Reddit mentions: The best philosophy books

This is generally the answer I give to anyone who's unsure about specifically what they're interested in. You probably wanna spend a little while doing "general reading" so that you can find out what subjects interest you the most. Here are a few introductory books which are commonly recommended in no particular order:

• Think by Simon Blackburn
  
• A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton
  
• An Introduction to Philosophy by Jon Nuttall
  
  These books all cast a very large net. The Warburton book (from what I remember) gives a more chronological account since it's concerned with the history of the ideas as well as the ideas themselves. Though, this was my first introduction to philosophy and worked just as well as any other.
  
  Given the authors you've mentioned, you might be particularly interested in the religious philosophy, ethics and political philosophy sections but you sound open to anything new. A tip: if you get your hands on one or two or these books, as you go through them, make notes on authors or particular ideas that you find interesting so that you can branch your reading out independently based on your preferences. These books will very much be discussing the classics of western philosophy like Hume, Descartes, Aquinas, Kant (maybe) etc at least a bit so I would also recommend searching out contemporary writers or 2nd hand sources if you're interested in the ideas of these historical figures. I say this because diving into their original works early on will be intimidating, exhausting and probably uninteresting. You may well find them difficult to interpret without knowing before hand what they're getting at. Having some idea of their historical context also helps. Contemporary writers are usually more approachable and sometimes more relevant.
  
  ​
  
  If you're also looking for good introductions to other topics like physics, I could help you out. In the spirit of this sub, I'll recommend you a couple writers that are philosophy literate. Philosophy has gotten a bad rap from popular science icons like Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss, recently. Lawrence Krauss probably dominates in terms of ignorance but hey that's just my opinion. Nye, on the other hand, has recently changed his tune. Don't let this put you off because there are popular science writers like Sean Carroll and Carlo Rovelli who know their philosophy and understand the historical and conceptual importance of philosophy to their science. Here are my recommendations:
  
  
• The Big Picture by Sean Carroll
  
• From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll
  
• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
  
• Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli
  
  The Big Picture is Sean Carroll's "treatise" on his philosophy, essentially. It covers is views about knowledge, values and science all in one. (Scare quotes because the book is intended for a large audience and the word 'treatise' makes it sound a lot more dense than it really is). In it, he introduces Bayesian epistemology which is quite a popular idea in contemporary philosophy of science.
  
  From Eternity to Here essentially aims to answer quite metaphysical questions about our experience of time like where it "comes from" and in some parts he aims to resolve paradoxes relating to time travel all from the point of view of our best theories of physics. He also discusses big bang cosmology and, throughout, pays great respect to other philosophical views on the questions he's discussing.
  
  Seven Brief Lessons is basically what it says on the tin. It's a very short introduction and is probably the best place to start off reading popular physics (at least on this list).
  
  Reality Is Not What It Seems is a discussion of the history of physics essentially from the ancient greeks up until modern speculation on quantum gravity. Rovelli also pays great respects to the 'physicists of antiquity' by discussing ancient greek ideas about physics and metaphysics within the light of modern physics. He gives credit where credit is due and then some.
  
  Hope this was helpful.
  
  Oh, P.S. A few people have recommended the SEP but I'd be careful with it since plenty of the articles on there get pretty damn technical pretty quick and even sometimes they assume knowledge that you may not have. It's usually best used to accompany other reading and when you know what you're looking for (in terms of author, period, topic etc). Going on there and just blindly searching by topic probably isn't a good idea. A similar resource which presents topics in slightly less detail is the IEP.
  
  Here's a good youtube channel to check out too.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I got hit with a pretty nasty respiratory bug which put me down for awhile.

Anyway, on to talking about a general plan for this project. I think that the best thing to do would be to start with a light touch, and see how well she takes to it.

With that in mind, I might recommend starting with 'Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar'. Plato and a Platypus is a cheap, and reasonably instructive (though superficial) introduction to a range of philosophical questions through jokes. It is a strange approach, but one I think works quite well as a something like a philosophical appetizer that introduces lots of interesting topics. It has a sequel focused on politics ("Aristotle and an Aardvark") which is also quite good. I will warn that not all of the jokes are appropriate for all audiences, so whether you like this book might depend on how liberal you feel like being regarding jokes featuring explicit language, adult themes, etc.

I also definitely recommend anything from the Oxford Very Short Introduction series, particularly (given your interests) the Very Short Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics. In my experience, the entire VSI series is excellent, and I've used some of them to teach philosophy at the community college level. They are extremely brief (they can fit into my pockets) and accessible, and also quite cheap (usually about 10 bucks a piece). They are written by leading experts on each given topic, and there is an enormous selection if you decide that you want to explore particular topics (Ancient Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Theology, etc). They will be a bit tougher than Plato and a Platypus in that they don't typically have much fluff, but should still be generally relatively accessible. The Ethics volume is pretty solid, built around a series of major questions that ethics needs to respond to. I will offer two warnings about the VSI series:
(1) VSI formatting is largely left up to the author, so the approach varies considerably from text to text. This allows authors to structure the material however they feel is best, which usually turns out great. Just be ready for some jumps in how they deal with things (e.g., the Ethics volume is divided into sections which each review some set of related questions and possible answers, while the Logic volume is problem centered and features new tools of formal logic to address various problems presented in each chapter)
(2) Authors of VSI are almost always working scholars with particular philosophical viewpoints - and this will come across in their texts. Expect some axes to be ground, and presuppositions assumed. That said, of the one's I've read (maybe 5 or so at this point), they still presented a rather fair overview of the field.

I think for books, you will be hard pressed to do better than Plato and a Platypus/Aristotle and an Aardvark to provoke the feeling that philosophy is worthwhile, and the Very Short Introduction series to provide an actual introduction into the field.

There are also some great philosophy podcasts. The best for a non-philosopher is likely "Philosophize This", which is a largely chronological review of a fair chunk of the most significant philosophers in history (even including some non-Western thinkers). Again, the material isn't explicitly aimed at younger folk, so there may be some touchy content, but it is generally an exceptional program. They have quite a backlog now (something like 90 episodes), so there is plenty of material there.

Also, I've found a couple of course plans for philosophy in middle school. The strongest looking one to me is this one from UNC. Definitely worth looking at as a way to structure your thoughts, but I would augment it with some of the resources covered above.

I think this would yield a pretty low cost way to test if this approach will work. Assuming you were to buy all four books I've mentioned, I think it would run a total of about $40 per person, which should make this a pretty light investment in terms of money. Likewise, the books are all relatively short, so you might make it through them in as little as a month (if you were really motivated).

I think the real trick will be in deciding where to go after the initial introduction has been made and more serious texts are being considered, but this will depend a lot on how this project develops. I think the best thing to do with that is to wait and see how things turn out, then plan the next leg of the introduction. I'll be around for the foreseeable future, and would be happy to help you figure that out when the time comes.

Let me know what you think, and keep me in the loop as the project unfolds. I am very interested in this project and would be happy to lend a hand when possible.

I'm very happy that I was able to help :)

And yes, a lot of people will blame everything around them for the misery of themselves. This seems to be the easy way out, but you must ask yourself what good it does in the end. There are things which are outside of your control. What people might do to you, say to you, and so on. However no matter what harsh things you go through in life it is ultimately you that decide how to respond to them. You decide what to do with it. It is as Epictetus once said:

> "Man is affected not by events, but by the view he takes of them."

Usually I do not actually like to talk openly about the philosophy I follow, for the simple reason that I just try to live by it. Use actions, not words. Also for many people it might seem that you try to push something on to them. However I felt in this case I was justified to give an explanation of what exactly helped me :-)

Anyways, if you are interested in the principles I explained, then what you seek is reading on Stoicism. The book that has especially helped me is this one:
Stoicism and the art of happiness

It has eye-opening/life-changing wisdoms and perspectives on everything that has to do with you. How to deal with emotions, what they are, and what is essential to life a good life. Another interesting fact is that many of the mental exercises and perspectives the stoics used is now today amongst some of the most scientifically well-documented practices used by cognitive behavioural therapy (also with a quick google search, you will find that even the founder of CBT was inspired by the stoic teachings), which deals with practically all kinds of mental sufferings you can imagine.

It's a practical book on the life philosophy of Stoicism, and it is written by a credible psychotherapist who also takes interest in the study of Stoicism (hence the book!). It's not academic in any way, it's meant to be easily approachable and easy to implement into your life. Here's a quick breakdown of it all:

Stoicism is a life philosophy that was founded by the ancient greeks around 301 BCE. It's not a religion, or any kind of weird cult. It is a collection of principles that is meant to guide you towards happiness (in greek context meaning something more along the lines of inner well-being and tranquility).

