Since I am, by trade, a philosopher, I feel obligated to start this discussion. Feel free to comment (or ask questions) about philosophy books, authors, and whatnot here. Anything's fair game here, but I PERSONALLY won't be able to provide much commentary on most of the contemporary continental philosophy. Maybe others will.

I am currently reading Jeff McMahan's The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (2002, Oxford U Press) which is just out in paperback. It's a fascinating study/argument about the ethics of killings "at the margins" which includes abortion and euthanasia. McMahan does a great job studying the aspects of the issue: personal identity, what "death" means, when "life" begins, what the various views, including religious views, add and subtract from the debate.

This is the first of a 2-volume series on killing, with the second about the OTHER sorts of killing, including self-defense, war, and capital punishment.

The problem with killing, is that someone always ends up getting hurt.

"God and the new physics" Paul Davies.

I'm not sure you can "hurt" someone who is in a coma or hasn't developed the appropriate cognitive responses to pain. That's part of McMahan's point. But I like your joke, if it's a joke.

I've not read Davies' book, bm, but it sounds interesting, from what I've heard about it. What's the skinny? Maybe I'll read it over break...

It's not a joke.

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Originally posted by philosopherEric:
Since I am, by trade, a philosopher, I feel obligated to start this discussion.

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The inevitable University of Walamaloo post:

E: Is your name not Eric?

F: No, it's uh..flem.

E: That's going to cause a little confusion. Mind if we call you "Eric" to keep it clear?

"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table."

okay, now we've gotten that out of the way....

.

At a recent party, a bunch of the drunk philosophers tried to rewrite the philosopher's song for our department's members. We failed. We were pretty pathetic, actually. Eventually, we turned it into kareoke.

I just picked up, using one of my many Borders gift cards, Dan Dennett's Freedom Evolves, a book that claims to be able to reconcile free will and determinism using evolutionary biology, cognitive science, economic theory, and philosophy. That's a tough road to hoe, but I'm looking forward to reading it next week.

Man, you must have some readin' matter piled up in front of you, people pushin' stuff on ya all the time, tryin' ta get yer opinion ' cause they respect it so much.

I got stuff from years ago I still havn't looked at.

It's a good thing I love to read.

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Originally posted by burning man:
Man, you must have some readin' matter piled up in front of you, people pushin' stuff on ya all the time, tryin' ta get yer opinion ' cause they respect it so much.

I got stuff from years ago I still havn't looked at.

It's a good thing I love to read.

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Honestly, very few people ask for my opinion on anything, burning man. My students, occasionally, but not that often. Friends, but never on philosophy.

I get stuff pushed on me often...free books from the presses. And it does pile up. But sometimes the stuff I've never read, or haven't read in ages, is the most rewarding.

Dan Dennett is great. Haven't read Freedom Evolves, but am about halfway through Conciousness Explained (and I'm getting worried cause he ain't anywhere near halfway through explaining conciousness). Glad to hear you aren't much for the contemporary continental philosophers pE. I'm hopeing to get some conversations going with you, as I recently submitted my apps for grad schools in philosophy. I'm primarily interested in Cognitive Science/Philosophy of Mind and Formal Logic.

Anyone go for Hofstadter's books? Not really a philospher in the traditional sense, but then again philosphy is getting less and less traditional by the day. He's probably my favorite thinker, and one of my favorite writers.

I'm trying to work through Godel's Incompleteness Theorem right now, and am just about done with the book Godel's Proof by Newman and Negel. I've got What is Mathematical Logic? up next, which hopefully will finish the job of getting my feet wet in regards to Godel.

Discuss please, I so rarely get to talk philosophy.

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Originally posted by keylimetrev:
Dan Dennett is great. Haven't read Freedom Evolves, but am about halfway through Conciousness Explained (and I'm getting worried cause he ain't anywhere near halfway through explaining conciousness). Glad to hear you aren't much for the contemporary continental philosophers pE. I'm hopeing to get some conversations going with you, as I recently submitted my apps for grad schools in philosophy. I'm primarily interested in Cognitive Science/Philosophy of Mind and Formal Logic.

Anyone go for Hofstadter's books? Not really a philospher in the traditional sense, but then again philosphy is getting less and less traditional by the day. He's probably my favorite thinker, and one of my favorite writers.

