it's "not a blank slate"? Well, of course not. No one said it was.

Oh?

The idea that human nature is a blank slate, an empty vessel into which society pours all of its assumptions, beliefs, behaviors, prejudices etc., has been one of the central, animating ideas for the far Left for many decades.

The idea first emerged the philosophers John Lock and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and later was incorporated into Marxism. Thomas Hobbes in his book 'Leviathan' defended a different view of human nature, in which the human mind is the result of inborn characteristics. The difference between the views of human nature conceived by Lock/Rousseau on the one hand, and Thomas Hobbes on the other, broadly speaking, have outlined the major differences between the Left and the Right over the centuries (as I see it the Left more or less begins in the French revolution).

It is not the only difference between the Left and Right, of course, and one needn't believe in the blank slate to be on the left.

A lot depends on which view is right.

The Marxist ideologies that swept the world in the twentieth century maintained that all of mankind's ills are imposed by cultural inheritance. In this view crime, racism, inequality, selfishness etc. are all consequences of views, beliefs, customs, economic structure of society at large. Marxism claims that human selfishness and malice are imposed by capitalist society and social institutions. Thus all of the ills of society can be fixed by simply changing the circumstances into which human beings are born. If instead humans grow up in a better, more equal, more just environment, then their blank slate personalities will absorb this, and subsequent generations will form a more equal and just society.

With this idea in mind, Marxist political parties seized power in many countries, overthrew the existing unjust order, and built extremely powerful states to force human society into perfection. They thought that human beings, being moldable like clay, would be changed by the newly shaped society, and a more just world would emerge.

The disaster that resulted is a consequence of the incompatibility of human nature with the policies that communism applied to society. If human nature is not a blank slate, and society's ills emerge from the interaction between human circumstance and a more fixed, more inborn human nature, then all the communist projects will have accomplished is to overthrow society and all existing institutions, and create chaos and misery, only to have all of the problems they claimed to be able to solve re-emerge. That is exactly what happened.

You can read more about all this here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/0142003344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331666634&sr=8-1

This is only tangentially related to this comment, but I find it odd that Pinker, who's now known for arguing for the notion of perpetual progress and humans constantly becoming less violent and more rational, also wrote this, which is all about the existence of human nature with inherent biases to violence and without pure rationality. I wouldn't consider the recognition of human nature pessimistic when looked at in the right light, but from a simplistic viewpoint of one who believes in a malleable human nature, it's funny comparing his present reputation for "optimism" with his past "pessimism".