Currently, I'm reading two non-research related philosophy books:

Rousseau's Dog by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. This one tells the story of the unpleasant collapse of the friendship of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. I'm half done, and it's pretty good. These guys also wrote books on the Bobby Fischer/Boris Spassky chess rivalry and on the famous Wittgenstein/Popper poker incident, so it was a pretty safe bet.

Breaking the Spell by Dan Dennett. Probably the best-known popular materialist/naturalist philosopher of mind writes a book attempting to explain where the desire for religion comes from. He's a great writer, although I think he often doesn't tell us what he THINKS he tells us. His recent books on Darwin, free will, and consciousness were all good, so this one should be a fun read.


EDIT: I gave up on the first one about halfway through. It's interesting enough, but it didn't grip me like the book on Wittgenstein and Popper did, and I finally packed it in. A book's really gotta GRAB me to get read these days, because of limited time to read for fun.

Dennett's book is, as all of his are, very well-written and filled with interesting tidbits, but I'm not sure I'm finding his argument(s) tenable.

I'm also flipping through a copy of Robert Solomon's Living With Nietzsche these days, and it's a very entertaining, fun read of a non-typical position on the iconic Nietzsche.

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Much thanks for the plato.stanford link on Spinoza - it's goddamn excellent!

I'm going to have an independent study of Husserl in the fall, so I was trying to read up on him, but so far I kind of hate it. So much ridiculous terminology and bulky elephantine german writing. I'll look for the introductory material on Husserl on that site and do some more reading before I have any real complaints about his philosophy though.

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Originally posted by vitunkrapula:
Much thanks for the plato.stanford link on Spinoza - it's goddamn excellent!

I'm going to have an independent study of Husserl in the fall, so I was trying to read up on him, but so far I kind of hate it. So much ridiculous terminology and bulky elephantine german writing. I'll look for the introductory material on Husserl on that site and do some more reading before I have any real complaints about his philosophy though.

The Stanford Encyclopedia is uniformly awesome. I like it because it's not aimed to be 'introductory' like a lot of online philosophy sites. It's written by academic philosophers for students (and other academics) who are willing to put some thought into reading encyclopedia articles.

Good luck with Husserl. While I've always been intrigued by the notion of phenomenology, I've never been able to quite 'get' how it really works. Maybe it's the analytic philosopher in me, but I don't see how Husserl (or Merleau-Ponty, or any of the other phenomenologists) get their arguments to work. I find Husserl himself to be puzzling, self-contradictory, and I'm bothered by his willingness to invent terms when needed. I've read chunks of Logical Investigations and all of the Cartesian Meditations, so I may be missing stuff, but I don't get it. Which is not to say it's not valuable, but only to say that it's not the kind of philosophy I do, which isn't saying alot.

Yeah, so far I haven't been too impressed with phenomenology. Although I don't have a whole lot of experience with it, on first glance it seems to take a lot from Kant and run with it way too far without heed for direction.

Last spring I had a fairly indepth metaphysics course concentrating on Heidegger's metaphysics lectures, which was amazing. So I might end up on the continental side of things, seeing as how (late) Wittgenstein also makes a lot of sense to me.

I'll say the same thing about Heidegger as I do about Husserl: I don't get it. But I'm an analytically trained philosopher and those folks on the continental side tend to frustrate me. I've liked some things I've seen Rorty say about Heidegger's pragmatism, but I can't say much of his work, itself, has ever spoken to me.

It's funny how people are so divided on that. Even within the class there was something of an insurrection which was very skeptical of the whole business. One of the major stumbling blocks for the class was giving up the idea that thought is somehow contained in language but not completely dependent on it. And one girl really disliked Heidegger's Bavarian peasant mode of speech and his constant reliance on listening to language speak itself.

Currently reading George Berkeley's Three Dialogues Between Hylas And Philonus. Not so much as reading it for pleasure as reading it because it's a course requirement The book is really growing on me though; I think it's an absolutely interesting read, at least so far. I've just finished the first dialogue, and I must say it has brought up some bright concepts on immaterialism, skepticism, "sensible qualities": primary and secondary qualities of material substances (and how they don't exist extramentally), and the theory that material objects in the universe are just "perceived through the ideas that resemble them".