I'm trying to work through Godel's Incompleteness Theorem right now, and am just about done with the book Godel's Proof by Newman and Negel. I've got What is Mathematical Logic? up next, which hopefully will finish the job of getting my feet wet in regards to Godel.

Discuss please, I so rarely get to talk philosophy.

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Don't expect Dennett to actually explain consciousness, keylimetrev. He doesn't. He's a GREAT writer who has at least one HUGE idea (the intentional stance) but he offers a lot of bluster and not enough conclusion for me. A better take on consciousness is Chalmers' The Conscious Mind. My strength isn't in formal logic...I've done the bare minimum, and avoided serious logic like the plague. But I've done a fair bit of work in philosophy of mind...

What programs are you interested in? Mine (Washington University in St. Louis) is heavy in cog sci and decent in formal logic. Our primary logician is the only person to have co-authored anything (a book) with W.V.O. Quine, but we've recently hired a new, young logician. PM me if you want to chat more about the specifics of programs...

I agree on the Dan Dennett comments. It was just a joke that I was actually thinking he might explain it all. He is one great writer though. I think it has probably done more to increase his stature as a philosopher than anything else.

I'm currently working up my first set of lecture notes for an upper-level class I'm teaching on the morality of war, and thought I'd shamelessly re-plug my edited book The Morality of War: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives which is due out next month from Prentice Hall. You can see it here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131487701/qid=1105986232/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-4502087-9316957?v=glance&s=books

Lest you think me merely a shill, I should also plug the book I'm currently using as my course text, which is Paul Christopher's The Ethics of War and Peace (3rd Edition). It's a nice discussion of all of the topics surrounding war and peace, but it lacks original source material. My text is ALL source material, so they complement each other well.

Anyway...if you're interested in the morality of war and violence and the discussions of these matters throughout history, you may find these two books useful.

Has anyone here read a book by Robert Wright called The Moral Animal? Not exactly philosophy, but was recommended to me by a Biology grad student who was transfering over to study the 'biology of ethics.' The Moral Animal is supposed to be a decent overview of evolutionary psychology, but I've got so many books lined up I'd like to know if it is worth pushing to the top of my reading pile.

Every thing you take in through your senses is programming.

It is good that you programme yourself on knowledge, and not ignorance, but it is still programming.

Loops.

To see reality with an unclutered mind is surely the objective.

I have books piled in front of me, sources of knowledge and wisdom, which I will read when they say I'm ready.

They jump into my hand.

Storm_chaser- Is this in reference to my last post? I'm a little unclear on what you are trying to say. Please explain.

It's a reference to the whole discusion above.

As cognitive animals, who depend on their senses to make "sense" of the world, we are naturaly inclined towards collecting knowledge, if only to allow us to survive better. Knowledge is power, after all.

Now, we have a choice in what we chose to absorb, but because of the current bombardment of imput, we look for cues as to what information we absorb.

This impulse can be manipulated.

that's interesting, storm_chaser because by saying we have a choice in what we absorb deals completely with how your conscious digests information. When making a choice to pick up a book, I definitely see what you mean...knowledge in that sense.

What about the things that truly shape us as human beings though, which is the lived experience and the environment around surrounding us? I think one's ability to then control what they digest is greatly hindered because i'm sure our unconscious alone will process 20 times more information that our conscious can ever intake at one moment. For example, when you're walking down the street. A person's senses are literally bombarded by information. Our conscious can only juggle so much in order to allow our brain to function, so what about all hundreds of other info? I can't believe it's ignored, but rather instead dealt with by our unconscious.

hmmmm..do you think that this is why we have things like "intuition" 'cause it's a thought process completely dependent on the unconscious for reasoning rather than the more controllable conscious?

I do like the idea of programming, storm_chaser, which is most apparent when observing our more social-based aspects of living, where the programming is apparent when studying different cultures value systems, religions, and even social heirarchies.

oh, since i'm new here...these are some of my favorite philosophers:
Baudrillard, Barthes, Lacan, Arthur C. Danto (art theorist), and I know this is kinda going out on a limb, but The Dali Lama (in his own respects).

That's what dreams are for.

Dreams exist outside of programming.

Anything outside of programming is either worshipped, attacked or dismissed.

When burning man replies to storm_chaser, should a psychiatrist be notifed?

And why aren't you two ever in the same room together????