I would suggest you read the book :-) Maybe you will come to pick up on everything stoicism has to offer, maybe you will only pick up whatever principles and wisdoms that you think are right, or maybe you won't find much agreement with it at all, all which is fine. However I think you will find some wisdoms you will definitely find to your liking, as you sound intrigued by the principles. The important thing is that no matter what, it will most certainly set you out on your way to think more about yourself and how to control your life and achieve your own understanding of well-being.

If Stoicism comes to your liking (start with the above book first, though), I could recommend books by some of the most famous ancient Stoics through time. I will leave some here for future reference for you:

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius - This is one of the most famous stoic texts.

Enchiridion - Epictetus

Dialogues and Essays - Seneca

These books read as manuals, not to be read in one sitting. They are huge collections of letters, essays and short passages from these excellent people about everything that has to do with achieving inner well-being, and how to view the world around you. They are remarkable ancient works, and it is truly inspiring and motivating to open them and just read a few of the lines from time to time.

As with anything, it's a learning process to change mindset. But it slowly comes when you study it. You learn the wisdoms and principles they had, you think about them and if they make sense, you apply them and live them, revisit them and so on, until they really become a part of you. It is truly worth the time though, and I think you see that too from what I could understand in your reply.

Best of luck to you! If you have any questions feel free to PM me as well, I'd be happy to help.

If one decides to perform an action in advance, and then performs that action, was it not a self-determined action? He was determined to slap the person in advance, but it was still a choice he made given many alternative options. Furthermore, is free will simply the freedom of action, or is it also the freedom of self-determination? I would argue that free will gives us the freedom to form ourselves into the people we wish to be, not just to perform the actions we wish to perform. He may have shaped himself into the type person that would slap an opponent instead of debating. Since this sub is about existentialist philosophy, you will probably find more people here agree with the idea of shaping ourselves into the people we wish to be.

>(or as Steven Pinker puts its a ghost inside your body pushing all the buttons)

Ah, another reference to a "pop intellectual" who isn't an expert in philosophy or free will. I've seen Sam Harris, Robert Salpolski, and now Steven Pinker as the defenders of hard determinism. It tends to be neuroscientists and psychologists in the popular science community. Why hasn't anyone mentioned a professional philosopher that shares their deterministic views; one who can provide a solid philosophical foundation for such beliefs? It may be because the majority of professional philosophers either believe free will is compatible with a deterministic universe, or that there is free will and it is incompatible with determinism.

>Free will: compatibilism 59.1%; libertarianism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; other 14.9%.

If you're interested in learning more about the justifications and challenges for free will, I recommend reading Elbow Room by Daniel Dennet and Four Views on Free Will. I can guarantee you'll learn more about free will from those two books than you will by listening to Steven Pinker.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Here's why I disagree:

> Many people get their ethics through intuition; therefore, you're not going to be able to convince a leftist out of taxing for the sake of the poor by "proving" taxation is immoral.

The fact that people get their ethics from intuition doesn't mean that they can't be persuaded that taxation is immoral. Most people intuitively agree that theft is generally immoral, so the only task left is showing them that taxation is theft. In his book The Problem of Political Authority Michael Huemer does exactly this. He argues that taxation is immoral using "common sense" moral intuitions that nearly everyone agrees with, including leftists, as a basis for his argument. So I disagree. (EDIT: Note that people have political intuitions too, such as the intuition that having a government that imposes some taxes is good. Peoples moral intuitions and political intuitions often conflict. Michael Huemer provides three reasons in his book why people should trust their moral intuitions rather than their political intuitions. See the last paragraph of section 1.6 of Chapter 1, or just do a search of the webpage for "political intuitions" and read from there.)

Also note that in my own case, I had the same moral intuitions before I believed that taxation is theft as I do now. It wasn't my moral intuitions that changed, but rather was my understanding of the nature of taxation that changed. Before I didn't realize that there was a threat of punishment and no consent involved, but now I realize that that is the case, and understand that the nature of taxation is such that it fits the definition of theft.

> They're never going to agree with you on those terms. Where you might get their support is by showing that states only provide token support for the poor, but that a stateless society cares for its poor more and in a more functional way.

I agree that educating people about the consequences of various things can be an effective way to help change their political views. However, in my experience most people aren't willing to take the time and effort to learn about the likely outcomes of an anarcho-capitalist or free market system unless they feel they have a moral obligation to do so.

For example, someone commented:

> the problem is I have heard nothing that has made me think twice about anarchism. I don't want to have to read a book if there is not one single idea that you can boil down to a few sentences that would make me stop and think how certain I am about what I consider true.

To most statists, including the person quoted above and my former self, the claim that we would be better off in an anarchic society seems so absurd that merely hearing the claim and a brief argument for it won't be enough for them to find it worth the time and effort to learn about how an anarchist society might function to provide law and order, help the poor, etc.

Perhaps if you're only arguing against a single government policy then people will take the time to hear your arguments about the fact that the consequences of the policy are worse than the free market policy. But I find that any time I speak of eliminating a substantial government program (e.g. abolishing the government school system) people find the idea that the consequences would be better so absurd that they don't take the time to read about it and see if I'm right.

On the other hand, when one is motivated by the belief that there is a presumption against taxation (since taxation is extortion), then they feel obligated to either prove the consequences of not having the extortion are so bad that the extortion is justified. They then take the time and effort to learn about free market alternatives to current practices, find out that the consequences are not likely to be sufficiently bad (and perhaps learn that they are likely to better, as is often the case) to justify the extortion, and then stop supporting the tax-funded government program.

The above is the path I took to anarcho-capitalism. I didn't care about politics at all. Then I was presented with arguments that governments are immoral since taxation is theft, etc. At first I said taxation is not theft. Then I realized I was wrong. Then I attempted to find reasons to believe that it's okay for governments to commit theft, etc. The only reasonable possible reason I came up with was that it was justified in the name of consequences. Since I still didn't want to give up my support of governments, I thus made these arguments that a bunch of government programs were necessary due to the consequences. I was met with counterarguments, learned about them (learned about how a free market anarchist society could do a bunch of stuff), realized I was wrong, and acknowledged that I was now an anarchist libertarian. Note that when I first became an anarchist libertarian I was not yet convinced that the consequences of an anarcho-capitalist society would be better than our current society. Rather, I just realized that the consequences weren't likely to be so bad that extortion was justified.

I never would have taken the time to learn about economics and how things would be if we had a free market or an anarcho-capitalist society unless I was motivated by the the moral arguments against the state. The possibility that things might be better with a free market wasn't a sufficient reason for me to care to learn about free market economics.

Hence why the moral arguments are important.

One last point: It's important to make the moral arguments for the sake of being fully honest. I am not an anarcho-capitalist because I think the consequences of anarcho-capitalism are likely to be better than any government system. That is, even if I thought the consequences would likely be not quite as good as the current system of democratic representative government, I would still be an anarcho-capitalist due to the fact that governments are morally illegitimate. If I only try to persuade people to support free market policies by pointing out that the consequences of those policies are better then I imply to whomever I am talking with that I think they should change their minds to support free market policies because the consequences of those policies are better. But this is not true. In order to be fully honest, I must state the true reasons why I believe they should change their views and support free market policies: because the policies are immoral and it's immoral not to stop supporting them.

The FAQ has a question (and answer) on recommended starting points from newcomers.

Summarizing the FAQ (cut-and-pasting from previous posts of mine summarizing the FAQ), there are a few approaches, depending on whether you prefer modern or ancient sources. For modern sources in the style of self-help books, some good options are:

• Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson. A practical, readable introduction to Stoicism intended for modern practice, readable independent of historical sources, in the style of modern "self-help" books.
  
• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine. Irvine's book is controversial among readers of /r/Stoicism. It is one of the most clear, easy to read, and practical accounts of Stoicism available, but critics feel it waters down and distorts many central elements of the philosophy. Additional discussion of Irvine's book can be found here, here and here.
  
• The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed by Andrew Holowchak. Holowchak's book is a short, stand-alone account of Stoic philosophy. It quotes classical authors extensively, and provides many references for follow-up reading, but does not use the classical sources as its primary vehicle, and works as a stand-alone source. A longer review can be found here.
  
  Stoic Week's 2014 Handbook, 2013 Handbook and 2012 Living the Stoic Life booklet may also be of interest. They are free online, and much shorter.
  
  The FAQ also lists more theoretical, academic modern accounts, which you might prefer depending on taste.
  
  For ancient sources, commonly recommended starting points are:
  
  
• The Enchiridion of Epictetus is short and easy to read. It was written as a "cheat sheet" of sorts for Epictetus's Discourses, reading the Discourses as well can be very helpful for clarifying what is being said.
  
• Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a personal journal. There are several out-of-copyright translations online, none of which are very good. Hard and Hays both have much better translations popular with readers here.
  
