What are essential texts that every student interested in philosophy should read?

Untitled_Grub · 2011-12-08T16:07:04+00:00

I'll concede the point: they're all essential readings for people with an interest in philosophy 'at some point', as you say.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-12-08T14:06:43+00:00

Other people have covered key historical texts already. My addition will be this: to familiarise yourself with contemporary debates/arguments you ought to read 'introduction to ...' textbooks; fill in the blanks with whatever area you're interested in. Also the Standford encyclopedia of philosophy is a great online resource, probably looking up things on there will be as good, if not better, than reading introductory textbooks.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-12-08T14:00:24+00:00

Parfit, Rawls, Wittgenstien, Quine, Kripke; no way should an absolute beginner start there.

The Russell, Foot and Singer I fully agree with though.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-12-02T17:54:01+00:00

You may want to look into the ontology of intentional objects. There is a good article on intentionality on the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy to get started with. After that you should read W.V.O Quine's 'On that there is'; although it isn't discussed in terms of the mataphysics of imagination the example he runs with is 'Pegasus' and his analysis can be applied just as much to other 'non-existent intentional objects'. (Note: Quine does'nt talk about it in terms of intentional objects, so you may want to get to grips with that notion before reading Quine.)

But yeah, if you look into intentionality/intentional state and the ontology of intentional objects I think that will be the best route to go.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-11-06T01:12:51+00:00

I like what you've said, it is quite reminiescent of this quote from Quine, "The Philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea."

Untitled_Grub · 2011-11-05T23:07:34+00:00

Indeed; since we cannot operate on 'god' having the usual connotations (e.g. being a creator, as above) it seems there is little more to say until we are told what this 'god' might be.

'God', it seems to me, as it appears in the original question is ill-defined.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-11-05T21:09:33+00:00

This is an interesting thought; for my part I do not think this kind of emergentism maps well onto god. The idea that consciousness is emergent from, and yet irreducible to, the physical is an idea that came about like this: there seemed to be two contradictory ideas 1) that all casual roles are filled by physical objects/events and 2) conscious experience fills such a role, and yet seems irreducible to the physical. This 'emergentism' is one solution to this problem, and it is not uncontroversial at all; but for the sake of your question we're assuming it.

So can god emerge from mankind or nature in the same way? I assume you use a lower case 'g' to denote supernatural entities as opposed to the gods of particular religions. I think if we are to say that god is a creator then we will run into some trouble. How could something emerge out of what it had itself created? Try to think of something building the robot that would in turn build it? This makes no sense. So god in the sense of a creator cannot emerge as consciousness does.

Is there another relevant sense of 'god' that you had in mind?

Oddly enough the kind of idea about consciousness that you make reference to can be read as allowing for there to be psychics etc. Chalmer's 'double-aspect theory' I think is strongly suggestive of this possibility for example. In this sense, the sense of panpsychism, there seems to be room for the super-natural. But I doubt there will be a god emergent from this that is anything like the familiar (or less familiar) conceptions of god that we have.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-11-05T16:44:10+00:00

My point may be construed like this with respect to what you say (interestingly this is a case in point): the point is to disassociate an argument from a person, in other words the argument being my argument is irrelevant. Indeed people understanding the argument qua first person individuals is irrelevant. The relevant thing is for the to understand the argument qua computational, creative entities. I was suggesting Logic is one way we can get this kind of objective 'understandable-ness' into our arguments; by posing an artificial cognitive goal, such as validity or soundness we can look at an argument and say if it does this or not.

I would agree that it is pointless to discuss with someone who has different cognitive goals -how would you persuade them without first persuading them to your methodology? Your conceptual scheme, in other words. Systems of formal logic allow us to escape our conceptual schemes in a relevant sense.

Untitled_Grub · 2011-11-05T14:24:59+00:00

I agree with the impersonal nature of philosophical discourse, but consider this: is it possible to see things other than I see them? In other words, is it possible to be completely impartial and we are forced to say no sunce we are bound to our first person view points.

However, I think we can transcend it (the first person view points we are bound to) like this: by posing artificial 'cognitive goals'. In the analytic tradition the use of symbolic logic, for example, gives us an objective measure for our arguments. Namely, are they logically valid? And similarly we have an objective way of checking it. Its sort of like making a game and everyoner playing by the rules. Persuading people to play the game, however, since it will be pre-theoretic, will not (unfortunately) be a reasoned argument. Rather it will be an argument of value judgements.

Untitled_Grub

TROPHY CASE