Very interesting book. I initially found it quite discombobulating that Berkeley would argue for immaterialism when technically he's an empiricist. Fortunately it's all starting to make sense to me now, and I can't wait to finish the the next two dialogues.

I refute Berkeley thus...(kicks desk)!!!

Students in Intro classes HATE those dialogues. I can NEVER get them to connect with it.

If you're into reading classic philosophical dialogues, read Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. I've been teaching them in my Philosophy of Religion course, and I've decided I'm going to write a book on them some day. They're that deep and rich.

Haha

There are indeed a lot of repugnancies (I can't believe I'm using Berkeley's WORD against him) in his dialogues which might be the reason why it's so difficult to connect with them (one example would be the copping out to a Divine Entity in order to solve all the problematic gaps)...but my prof right now is so amazing. I'm not quite certain if it's her teaching charm that got me enthusiastic with what I'm reading right now or it's the foolishness of Berkeley that got me hooked. Either way.

I heard you're a very charismatic prof, so it's not you. Blame your students.

Anyhow, unfortunately Dialogues Concering Natural Religion is not one of the texts in any of my courses this year. In this specific course however (17th and 18th century Philosophy - The Rationalists & The Empiricists), we're going to be reading Sections 1 through 12 of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding starting February. I'll heed your recommendation on Hume's other work though, most likely this summer when I'm not up to my nose with my current reading schedule.

On another note, I'm really finding the works of the Rationalists very engrossing, although some of their conceptual ramblings are not particularly credible. I am planning to take a more in-depth course on the Rationalists next year, me thinks.

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Although I was not trained to be a philosopher in college, but I do like philosophy! In school and nowadays I'm a free hunter of western philosophy. I've read a bit of its history, studied a few guys that I really liked. personally, I feel my own thoght is profoundly influenced by later Wittgenstein! I like his metaphor of beatle's box and his opinion of "private language".

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Do you see philosopy as an endless loop? In math I can add two figures, say four plus three equals seven, and get a final solution, but in philosophy the end, if there is one, is far into the future. Perhaps that is the nature of this science, but I do not know. Is there a four plus three equals seven in philosophy? Does my question make sense? Wht is sense? oops!

No worries, rockthief, I hear ya. I believe however that this is the appeal of Philosophy for those who are immersed in the discipline. Reasoning and logic might not give you definitive answers at the moment, but the resulting sound propositions often become precursors to more grounded frameworks of knowledge.

To name just a few of the myriad examples, Astronomy and Psychology used to be subsets of Philosophy back in the day, but now they are their own completely independent spheres in scientific inquiry. One of Philosophy's aims is to push the boundaries of human knowledge, and this has done more than wondrous things to benefit science.

Well there's no three + four = seven in philosophy because the goal of the philosophy is to find answers that we could never know and that science cant find those answers. Philosophy is all about theories and speculations.

Most of you are americans and its normal for you to like anglo-saxons philosophers. But i seriously think that philosophy ends with Saint-Augustin. Modern phylosophy tries so hard to find solutions with philosophy and using it as a tool instead of believe in philosophy. Thats why someone like Wittgenstein will think that nobody can understand ethics: its phylosophy is not something he truly believes, its just a tool to counter greek ethics. Well i totally hate Weitgenstein because he prefers mathematics to ethics as a way to understand human morality. What a depressed *!&%$/%!!! And I would like to say mean things about John Rawls (and Kant too) but i'll stop right here. But there is one good thing about Weitgenstein: he's not worst than Hegel......

Actually numbers were used in one of my classes last year to demonstrate differences between analytic and synthetic knowledge (don't ask me right now what those are, I literally just woke up and I can't remember a darned thing).

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because the goal of the philosophy is to find answers that we could never know and that science cant find those answers. Philosophy is all about theories and speculations.

You see, that's why I think the trend of modern Philosophy is veering in the direction of Analytic Philosophy with tons and tons of logic. It might have been set by Kant with his Transcendental Idealism. He has mentioned in his Prolegomena and Critique... that plain reason always pushes people towards Metaphysics. Metaphysics according to Kant is never a legitimate source of knowledge because it only deals with the logically possible and not the physically possible. I think this might have set the course for modern Philosophy to be more analytical than metaphysical. I believe however, that Metaphysics will always be a recognizeable branch in Philosophy and will always have a place in the field (hell, even physicists figuring out the origin of the cosmos ultimately have to resort to Metaphysics as their inspiration). I just think that at this day and age the real trend is Analytic and the epistemological pursuits of modern day philosophers are served well by Analytic Philosophy.