• Selected essays and letters by Seneca the Younger, particularly De Tranquillitate (On Tranquility of Mind) and De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life).
  Moses Hadas's The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca is a good printed source for these and other writing by Seneca.
  
  I think any of these can be a good starting point, and any of them can be valuable on its own, but each only offers a partial glimpse of Stoicism as a whole.
  
  Most of the ancient sources above are good for browsing, picking random pages and reading a little bit here and there. Each has its own distinct character. A good approach may be to find copies of the Enchiridion, Meditations, and a selections of Seneca, and spend a little time browsing through each, and then focusing on the one that appeals most. Then, pursue supporting material to help give context, unpack references, and otherwise improve interpretation. For the Enchiridion, the best source for this would be the Discourses, and Long's Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life is also helpful, in different ways. For the Meditations, Stephens' Marcus Aurelius does a good job of explaining context, references, and interpretation.

>You espouse nothing but poor reasoning

You can't espouse poor reasoning. You can however espouse an idea supported by poor reasoning. Assuming this is what you meant, I still haven't done it. You have no examples for how my arguments rely on poor reasoning, you just keep insisting that they do. This is due to your own reliance on specious reasoning.

>You're an apologist. You've chosen that position and it's an ugly one.

Sigh.... You know what an apologist is right? Lets use the term in a sentence... "The christian apologists tried to defend their beliefs using reason, thinking that belief in god could be found through logic." Hmm... Maybe a definition would still be useful.

Ya... I'm not an apologist. I'm not arguing in defense of a belief. I'm arguing against a belief in moral realism. You, my friend, function as the apologist in this debate. Please stop using words without knowing how to use them.

>My morals are quite measured and I do not follow them blindly, with faith. I quoted this because this is all you do. You make stupid and baseless attacks because you have no defense.

Watch this: "My belief in God is quite measured and I do not follow him blindly, with faith." Just because you use reason to justify things after the fact does not make the original assumption true, or any less "faithful."

You seem to have a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to moral theory and what is possible through moral theory. Sam Harris, while an interesting individual, and right about many things, is fundamentally wrong when it comes to what science can do with regard to morals. Not in the sense that his moral system is untenable, but rather in the sense that you can't get his moral system strictly through scientific study—which he claims we can. Assumptions must be made before you can even begin the study of well-being and suffering, and even more must be made in order to say that you should promote one and avoid the other.

A person's insistence on the existence of universal objective morals is best termed as a FAITH. There is no evidence of universal objective morals, and they are fundamentally unscientific entities in the same sense God is—even if we wanted to, we could never find evidence of them. At best they are commonly assumed entities—like God is for most people.

And I repeat, because you seem to think I am some sort of moral heathen, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT MORALS ARE USELESS OR THAT WE SHOULD LET PEOPLE DO WHATEVER THEY WANT BECAUSE THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE MORALS. Your feelings about me being somehow deficient are the same feelings a religious fundamentalist would have toward both of us due to our lack of belief.

That you think a bit of pop-science is somehow "important" for me to read is laughable. If what you know of morals comes from that book, I feel sorry for you. I understand that many atheists will praise anything that comes from the "canon" writers on atheism like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, however, being a fan of someone does not make all of their work good, or even relevant. At best, Sam Harris is simply endorsing the naturalistic fallacy. At worst, he's willfully ignorant of what the naturalistic fallacy is, and simply wishes to push his view as a "counterpoint" to religious morality.

Since you so kindly left me a link to a book, allow me to do the same, by linking you to the most important books in moral theory for you to read, some of which argue directly against me, but at this point the idea is to get you educated, not to get you to agree with me:

Alisdair MacIntyre — After Virtue

Nietzsche — Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche — The Genealogy of Morals

Kant — Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics

G.E. Moore — Principia Ethica

I've done my best to find the best editions of these books available (I myself usually default to the Cambridge editions of works in the history of philosophy). You may also want to check out some Peter Singer, along with Bentham and Mill, if only to know what it means to be a utilitarian. After that, read John Rawls, because he'll tell you one reason why utilitarianism is so controversial in ethical theory.

I hope to hear back from you about the results of your studies. I figure you can easily find pdfs of these books (though perhaps not the same editions I linked) somewhere online. Given about a month or two to read them all (I'm not sure how much free time you have... maybe more like three months) you should be up to speed. Hopefully I'll hear back from you after the new year. At that point, I don't expect you to agree with my view on ethics, but I at least expect you will understand it, and be able to argue your own position somewhat more effectively than you are at the moment. If nothing else, think of this as a way to learn how to "stick it" to people like me.

Maybe by then you'll have gotten beyond the whole "I'm taking my ball and going home" disposition you seem to have when confronted with someone who's better than you at debating ethics. I can only hope.

If you take ethics seriously at all, do this for yourself: study the shit out of ethical theory.

Another fair point. So, a clip here, so you don't even need to leave Reddit.

>...

>#Our Argument in Brief

>To orient readers, let me summarize the claims we defend in our book.

>Marriage is a human good with its own structure, like knowledge or friendship. The present debate is not a debate about whom to let marry, but about what marriage (the human good that the law has reasons to track) really is. Two answers compete for legal enshrinement.

>The first, driving the push for same-sex marriage, is that a certain emotional intimacy makes a marriage. But as our book shows, this answer can’t coherently distinguish marriage from companionship, an obviously broader category. So it gets marriage (the human good) wrong.

>The second view of marriage begins from basics. Any voluntary form of community involves common action; it unites people toward common ends in the context of commitment. And in these respects, what sets marital community apart is its comprehensiveness: in (1) how it unites people, (2) what it unites them with respect to, and (3) how extensive a commitment it demands.

>First, marriage unites people in their bodies as well as their minds. Just as your organs are one body by coordinating for the biological good of the whole (your survival), so a man and woman’s bodies unite by coordination (in sexual intercourse) for a biological good (reproduction) of the couple as a whole. No other activity makes of two people “one flesh.”

>Second, as the act that makes marital love also makes new life, so marriage itself is uniquely enriched and extended by the bearing and rearing of children, and the wide sharing of family life.

>Third, because of its comprehensiveness in both these senses, marriage alone requires comprehensive (permanent and exclusive) commitment, whatever the partners’ tastes.

>The stability of marriage, so understood, best ensures that children will know the committed love of those whose union brought them forth. This gives them the best shot at becoming healthy and happy people, which affects every other social good. That is why every society with the merest ambition to thrive has socially regulated male-female sexual bonds: to shore up the stabilizing norms of marriage, on which social order rests.

>If marriage is redefined (in law, and hence in public opinion and practice) as simple companionship for adult fulfillment, then, for reasons to be explained, it will be harder to live by its norms and urge them on others. And this will harm the social goods that hook society into regulating marriage in the first place.

>Besides defending these claims, my coauthors and I answer the most common objections to the historic view of marriage. And we show how society can uphold that view without ignoring the needs, undermining the social dignity, or curbing the fulfillment of same-sex attracted people.

>#Misreadings

>...

I end the clip at that point from this article as this is a succinct presentation of their book, What Is Marriage?

I actually deconverted from Catholicism in college. I'm a revert.

I never got into into the party culture. I'm really against drinking and doing drugs, and I've always been skeptical of sex outside of a committed relationship and those morals stuck with me even after I deconverted from Christianity. What I did encounter was a lot of intellectual arguments against religion that I couldn't answer. However, what I also eventually discovered was that most of those objections had been heard before and responded to, at least in some manner.

So, here's my semi-comprehensive list of apologetics apologetics resources that I've accumulated over the years.

IMHO, the following books cover all the essentials very well and are probably must reads. You can buy used or online copies of them relatively cheaply, under 20 dollars if you're in the US. Check out Trent Horn's Answering Atheism, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civ, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis (you can probably get Mere Christianity at your at public library), and What is Marriage? Man and Woman a Defense for defending the concept of natural marriage. You should also read How to Argue which is a free pdf. I haven't researched abortion apologetics as extensively as other areas but I know Trent Horn has some books on those.

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I'm not going to say you should read all of my remaining recommendations but I'm putting the rest out there for you so you know they exist.

Now, no list of apologtics is going to cover every argument about Christianity so I would also recommend some online resources. www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism is an amazing forum. It has tons of Catholics who are way more knowledgable and experienced that me who can answer questions and stuff. You may or may not have heard of it ;). I also recommend William Lane Craig's site: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer. Again, Craig is a protestant so don't look to him for a defense of Catholicism. However, he's good when it comes to defending the basics of Christianity from atheism. Catholic Answers is good. Fr Barron is good. Strange Notions can be good, I link to it in my last paragraph.

