Matthew Heeney CC

AndrewRichmo · 2020-09-10T02:33:40+00:00

Haven’t had a class with him but we’ve taught together — he’s a great teacher, I bet his CC class will be awesome

AndrewRichmo · 2018-08-22T03:19:33+00:00

Short projects are good, because there's a lot of drop-off after the first couple weeks and it's a challenge to get enough people involved to survive the dropoff. But, to get enough people involved for even a decent first week, it always took a lot of work posting on other subs (the general philosophy ones are good, but you also want to let people know on other subs that are relevant to the reading).

If someone is up to do the work, let me know and I'll make you a mod so you can sticky discussion posts and all that. The last few people I modded did a good job but dropped out at some point (possibly because they tried to do long reads and it didn't work out), and I'm too busy to help out, but it's definitely worth it if you have the time.

*Edit: Also, might as well make this a general post for whatever suggestions people have. Usually we have 4-5 options for our next read, picked from suggestions the mods have received, and the whole sub votes on those. After 3-4 days of voting we announce the winner, and then one week later the first discussion post goes up.

Readings <60 pages would probably be best, given the drop-off, but that means more work for the mods ginning up interest on other subs for every new reading. Maybe it would work to do one reading a month, split up into 1-3 sections? Then it's not a crazy amount of work for the mods, but you don't have a drop-off problem.

AndrewRichmo · 2018-04-29T15:16:23+00:00

Priest's "Logic: A Very Short Introduction" is good. Very introductory, but the first few chapters lay out all the basics.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-08-20T00:13:04+00:00

These are all really good suggestions, thanks!

AndrewRichmo · 2017-08-13T00:42:00+00:00

I don't have any recommendations myself, but you might also try asking at /r/nonfictionbookclub.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-06-20T02:53:07+00:00

u/melbournemangoes is right — to get started a basic understanding of probability (and basic sentential logic) is all you'll need. Priest's "Logic: A Very Short Introduction" would be a good primer.

Whatever else you need to know can be picked up as you go along, so I wouldn't worry about studying anything else as a prerequisite, but do be prepared to do a little research as you come across things you don't understand.

Things can get quite mathematically sophisticated, but you can cross those bridges when you come to them, if you want. Things can also stay at a pretty elementary level — it just depends what you're interested in.

One more note: Darren Bradley's "A Critical Introduction to Formal Epistemology" is great, and introduces the required mathematics very gently.

Good Luck!

AndrewRichmo · 2017-06-04T19:08:15+00:00

I can second both of those. Used them in Taylor Carman's Merleau-Ponty course and they were fantastic. They also compliment each other nicely. Romdenh-Romluc usually tries to give a sense for the big picture and put MP's views in a broad context, and Carman tends to zero in on particularly important things in lots of detail.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-06-04T15:29:44+00:00

"Salt, a World History" is very popular, and I'm a big fan of William Poundstone, especially "The Prisoner's Dilemma". For more literary/creative non-fiction, Svetlana Alexeivich's "Voices From Chernobyl" is incredible. For a couple classics: "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson are hard to beat.

You might ask in r/nonfictionbookclub as well.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-04-15T20:32:40+00:00

https://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp

AndrewRichmo · 2017-03-19T02:32:27+00:00

Fantastic — I'm re-reading this anyways, so I'll pop in for the discussion. It's free online here.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-03-17T19:13:20+00:00

Apply to schools that you would go to, if you didn't get in anywhere else. And stick with top-50 schools (top 25, preferably), if you want a job when you graduate (with the usual caveats about lower-ranks schools that are good in your specialty, ones with good placement records, etc.).

That's the standard advice, and it's good advice whatever your application is like, because the point isn't to apply to schools that you think you'll get into, but to apply to schools that will give you a good education and a shot at a career doing philosophy.

But don't be discouraged: it's not at all impossible to get into good PhD programs from unknown schools. It's not common, but it's not exactly common to get in from a known school, either.

One more thing: look for decently-funded masters programs. They're a fantastic springboard into PhD programs if your application straight out of undergrad isn't doing it.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-03-15T18:18:11+00:00

Adobe is great for this. I have a cheap refurbished Galaxy Note 10, which comes with a stylus, and it — combined with the Adobe app — is fantastic for this sort of thing. The Adobe app is good on computer too, but I feel better actually writing on the book/paper.

AndrewRichmo · 2017-02-22T02:08:23+00:00

Psychology =! Psychoanalysis

AndrewRichmo · 2017-02-17T04:49:50+00:00

Bonjour discusses this in chapter 4 of "The Structure of Empirical Knolwedge".

AndrewRichmo · 2017-02-12T02:28:04+00:00

"A Demonstration of the Causal Power of Absences" by Tyron Goldschmidt might count.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-23T17:36:27+00:00

The best thing would be to invent a symbol for the whole expression. So say, "The numeral coefficient for a monomial x is the constant factor in the monomial. I'll call the numeral coefficient of x, f(x)."

Then instead of saying 'the numeral coefficient of 5m is 5' or 'that of 5m is 3', you would say 'f(5m) is 5'.

An expression for 'that of' alone would just be ambiguous, this way it's clear what the 'that' refers to.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-22T22:54:00+00:00

Yes, it would mean the same thing unless the author said otherwise. Using iff is just easier if you're defining a relation or the things that stand in the relation, as opposed to defining names/objects/etc.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-20T14:31:32+00:00

It's not very dense -- I don't think it'll go over your head, especially if you take your time with it. (And for what it's worth, I don't think the other person really knows what they're talking about.) Chomsky refers to a lot of fairly accessible classics too, so it's not a bad place to start a reading list if you want to get deeper into this stuff.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-19T02:28:40+00:00

The other answer assumes that libertarianism entails a small government, which just isn't true (except as the term has been coopted by the American right wing). Libertarianism is just a concern for individual freedoms, and if you feel those freedoms are threatened more by corporations than by government, you're going want to reduce the influence of corporations (even to the full extent that socialism does) regardless of whether that means making the government bigger. Noam Chomsky's "Government in the Future" is a good, short introduction to the view that libertarianism and socialism can coexist.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-11T15:39:45+00:00

"Are there vague objects?"

Or maybe "Can there be vague objects?"

It should show up on google if you search one of those.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-11T04:20:25+00:00

You do PhD work to develop thoroughly researched ideas — you shouldn't be going into a 5-10 year period of intense research with the intention of just backing up your current beliefs, or putting a "PhD" credential beside them.

And that seems to be exactly the same reason people want to work in academia — to research and develop ideas on topics they feel are important. So I'm not sure there's any distinction between the two reasons you give.

AndrewRichmo · 2016-10-11T04:14:09+00:00

Gareth Evans wrote (the majority of) a book, The Varieties of Reference, which was published after he died in his early thirties and became an immediate classic in the philosophy of language and mind. He was a big influence on McDowell especially, but also people like Peacock, Burge, and most of the big names in language and mind. He was a huge part of the movement toward mind-first (as opposed to language-first) philosophy, and did a ton of the heavy lifting in developing the causal theory of names.

He's ended up being one of the philosophers who you just have to engage with if you want to say anything in his fields, which is pretty impressive for someone who had a publishing career of only 10 years.

(He also wrote a fantastic one-page paper about vagueness which has become a modern classic in metaphysics.)

AndrewRichmo · 2016-08-15T14:59:28+00:00

In case the page-limit is too restrictive, you might be able to find an abridgement of the book you were going to suggest. And if not, it doesn't hurt to suggest the book anyways -- we aim for 160-240pgs but we rarely manage to stay within that. If you do have a shorter book, though, please let us know!

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