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Originally posted by eggTweedyegg:
Well there's no three + four = seven in philosophy because the goal of the philosophy is to find answers that we could never know and that science cant find those answers. Philosophy is all about theories and speculations.

Most of you are americans and its normal for you to like anglo-saxons philosophers. But i seriously think that philosophy ends with Saint-Augustin. Modern phylosophy tries so hard to find solutions with philosophy and using it as a tool instead of believe in philosophy. Thats why someone like Wittgenstein will think that nobody can understand ethics: its phylosophy is not something he truly believes, its just a tool to counter greek ethics. Well i totally hate Weitgenstein because he prefers mathematics to ethics as a way to understand human morality. What a depressed *!&%$/%!!! And I would like to say mean things about John Rawls (and Kant too) but i'll stop right here. But there is one good thing about Weitgenstein: he's not worst than Hegel......

aww, but Hegel had EVERYTHING figured out. He just couldn't write it in a way that anyone could either a: understand or b: give a crap about.

The only philosopher I've really thought is worth a damn is John Dewey. I read part of his book Art as Experience before me university library decided to cut me off, and it is fantastic. The outside/inside problem of metaphysics isn't a problem for him.

But philosophy really isn't about theories. The word theory really belongs to science and is not relevant to a priori knowledge. The word theory comes from a Greek root which is related to seeing, sight. And since philosophy deals with a priori knowledge (knowledge independent of experience), it is precisely the kind of thing that cannot have anything to do with sight. Which is really the problem of metaphysics. Metaphysicians try to take away just about every tool they've been given to figure things out, and then try to figure it out using reason alone, in the dark. No wonder it was a big failure.

BlueRecluse:
Simple applications of the operation of addition are examples of knowledge that Kant called both synthetic and a priori (according to him at least - I would call them a priori, but not synthetic). He called the synthetic because you have two "concepts" (3 and 4), which form a result (7) when "3" and "4" are operated on by the operation of addition (which is probably yet another concept making up the synthesis, but it's been awhile since I worked on the Critique of Pure Reason, so I'm a lil fuzzy on it). A synthesis is a "putting things together" (at least that's how I taught myself to remember it). So you have one thing - 3 and another thing - 4 to make 7. But you don't need to have 3 and 4 apples or 3 or 3 and 4 of anything else that you experience to know that 3 + 4 = 7. A stock example of analytic knowledge is the definition of the word "bachelor." The word "bachelor" means unmarried man. So nothing is "put together" to get the end result "unmarried male." Except for the meaning of meaning, of course. oh boy.

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Originally posted by rockthief:
Do you see philosopy as an endless loop? In math I can add two figures, say four plus three equals seven, and get a final solution, but in philosophy the end, if there is one, is far into the future. Perhaps that is the nature of this science, but I do not know. Is there a four plus three equals seven in philosophy? Does my question make sense? What is sense? oops!

hahaha!

some time ago, I was thinking about what the hell we mean when we talk about things "making sense." My teacher/friend said when things make sense they are understandable. I think something makes sense when it makes our ideas clear as the everyday things we see in the world around us. anyway....

Turn 3+4=7 into a question. What is a question? AAAGGGGHH! What difference does it make for there to be something rather than nothing? (how Heidegger put it)

These questions will never get satisfactory answers in the normal sense of the word "answer." That how philosophy has dealt with the same questions for thousands of years. And it's not just a Euro-centric thing. Only in Asia it's more likely that metaphysical, philosophical questions come out in what we might call religious texts. Like the Tao Te Ching, the writings of Chuang Tzu, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, etc. They don't have quite the division between philosophy and religion that we do. I, for one, admire them for that. I think a lot of our philosophical questions are deeply tied to religious questions (somebody mentioned Augustine earlier...).

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Originally posted by vitunkrapula:
The word theory really belongs to science and is not relevant to a priori knowledge. The word theory comes from a Greek root which is related to seeing, sight. And since philosophy deals with a priori knowledge (knowledge independent of experience), it is precisely the kind of thing that cannot have anything to do with sight.