The exact relationship between faith and reason was my biggest stumbling block on the road back to Catholicism, so I have some good recommendations on that topic. I recommend the papal encycle Fides et Ratio and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civ. Plantinga's book Where the Conflict Really Lies is also popular and uses evolution to make an interesting argument against materialism. Plantinga's not a Catholic so I don't know how well they would square with Catholic philosophies like Thomism, but, yeah, he exists. He also wrote this giant essay on faith and science, which was helpful. The book God and the Philosophers is pretty good too, it's an anthology of different Christian philosophers and talks about how they converted to Christianity.

Some comprehensive (but expensive) books by non-Catholics include The Blackwell Companion to natural theology by William Lane Craig (not a Catholic). I've heard good things about Richard Swinburne's apologetics trilogy The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason. Swinburne is Eastern Orthodox, just for the record.

I want to give a special shoutout to Edward Fesser. He's a secular atheist philosopher who converted to Catholicism. You can read his conversion story here. He also has a blog that you can google. Fesser also wrote a bunch of books that are highly recommended by people on this sub, although I haven't read them.

If I was going to provide someone with a list of books that best expressed my current thinking on the Political Economy these would be my top ones:

1. The Law - While over a century old this books stands as the perfect intro to the ideas of Classical Liberalism. When you understand the core message of this book you understand why people oppose so many aspects of government action.
   
2. Seeing Like A State - The idea that society can be rebuilt from the top down is well demolished in this dense but important read. The concept of Legibility was a game changer for my brain.
   
3. Stubborn Attachments - This books presents a compelling philosophical argument for the importance of economic growth. It's hard to overstate how important getting the balance of economic growth vs other considerations actually is.
   
4. The Breakdown of Nations - A classic text on why the trend toward "bigger" isn't a good thing. While various nits can be picked with this book I think its general thesis is holding up well in our increasingly bifurcated age.
   
5. The Joy of Freedom - Lots of books, many objectively better, could have gone here but this book was my personal pivot point which sent me away from Socialism and towards capitalism. This introduction to "Libertarian Capitalism" is a bit dated now but it was powerful.
   
   There are, of course many more books that could go on this list. But the above list is a good sampling of my personal philosophy of political economy. It is not meant as a list of books to change your mind but simply as a list of books that are descriptive of my current belief that we should be orientated towards high (sustainable) economic growth & more decentralization.
   
   Some honorable mentions:
   
   As a self proclaimed "Libertarian Crunchy Con" I have to add The Quest for Community & Crunchy Cons
   
   The book The Fourth Economy fundamentally changed my professional direction in life.
   
   Anti-Fragile was another book full of mind blowing ideas and shifted my approach to many things.
   
   The End of Jobs is a great combination of The Fourth Economy & Anti-Fragile (among other concepts) into a more real-world useful set of ideas.
   
   Markets Not Capitalism is a powerful reminder that it is not Capitalism per se that is important but the transformational power of markets that need be unleashed.
   
   You will note that I left out pure economic books, this was on purpose. There are tons of good intro to econ type books and any non-trained economist should read a bunch from a bunch of different perspectives. With that said I am currently working my way through the book Choice and if it stays as good as it has started that will probably get added to my core list.
   
   So many more I could I list like The Left, The Right, & The State or The Problem of Political Authority and on it goes...
   I am still looking for a "manifesto" of sorts for the broad movement towards decentralization (I have a few possibilities on my 'to read list') so if you know of any that might fit that description let me know.

It depends. But I'm glad you asked, for the following suggestions might also be helpful to others.

If I understand you correctly, you seem to think that pointing out fallacies is an efficient way to "fight the good fight". At least, that's my impression. Please correct me when I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, almost all the evidence points to a different direction: It's usually not very effective, because those committing the fallacy usually don't care much about a logical analysis of the situation, anyway. This does also apply to non-believers. Assuming all humans process information in two ways (see Kahneman's System 1 and 2), even atheists often seem to ignore their own system 2, because it actually takes effort to use it.

However, if you're looking for resources about fallacies, any good book on logic will help. One of the best one, I've been told, is "Introduction to logic" by Gensler. You may only need the first 5 chapters, because it becomes quite technical after that. Maybe, Amazon can help find a less technical book.

If, however, you're looking to persuade people, that's a completely different story.

Here, a very common recommendation is Cialdini's "Influence". You can research its contents easily online, so there's no need to buy it. Cialdini emphasizes six common areas to get people to agree with you.

I've looked at your comment history, so here's a short overview what you may want to change to be more effective:

• Liking: People say yes to people they like. Being offensive to believers is thus unlikely to help you make your point.
  
• Scarcity: People often want they don't think is hard to get. It's thus okay to say that we as atheists may indeed by the exception. It might help to say, you understand if your opponent is unable to understand your position.
  
• Authority: It helps to have bookmarks, or notes, from authorities who believers respect (typically other believers).
  
• Social Proof: It helps to have notes and bookmarks about being a non-believer is on the rise, generally speaking.
  
• Reciprocity: People tend to return a favor. This is hard to apply online, but it may help offline.
  
• Commitment: If people commit, verbally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment. It's thus worth trying to get your opponents to agree to a certain set of principles. For instance, the fight about gay marriage was won by appealing to one of the most common principles among Americans: Freedom. A simple change of words (from the "right to marry" to the "freedom to marry") made a big difference.
  
  Hope this helps.

this is exactly what i do. don't know what i believe right now, but i do believe in tithing/some version of the law of consecration. could no longer bring myself to pay tithing to the church, but still wanted to donate to a real charity. GiveDirectly seems like about as good as it gets.

The best part is, I'm on the verge of convincing my amazing TBM spouse to agree with it. She and I read "The Life You Can Save" by Peter Singer, and it really opened her up to the idea. Really a great book, I'd encourage anyone to read it. Singer's Effective Altruism movement is essentially a secular form of the law of consecration.

Just in case anyone is in a remotely-similar situation, here are the points I made in our conversation after we had both read the book:

• The church only donates $40 mil per year in humanitarian work, which is abysmal for a church that brings in at least $5-7 BIL in tithing
  
  
• The Church has no measurement of the impact of their humanitarian work, it's all outputs (i.e you can't tell how much good your donations actually do)
  
  
• They spend much of their money on malls, for profit businesses, and expensive real estate. We are vegetarians (sometimes vegans, but not always), and she was really sad to learn the church owns one of the largest cattle ranches in the US, as well as for-profit hunting preserves. Why spend our money on things we don't support?
  
  
• They are not transparent in their use of tithing funds, which is contrary to the D&C's "common consent" requirement
  
  
• Singer talks about considering "Room for Growth" when choosing where to donate, i.e. is this charity maxed out with donations, or could they still put them to good use? Even though my TBM wife believes that much of what the church does is helpful, i.e. printing and distributing BoMs, I argued that if they can afford to build mega malls with tithing money, they probably don't need our $ to print more BoMs. Therefore, our money would go farther with GiveDirectly than by donating to the church.

Awesome, let me hook you up:

Murray N. Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty, the indepth treatise on liberty in a society without the State. And the audiobook.

Chaos Theory by Robert P. Murphy (Audio). Shorter work on the principles of liberty and expands on the economic aspects.

Anarcho-capitalism Primer videos playlist. There are about 4 or 5 shorter than 10 minutes for you to chill. And there are the in-depth, one-hour lectures for when you are in between the books.

Rothbard's For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Rothbard poured a lifetime of research and all his intellectual energy to makes an overwhelming case on most matters of social concerns to explain society without the Nation-state (Audiobook).

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (e-book) and (audiobook). Friedman uses economics and utilitarian concerns to discuss how society would improve with liberty and without the State.

The Market for Liberty by Morris and Linda Tannehill (audiobook.) Excellent and very argumentative, with many interesting illustrations and discussions on several topics of society and economics.

Huemer's Problem of Political Authority. It is a work on political and moral philosophy, with some treatment of psychology.

Leeson's Anarchy Unbound. Peter Leeson is a legal scholar and his work documents historical and contemporary legal practices and teachings and how they apply to a society of liberty.

Christopher Chase Rachels' A Spontaneous Order. Inspired by the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe on argumentation ethics as an ultimate foundation for liberty. First five chapters available as audio.

For a more complete list see Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

When you read one of them, I suggest for you to write up a short post on your favourite subjects. It is a great way way to have productive discussions. Don't forget to tag me ( /u/anon338 ) so that I can enjoy it also.

My usual "recipe" for conversations is:

1. start with observational humor on environmental banalities (weather, pop culture, interesting buildings/statues, recent festivals, etc.) and explore basic biographical details (where are you from, have you lived here long, etc.)
   
   
2. eventually pivot to FORD (family, occupation, recreation, dreams), which can easily fill a few dozen hours
   
   2.5) actively listen to your conversation partner in addition to thinking about what to say next, e.g. split your attentions 65/25, respectively. Ask them questions about the stories they tell, but if your question is too much of a digression keep it in mind for later (earlier you mentioned X, I think Y, what do you think of Z?)
   
   2.75) have a bunch of relevant stories of your own in your back pocket that you can retrieve at a moment's notice, but beware one-upmanship; instead, seek to find or build common ground. Helpful to have explored lots of hobbies yourself here
   
   
3. you mentioned grad school -- people usually study stuff they're interested in, so dredge up relevant memories of old articles you've read and questions you had while reading them, and have them clarify tricky concepts for you. If you're not quite right it's just all the more opportunity for them to swoop in and show off, and at least signals your interest in whatever subject they're studying
   
   
4. another poster mentioned lists of questions -- I actually think these can be useful conversational aids! But don't, like, memorize the questions and completely break the flow of conversation asking one. Maybe during a quiet moment when all prior conversation threads have terminated you can pop in with a random "what's your favorite dinosaur" (and why?), but otherwise I've found these best for e.g. long drives together. Also, the linked questions maybe aren't the best -- I'd recommend getting one of these (personal faves have been Greg Stock's books, and I think I've tried most at this point; something like this also works). Each question has usually afforded around half an hour of conversation, though some took us a few hours and some a few minutes. Also, these are great for building a relationship off an existing foundation, which is to say that I've only ever tried the books of questions thing after I'd already talked to the person “organically” for 50-100 hours. But collectively they've probably given me many hundreds, if not thousands of hours of conversation, so I wouldn't be so quick to discount them!
   
   
5. bring it back to local entertainment -- listen to a podcast or audiobook together or watch a movie or documentary and pause to discuss points

There are a lot of very simplistic points made for and against the positions presented by the libertarian/anarchistic intellectual traditions, and internet comments especially can devolve very quickly. Some people who've taken the time to research the arguments related their own questions or opinions about anarchy have sophisticated responses against steel-manned positions, but the majority are radically oversimplified and woefully short of awareness just like this. It's disheartening to spend so much effort to find out where exactly you stand in a political sense, and find that there appear to be legions of people continuously washing up against you who, though they might claim rationality, are perfectly content to drop an opinion as a decisive conclusion into a soundbyte space with no real argument. And this applies to the person you're speaking to above, not just you. It's just a really poor exchange. I'll see what I can do to help in this case, and maybe something interesting will happen.

To be very up-front, I would also describe myself as an anarchist. I came to that conclusion first by exposure to powerful moral arguments that required no acceptance of any special moral theories, but simply pitted my own morality against my belief in the political authority of the State and exposed total conflict. However, half the anarchists I've met didn't come by this approach, but by pragmatism instead. I would say that approach occupies most of the anarchist literature out there, being things like legal theory, game theory, economics, solutions to public goods problems, market failures, basically a consequentialist's playground. The reason for this is probably that a lot of folks demand quite a complete and detailed explanation for most facets of a theorized anarchist society where today they can only imagine coercive (State) solutions to the same problems. Since both of the above comments appear to be approaching from a pragmatic perspective, that's the kind of resource I'll be providing.

The claim in question is one of the most common refrains first uttered in response to the idea of a stateless society. "Without government, warlords would take over." Luckily for anyone interested in that claim here, it is also addressed in most places where people bother to ask about it. I'll present some of the shorter resources, and one or two longer ones, and then at the end I'll even contribute a tidbit of my own thoughts on the matter, which take a little bit of a different angle.

The most direct address is an article by Dr. Robert P. Murphy (economist) which you can find in written form here, or as a 12-minute narrated audio upload which someone has posted here. It doesn't take long to get through, and I don't need to reproduce its arguments here. I'm interested to hear what you think of it.

Edit: I also realize that in the article above, Murphy mentions some concepts which are common to discussions of polycentric (stateless) legal systems, but not common outside it. Things like private defense and arbitration agencies. While these too are discussed in the link below, to help provide context for anyone who feels a little confused with the above, there are some great youtube videos that give a quick introduction to these as well. The Machinery of Freedom: Illustrated Summary and Law Without Government. Hopefully this doesn't muddy the discussion, but provides some useful context if something was missed in the above article.

Further resources that cover the "warlord" question, though with the greater context of a detailed surrounding system, would include the freely available 2nd edition or Amazon-purchasable 3rd edition of The Machinery of Freedom by economist David Friedman (Milton Friedman's son). I would consider his discussions of stability questions certainly related to that, though he presents things in terms of a Mafia-like setup, and the concerns given his particular premises are not exactly the same.

I think you'd also find Chase Rachels' chapters about Law & Order and Defense & Security from A Spontaneous Order relevant as well -- you might even skip the rather boring and rigorous argumentation ethics the book leads with to get to that spot.

And I think that's more than good for a starter. Now my own tidbit. Please read/listen to the first article I linked before moving on here.

Something I think all of these guys miss even in their own objections is the public's idea of the belief in political authority. Were we to assume that a given -- let's say "Western" -- society actually opted for a truly stateless existence (whether an existing one "transitioned" or a new one was created, like a seastead community), it stands to reason that the people comprising it would have given up any belief in the legitimacy of political authority. If they hadn't, there's no reason they would've gone anarchist in the first place instead of just replacing one government with another. And if they did actually go through all the trouble to rid themselves of a State, and they indeed did not tolerate claims of political authority on that scale, there's no reason to assume they will turn right around and tolerate it on the local scale either. "Warlords" here, like kings and barons, need people to actually believe they have a right to do what they do in order to maintain any kind of power base. It's unclear why a people who disbelieve in this right of rulership would listen to them in the first place, much less tolerate them when they would not tolerate a modern State. This is my same argument against another common question: "If you eliminated the state, wouldn't a new one simply rise in its place?" or "Wouldn't a corporation just turn into a state?", etc.

If you assume a simple disbelief in political authority, a necessary precursor, for a people who were not already degenerating into moral barbarism (in which case a state comprised of those people doesn't help anyway, as Somalia had before it ripped itself apart), then the re-emergence of States on any scale doesn't seem likely to me, including that of the local warlord.

I'm not sure how much my words will be of use for you, as I am myself not yet Catholic (I'm currently going through RCIA). However, I can relate with regard to a lack of Catholic friends. I'm an immigrant from India who was raised in a Hindu family; most of my friends are Indian and nominally Hindu. I've had only a couple of Christian friends in my life and never a Catholic friend. Reading and researching through books, articles, podcasts, videos, etc. have led me to the faith.

Oftentimes, in defending the faith, I have debated my family, my friends, and others close to me. It became clear to me that I needed a systematic plan if I was going to do this with any shred of ability. Here's mine. Perhaps it will be of use to you or somebody else who clicks on your post because they can relate.

1. Learn logic. I'm working through Socratic Logic by Peter Kreeft right now. It's clear, readable, has plenty of examples, many of which are from interesting works, such as those of G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis. It's an investment, to be sure, as it's running for ~ $20 online, but it's well worth it.
   
   
2. Study Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. St. Thomas Aquinas is the universal doctor of the Catholic Church. You're not going to find a better source of philosophy, theology, and wisdom than this saint. Now, I don't recommend jumping right into the Summa Theologica or the Summa Contra Gentiles, at least not without a study guide, primarily because modern thought holds assumptions which Aquinas would have rejected. Therefore, to understand Aquinas' arguments, and really the arguments of any philosopher before Descartes, you need to understand the basic metaphysics (the understanding of being as being) of the classical (Aristotle, Plato, etc.) and medieval (Augustine, Aquinas, etc.) philosophers. Edward Feser is an American analytical philosopher who is also an orthodox Roman Catholic. He's written two books which I would highly recommend. First, and foremost, I think you will be well served by his The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (I'm sure you can see why). It's very readable but also deep. It's also polemical; you'll laugh out loud quite a bit. Second, I would recommend his Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide. This is an introduction to Thomistic philosophy. It goes over the metaphysical foundations, Aquinas' Five Ways to demonstrate the existence of God, Aquinas' philosophy of ethics, and Aquinas' philosophy of psychology.
   
   
3. Once you have worked through these three books, I think you'll be ready to work through the more difficult works. However, and this is key, the vast, vast, vast majority of atheists and skeptics you'll come across and meet in your journey through this world can be easily and completely refuted if you familiarize yourself with and understand and think through the arguments laid out by Feser in these two books. Depending on your intelligence level and the availability of time, going through these three books might take you a bit of time. Don't worry. Take it slow. Once you understand their relevance and validity, you'll be able to both defend the faith and also show how atheism is false, incoherent, and dangerous.
   