Okay, but what about Empiricism?

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aww, but Hegel had EVERYTHING figured out. He just couldn't write it in a way that anyone could either a: understand or b: give a crap about.

about point a. : ehh....that's what i said. He was bad...and pretentious...and mean. Even one of my philosophy teacher would say that Hegel WANTED to be misunderstood.

about point b. : Hegel's "Philosophy of right" was a best-seller when it came out in stores...

Hegel's "bildung" is a mistake. Even if your work is fun, creative and helpfull, you are always working into a specific domain. While working on your specific projects, you don't really have the time to learn other things. Specific work brings a new ignorance. That's the way it goes.

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Which is really the problem of metaphysics. Metaphysicians try to take away just about every tool they've been given to figure things out, and then try to figure it out using reason alone, in the dark. No wonder it was a big failure.

Well it's modern philosophy problem. One thing is sure, it wasn't Aristotle's problem. He's the one who understood metaphysic. Even if we all know that Platon was wrong, (with the world of Ideas), his metaphysic is so important. He wanted to explain all the spiritual and introspective side of humankind. Plato and Socrates strongly believed in the soul.

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Originally posted by Blue Recluse:

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Originally posted by vitunkrapula:
The word theory really belongs to science and is not relevant to a priori knowledge. The word theory comes from a Greek root which is related to seeing, sight. And since philosophy deals with a priori knowledge (knowledge independent of experience), it is precisely the kind of thing that cannot have anything to do with sight.

Okay, but what about Empiricism?

Let's see if this helps... Empiricism itself can't be validated based on testimony from experience. In other words, Empiricism is not a theory that can be tested conclusively. Theories are posited already under the assumption that experiential (empirical) data are a reliable source of knowledge. So any theory to be tested already rests on some strain of empiricism. But empiricism itself cannot be a theory, cos that would be like saying experience vouches for itself that it is a viable source of knowledge. I'm telling you something right now, and by the way, I'm telling you the truth. Does that really convince you? I hope not. You will never be able to see anything that makes seeing as a whole "correct," in some weird sense.

Does that help at all?

The Rationalists would just bitch about how many times our senses have fooled us. For we must be able to reason to even have a prayer of interpreting data correctly, so the reasoning is the really important thing.

I spose I would say: You must be able to reason, AND you must be able to use your senses. Just one or the other is no good.

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Originally posted by eggTweedyegg:

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aww, but Hegel had EVERYTHING figured out. He just couldn't write it in a way that anyone could either a: understand or b: give a crap about.

about point a. : ehh....that's what i said. He was bad...and pretentious...and mean. Even one of my philosophy teacher(s) would say that Hegel WANTED to be misunderstood.

1st off - I was joking, man. I actually have a soft spot for Hegel. But I take pretty much every philosopher with a heavy grain of salt. The bigger the truth they claim to have found, the bigger the grain of salt.

Pretentious? I dunno. He did seem to like to pretend things. But I think that makes him fun more than bad and mean. I think Heidegger, much more than Hegel, WANTED to be misunderstood. If it's so, he's a marvelously skilled charlatan, getting just about all of Germany (Bavaria, whatever they called themselves back then) excited about his books. At least for a half century or so. Which isn't bad - like the Beatles of philosophy, perhaps.

But mean?! Where are you coming from there? Which writings of Hegel have you actually read? I don't mean to sound snotty here, but everyone really needs to get it from the horse's mouth (specially when it comes to philosophy), and not from some secondary source who more than likely turned away without ever really giving him a chance? Complain as much as you like about how he might never be understood, but as long as you don't understand it, it's just gibberish, NOT wrong. You have to be able to understand something to call it a mistake and be right about that.

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about point b. : Hegel's "Philosophy of right" was a best-seller when it came out in stores...

I was referring to the public's attitude towards Hegel in the 20th century onwards - like your philosophy prof's apparent distaste, and yours. From what I've heard, people went NUTS for "Phenomenology of Spirit" when it came out, as well as the later Encyclopedia thingummy. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, was not popular at all in his day and age, but was vindicated later on by Nietzsche and others. And Schopenhauer despised Hegel.

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Hegel's "bildung" is a mistake. Even if your work is fun, creative and helpful, you are always working into a specific domain. While working on your specific projects, you do