   In summary, I'd recommend reading the following books in this order:
   
4. The Last Superstition by Edward Feser: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism-ebook/dp/B00D40EGCQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504537006&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+superstition
   
5. Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide by Edward Feser: https://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Guides-ebook/dp/B00O0G3BEW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504537006&sr=8-2&keywords=the+last+superstition
   
6. Socratic Logic by Peter Kreeft: https://www.amazon.com/Socratic-Logic-Questions-Aristotelian-Principles/dp/1587318083/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
   
   God Bless and take care.

As /u/FreeHumanity has pointed out below, it makes it easier for us to help you if we know what you're interested in.

However, these are a couple of books on my bookshelf that I find interesting and are mentioned on here quite often:

The Pig that Wants to be Eaten, by Julian Baggin. It's 100 ethics-related thought experiments, laid out in a very easy-to-read way. Amazon link here.

If you're interested in something a little more academic and a little more comprehensive, The History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell, is one of the best one-volume histories of philosophy around. You have to be a little bit careful with him, though--he tends to put his own ideas about the philosophers into his text :) Again, Amazon link here.

If you would like more specialised help, please do clarify what your interests are so that we can recommend books, youtube clips, or other things that are tailored to your interests :)

Hope that helps :)

• Meditations: Either get the one by Gregory Hays or Robin Hard. I have both. Hays uses more modern English and is easier to understand, but he can be pretty liberal with his translation. Hard is a little more straight laced in his translation it seems but still uses pretty modern English. Also the Hard translation contains Letter from Marcus to his Rhetoric teacher Fronto which are cool to read. Other versions of Meditations do not have this in them afaik.
  
• Epictetus, Enchiridion + Discourses: Epictetus's Discourses, Fragments, Handbook by Robin Hard. Best translation of Epictetus I have found ( I like more modern English). Lots of good footnotes in this one.
  
• Seneca's Letters: Either Letters from a Stoic to get a taste of what Seneca is like, or go all the way in and get Letters on Ethics which contains all 124 letters to Lucillius. Hardcover book is awesome, high quality, great foot notes throughout.
  
• Seneca's Moral Essays: There are a bunch of these, I haven't found a favorite translation yet. If you only read one, read On the Shortness of Life

Some responses and questions for your thoughts here (thanks for being thorough, by the way):

You say:

> 1) The polarization of society shows that… moral standards are being strengthened rather than lowered.

> a) To say that [moral standards] are lower because they are not Catholic is to [claim that the] Church [is] right because it says it is right, not because it is [demonstrable.]

I say:

First, “polarization of society” does not equal a “strengthening” of Catholic moral standards. Just because two groups hold competing and increasingly hostile views does not mean that either of those groups hold to the fullness of any particular moral standard, let alone Catholic ones.

As an aside, I’d also be interested in what you mean by “polarization of society.” Which society? What kind of moral structure do these two polarities adhere to? Are there really only two dominant competing moral theories that exist?

Second, how would you suggest we demonstrate the superiority of a particular moral position in a way that is intelligible to those who lack the moral language or conceptual framework to grasp it? Alasdair MacIntyre writes about this problem in the important work After Virtue—one cannot simply “demonstrate” the superiority of a moral position because we do not have a common lexicon in which to understand these positions.

I mention this because saying something is “not Catholic, and therefore not right” seems to me a very valid way of expressing one’s moral perspective. It doesn’t “prove” anything, but it encapsulates a moral position succinctly and objectively, something more than most modes of modern moral theory can muster. (I had to keep my m’s going there.)

You say:

> 2) In the 50’s and 60’s Kinsey found that 50% of married men had cheated on their spouses. In 1990 Lauman discovered the number to be 25%, and another report by Treas in 200 showed the number of people who had cheated to be 11%, which shows a decline in infidelity over that period.

I say:

These statistics do not account for the rise of internet pornography, ease of access to said pornography, and certainly doesn’t reflect the actual state of affairs (excuse the pun) between men and women today versus 60 years ago.

As for the first point regarding pornography: “Infidelity” is an amorphous moral term, because it always references how we conceptualize “fidelity”. Does a man remain faithful to his wife if he doesn’t sleep with another woman, but masturbates to pornography in the confines of marriage? As the taboo against porn has waned, so has the increase of its consumption (an easily searchable statistic.) It has become easier and “safer” to satisfy extramarital sexual desire through the use of the internet, so it follows that the more “risky investment” of an affair would fall.

Finally, the statistics you mentioned, especially Kinsey, cannot account for the actual occurrence of infidelity. Most are already aware of Kinsey’s methodological problems, and of course the very nature of infidelity is one that is shrouded in deceit.

Therefore, it isn’t helpful to use statistics surrounding infidelity and illegitimacy when discussing morals unless: 1) there is an agreed upon understanding of what constitutes infidelity and 2) there are a number of more reports regarding infidelity with varying methodologies that might be compared.

You say:

> 3) …even though they are not married, [couples with children are] still performing the same roles as if they were married

I say

This isn’t relevant to the thesis that “love, marriage, sex and procreation are all things that belong together” for the simple reason that, even if marital “roles” are established, the sacrament of marriage, which is an essential component of a “right” moral structure (as it relates to the identity of the human person, which relates to the identity of God, which relates to the ultimate happiness of the human person) is deemed unnecessary. This deeming rejects a sacramental word-view, which in turns rejects the foundation of Catholic moral theory (again, as it pertains to human flourishing in relation to the Sacred/Divine).

You say

> 4) “…with the expansion of women’s rights we are… objectifying women less than when Humanae Vitae was written.”

I say

As you mentioned, this is your opinion, and one I can appreciate—but disagree with. I agree with you that this is a “touchy” subject primarily because we haven’t done a good job defining what it means to “objectify” the human person. I think it’s clear this kind of objectification has always been present in human history, but I also think it’s clear that it has grown worse in the 20th century moving forward. Simply look at the “adult entertainment” industry for proof of this: There is literally a multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around turning the bodies of men and women into consumable objects. Not to mention the sex-trafficking industry is operating at an all-time high and demand is ever-growing. These kinds of industries have always existed, to be sure, but never before on such a massive scale and with so much tacit support from the general population.

You say

> 5) “Government coercion in reproductive matters [seem] hardly tied to expansion [of] birth control…children are expensive and as society becomes more consumeristic… people would rather spend their money on more things rather than more children.”

I say

Two things: First, I agree that people would rather spend their money on things than children. This fact supports the thesis that birth control has a corrupting and constricting effect on the morality of a nation, not a liberating one. Orienting people’s desires towards products rather than people is a commonly mentioned moral transgression, in and outside of a Christian ethical schema.

Second, it’s hard to prove “government coercion” when it comes to the expansion of birth control. In fact, countries like Japan are now having to encourage that their citizens not use birth control because of the devastating effect of population decline on the economy. But when the aforementioned consumeristic ideology has taken root even in the minds of those who control government, it’s clear to see why dispensing contraceptives becomes a priority, even to the point of elevating them to the status of a “woman’s health product.”

Finally:

I think that your conclusion that “the prophecies of Humanae Vitae did not come true” is unsubstantiated and, perhaps more unfortunately, a misunderstanding of a component of the document’s argument. The idea that “increased birth control is an effect and not a cause of the shift in moral standards” glosses over the reality that moral standards are tied to material changes. The advent and widespread dissemination of artificial birth control was a catalyst, not an effect for the growth for the already-present disordered sexual ethos found natively in virtually every culture.

On my way out, but briefly.

One option is to just power through, mindful of the limits. It'll help to familiarize yourself with the notation, even if the details are difficult to follow. You'll be required to take some formal logic for your program. But if you're looking to get ahead of the game, there are some online resources that may be useful. I compile some of those resources here. Quoting that:

>Free, general logic resources: Stanford's Intro to logic and Mathematical Thinking- w/ Free online tools for completing exercises; Paul Teller's Modern formal logic primer - w/ free tools for completing exercises; Peter Smith’s Teach Yourself Logic and other materials, like his reading guide; Katarzyna Paprzycka Logic Self-Taught - w/ free workbook; J. Ehrlich's "Carnap Book" - w/ free exercises & tools; Open Logic Project - and List of other open/free sources.
>
>Not Free: Gensler's Introduction to Logic, Howard Pospesel's Introductions to Formal Logic (prop and pred). [Karen Howe's has her logic stuff online using Pospesel's books.]
>
>Common Symbols: here
>
>Lists of Rules of Inference: here, here, here, here

Routledge has a guide to the Tractatus that could be helpful. Anscombe's guide has a glossary with some of the common symbols. I haven't watched, but there's this lecture video on YouTube re logic in the T.. hope that helps

At least for Anarchists or other left-libertarians it should also be important to actually read up on some basic or even fundamental ethical texts given most political views and arguments are fundamentally rooted in morality (unless you're a orthodox Marxist or Monarchist). I'm sadly not familiar enough with applied ethics to link collections of arguments for specific ethical problems, but it's very important to know what broad system you're using to evaluate what's right or wrong to not contradict yourself.

At least a few very old texts will also be available for free somewhere on the internet like The Anarchist Library.

Some good intro books:

• The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau
  
• The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James and Stuart Rachels
  
• Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Simon Blackburn
  
  Some foundational texts and contemporary authors of every main view within normative ethics:
  
  
• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotles for Classic Virtue-Ethics. Martha Nussbaum would be a contemporary left-wing Virtue-Ethicist who has used Marx account of alienation to argue for Global Justice.
  
• Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel (or Emmanuel) Kant for Classic Deontology. Kantianism is a popular system to argue for anti-statism I believe even though Kant himself was a classical liberal. Christine Korsgaard would be an example of a contemporary Kantian.
  
• The Methods of Ethics by Henry Sidgwick for Classic Utilitarianism. People usually recommend Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, but most contemporary Ethicists believe his arguments for Utilitarianism suck. 2 other important writers have been R. M. Hare and G. E. Moore with very unique deviations from classic Utilitarianism. A contemporary writer would be Peter Singer. Utilitarianism is sometimes seemingly leading people away from Socialism, but this isn't necessarily the case.
  
• Between Facts and Norms and other works by the contemporary Critical Theorist Jürgen Habermas may be particularly interesting to Neo-Marxists.
  
• A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. I know Rawls is a famous liberal, but his work can still be interpreted to support further left Ideologies. In his later works like Justice as Fairness: A Restatement you can see him tending closer to Democratic Socialism.
  
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche for... Nietzsche's very odd type of Egoism. His ethical work was especially influential to Anarchists such as Max Stirner, Emma Goldman or Murray Bookchin and also Accelerationists like Jean Baudrillard.
  
• In case you think moralism and ethics is just bourgeois propaganda maybe read something on subjectivism like Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong by J. L. Mackie
  
• Or if you want to hear a strong defense of objective morality read Moral Realism: A Defense by Russ Shafer-Landau orc

I think that if the person reports it was her duty so save other soldiers, it's not really a classical case of altruism. So in that case I agree. But that's unique to the reported reason of someone handling out of "duty" rather than "empathy".

On an act being egoistic as soon as some pleasure is derived, allow me to quote these nicely written paragraphs from this book.

> The egoist might respond: if you are doing what you really want, aren’t
you thereby self-interested? It is important to see that the answer may well
be no. For all we know, some of us deeply want to help other people. When
we manage to offer such help, we are doing what we really want to do. Yet
what we really want to do is to benefit someone else, not ourselves.
Now, if people get what they really want, they may be better off as a
result. (But they might not: think of the anorexic or the drug addict. Or
think of the cases of disappointment discussed in chapter 4.) Yet the fact
that a person gains from her action does not prove that her motives were
egoistic [1]. The person who really wants to help the homeless, and volunteers
at a soup kitchen or shelter, may certainly derive pleasure from her efforts.
But this doesn’t show that pleasure was her aim. Her aim may have been to
help those in need. And because her aim was achieved, she thereby
received pleasure.

> As a general matter, when you discover that your deepest desires have
been satisfied, you often feel quite pleased. But that does not mean that your ultimate aim is to get such pleasure. That’s what needs to be shown; we can’t just assume it in trying to figure out whether our motives are
always self-interested.

I also think describing altruistic behavior as epigenetically, deterministically or evolutionarily is as useful as describing love as an influx of dopamine and oxytocine. It's scientifically nice but also kind of restricting in understanding humans.

[1] If I reward you with a cookie for taking the shortest path to work, and you enjoy that reward, that does not prove you took the shortest path to work because of my reward--you would have taken it anyway and under what I understand to be your conception of human behavior there is no accounting for this possibility.

Adding to that, if you have utilitarian-leaning tendencies, you may want to consider researching effective altruism. In a nutshell, it suggests that when attempting to do good for the world that you should take an evidence-based approach. So rather than donating to a charity because it sounds nice and tugs at your heartstrings, you should figure which (possibly unsexy) organizations are doing the most good. It's very possible for a charity to have a high Charity Navigator rating because its administrative overhead is very low while the actual charity work it does is ineffective.

Relevant organizations/resources:

• A TED Talk by Peter Singer, philosopher and proponent
  
• The Life You Can Save, a book by Peter Singer that readably and compellingly (in my opinion) articulates this approach
  
• GiveWell, a meta-charity that has a lot of information on their approach to giving and does a lot of research on its favorite charities
  
• Centre for Effective Altruism: an Oxford-based organization that aims to promote this philosophy
  
  Of course, you should always give to charities that you like, rather than blindly following what strangers on the internet tell you. But when I give money, I like the idea of trying to maximize worldwide good per dollar.
  
  And I'd also recommend that you research arguments against the practice:
  
  
• One written by a believer as a test of their understanding of the arguments against it
  
• A column by NYT columnist David Brooks
  
• Art is a selfish waste of time, says effective altrusim
  
• An article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review: note, however, that it's very name-cally and hand-wavey
  
• A compare/contrast with a movement called "philanthrolocalism"

I'd start by questioning the notion of political authority. There is a range of activities which the state does that we'd condemn a private agent or entity if they did those things. So the question is: what accounts of this authority are there, and do they actually justify our holding governments to different ethical standards as non-governmental entities? (These accounts will typically be appeals to things like social contracts and democracy.) The anarcho-capitalist answer is oftentimes: these accounts fail to justify political authority.

This alone doesn't get you to anarcho-capitalism. You'll need a couple more things. Firstly, you'll need some sort of account of how an anarcho-capitalist society will provide the services or features that seem necessary for any acceptably functioning society. These are typically things like settling disputes (courts?), including tricky disputes regarding certain kinds of externalities, rights protection (police? military?), and, if you are so inclined, perhaps some kind of social justice. Secondly, since anarcho-capitalism is capitalistic, then one will probably need some sort of defense of private property rights as well. (If you already accept private property, then this might not be necessary. But those who are suspicious of it will probably want some sort of account of it, probably for similar reasons that we desire an account of political authority from the state.)

If each of these notions hold up (1 - political authority doesn't exist; 2 - private institutions can provide the services and features required for an acceptably decent society; 3 - private property is just), then you have a pretty good general case for anarcho-capitalism.

As for suggested reading regarding each of these points...

• The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer. This one attempts to debunk political authority and provides a rough account of how an anarcho-capitalist society might provide for things like dispute resolution and the defense of individual rights.
  
• The Machinery of Freedom, by David Friedman. While this provides an account of private property, I think the real virtue of this book is its ability to showcase capitalistic solutions to what we typically consider the domain of government action. (Again, things like providing law -- resolving disputes --, providing defense, education, etc.)
  
• Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick. While Nozick is no anarchist, he is a libertarian, and he developed an account of property entitlement that has been fairly influential, called The Entitlement Theory. While I'm not a strict adherent of this theory, it does seem to capture and explain a very wide variety of basic ethical intuitions regarding property rights.
  
  On the other hand, a good argument against anarcho-capitalism will probably hit on the negations of these points. It will attempt to establish political authority, or show anarcho-capitalist solutions to be highly impractical and improbable, or debunk private property, or something of this sort. Hopefully that helps lay out a sort of structure with which to analyze anarcho-capitalism with.

If money can buy you happiness, them presumably one is not choosing money rather than happiness. Instead, one is choosing more happiness over less happiness.

I can't think of any philosopher who has ever argued that it makes more sense to get money than to be happy, except for the ones who have argued that one has a duty to help others as much as possible, which entails earning lots of money and donating it to charity. See here and here for details. Apart from that though, the choice seems pretty easy: happiness, because money is only useful as a means to some other end, whereas happiness is an end in itself.

>I am the first to say that libertarian authors have frequently relied upon controversial philosophical assumptions in deriving their political conclusions. Ayn Rand, for example, thought that capitalism could only be successfully defended by appeal to ethical egoism, the theory according to which the right action for anyone in any circumstance is always the most selfish action. Robert Nozick is widely read as basing his libertarianism on an absolutist conception of individual rights, according to which an individual's property rights and rights to be free from coercion can never be outweighed by any social consequences. Jan Narveson relies on a metaethical theory according to which the correct moral principles are determined by a hypothetical social contract. Because of the controversial nature of these ethical or metaethical theories, most readers find the libertarian arguments based on them easy to reject.

>It is important to observe, then, that I have appealed to nothing so controversial in my own reasoning. In fact, I reject all three of the foundations for libertarianism mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I reject egoism, since I believe that individuals have substantial obligations to take into account the interests of others. I reject ethical absolutism, since I believe an individual's rights may be overridden by sufficiently important needs of others. And I reject all forms of social contract theory, since I believe the social contract is a myth with no moral relevance for us...

~ Huemer from Problem of Political Authority. (The book argues in favor of anarcho-capitalism, but will also give you a strong foundation for minarchism)

His moral philosophy is intuitionism. I also highly suggest his other book Ethical Intuitionism - it's a great intro to metaethics and spurred my interest in philosophy to begin with.

If you can't afford either, he has some chapters over at his faculty page.

It asserts a moral realist position (objective moral facts) on the basis of our intuitions - essentially common sense morality (see: GE Moore, and WD Ross). It is a respectable academic philosophy (as opposed to Objectivism) and has recently seen a resurgence.

Here is a good summary of what Huemer's approach lends itself to

>And I don't pretend that I have anything more than a populist's understanding of these topics. I'm surely just scraping the surface of most topics, misunderstanding things, and I would never think I can be part of an academic conversation because I listen to a couple podcasts.

And I respect you understanding your own ignorance in a topic, because that shows intelligence. Philosophy, interestingly, is the subject that most makes me feel more stupid the more I've studied it, so you're definitely not alone! That being said, many people from the new atheist / "skeptic" community act like this gem

>Yeah, I just say "this is interesting, I'd even like to talk about it with strangers", but I acknowledge the second part of your sentence and am OK realizing my understanding is often limited and quite possibly wrong.


And I think you should use that understanding as motivation to maybe go directly to the sources that these podcasts engage with :) Philosophy is a subject with so many fantastic, but extremely accurate introductory books and I go back to them every now and then to refresh myself on the basics. My favorite example is Prof Simon Blackburn's - Think and another really good piece which goes into a lot of informal logic as well as the jargon: The Philosopher's Toolkit

I find both of those to give an excellent simplification of some of the bigger elements of philosophy without overstretching and misrepresenting their subject matter! :)

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)

Its been some years since I studied Nietzsche with any real application, so I should be clear that I'm really just giving a quick summary of Kaufmann's work on Nietzsche, primarily from his annotations in the aforementioned volumes, as well as Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Kaufmann was a very key part in rescuing Nietzsche's legacy from the Nazis, which was first tarnished by his sister, and then my editors like Alfred Bäumler, whose annotated edition was one of the most widely read in the interwar years, and also was an avowed Nazi. At Nuremberg, it was noted:

>[Nietzsche's] vision of the masses being governed without constraints by rules presaged the Nazi regime. Nietzsche believed in the supreme race and the primacy of Germany in which he saw a young soul and inexhaustible reserves.

And that was certainly the image cultivated about Nietzsche, which the Nazi party latched onto, but I would also point back to the unpublished line above, which is only one of many you can find where he has quite the opposite to say in regards to the German spirit.

Take what he had to say on the Slavs compared to the Germans:

>The Poles I consider the most gifted and gallant among the Slavic peoples; and the giftedness of the Slavs seems greater to me than that of the Germans.

Much of the discussion that Kaufmann covers in Nietzsche about this (the entire 10th chapter, "The Master Race", is devoted mostly to race and Nazism) comes down to perception of race in Nietzsche's writings, and specifically the concept of 'master race', which of course tied in well with the Nazi's own philosophical underpinnings (although it should be noted Nietzsche [seemed to] fit their philosophy, and was not the source of it). But, as Kaufmann points out, Nietzsche writes against nationalism, advocates the 'mixed race' marriages, and is generally quite praiseful of the Jews in this regards, "just as useful and desirable an ingredient as any other national remnant". He certainly had views on race that we would find troubling, but far from being the hateful, racial supremacy of Nazism, it was really more an advocacy of many different races, each with their various characteristics, coming together, intermingling, and leading to his hope of the "European Man" (So... yeah, he wasn't exactly not racist either, just not in anywhere near the same context as Nazism).

To quote Kaufmann, "It would be cumbersome and pointless to adduce endless examples from Nazi works on Nietzsche to refute them each time by referring to the context of Nietzsche's remarks", but nevertheless, Nazi scholars of Nietzsche, such as Max Oehler or Bäumler, often had to do some serious mental gymnastics to excuse or rationalize the anti-German, pro-Jewish, anti-Nationalist, anti-anti-Semitism (an 'obscenity' in Nietzsche's words), which were numerous, and generally done through taking them out of context, or else subtle editing.

So I hope that gives you a little glimpse, but if this is a topic that interests you, I really would recommend you track down a copy of Kaufmann's book, as just reading it will be much better than me trying to make out my indecipherable margin notes that are nearly a decade old! (Amazon has a "look inside", so see if you can get some samples of Chapter 10) The sum of it is that Nietzsche's philosophy often can be troubling, and there is plenty to his that simply can't be excused. He is controversial in his own right, even without the association with Nazism, but that association is very much an unfortunate one that shouldn't be taken as representative of his works, and post-WWII scholars have really worked hard to destroy.

Edit: Minor clean up

Note: I'm not recommending that people donate to this, but am just sharing it because it's relevant.

Criticism of Rose's arguments:

Honestly I'd be somewhat embarrassed to ask a professor I knew to debate Larken on this due to the fact that I think Larken's arguments against political authority are rather weak / lacking in philosophical rigor. (Note: Huemer does much better at this.) I wouldn't expect Larken's arguments to change any professors minds and not because I think the professors are irrational, but rather because the arguments simply aren't good enough.

Larken's arguments against political authority wouldn't have convinced me before I was a libertarian. Before I finally accepted the view that governments shouldn't be granted political authority I spent hundreds of hours coming up with dozens of arguments to the contrary--far more than the handful that Huemer considers and rejects in the first half of The Problem of Political Authority.

And I was right to consider these arguments for political authority. I don't think that one should just go from (1) observing that they hold conflicting moral intuitions and political intuitions and (2) the moral intuitions seem stronger to (3) rejecting the political intuitions. Rather, one should consider all of the reasons why governments really should be given that special moral status, and should only conclude that they shouldn't be granted the special moral status if none of those reasons seems satisfactory.

As Huemer writes in Ch 1 section 1.6 A Comment on Methodolgy:

> Those who begin with an intuition that some states possess authority may be brought to give up that intuition if it turns out, as I aim to show, that the belief in political authority is incompatible with common sense moral beliefs. There are three reasons for preferring to adhere to common sense morality rather than common sense political philosophy: first, as I have suggested, common sense political philosophy is more controversial than common sense morality. Second, even those who accept orthodox political views are usually more strongly convinced of common sense morality than they are of common sense political philosophy. Third, even those who intuitively accept authority may at the same time have the sense that this authority is puzzling–that some explanation is required for why some people should have this special moral status–in a way that it is not puzzling, for example, that it should be wrong to attack others without provocation. The failure to find any satisfactory account of political authority may therefore lead one to give up the belief in authority, rather than to give up common sense moral beliefs.

When it was first pointed at to me by a friend in 2010 that taxation is like extortion, imprisonment for victimless crimes is like kidnapping, etc, my reaction was that there must be some good explanation for this. I came up with dozens of plausible explanations and it took a while for me to reject them.

I don't think it took me more than five minutes to reject lines of argument like "the citizens delegated the right to Taxpayer Bob's money to the government, therefore it's not extortion for the government to demand that he give them money." If Larken had made his traditional one-line arguments against political authority to me before I became a libertarian, he'd thus be attacking a straw-man.

The intellectual challenge is not (as Larken says) to recognize that if individuals own their money then there is no process by which a collective of others can gain the right to take that person's money from them against their will. This is a straw man. Very few people actually believe that the government has the right to tax because other people delegated them this right. Very few people say this, and most of those who do say this don't even actually believe it. Instead, what's motivating them to say it is that they have an intuition that the governments should be able to do most of what they do--that they have political authority.

The real challenge that held me back for weeks or months before I finally rejected political authority is to figure out if there is some good reason for governments to be granted the special moral status that is political authority. It wasn't an obvious no. There are lots of psychological factors motivating me to think the answer was yes. It took dozens of hours over the course of several weeks at least before I concluded that none of my explanations (for why government should have this special moral status) were satisfactory.

> I just see it as a distraction instead of addressing the specific points being made.

There are very real differences between the analytic and continental approaches to philosophy, as well as which thinkers are most seriously and most often discussed in their respective traditions. These trends are not accidental.

>so I'm suspicious that the author Rosen is using that "continental" label to obfuscate a text to lend itself to his own beliefs and principles.

The Mask of Enlightenment is not primarily political.

>so already I'm beginning to feel suspect on how honest the author is with his interpretation of the text.

There's really no better way to judge a text by singling out one Amazon reader review.

>I first recommend people to read any material for themselves and try to convey their own understanding as best they can.

This isn't good advice. Nietzsche is easy to read but it's tremendously difficult to get a holistic grasp on his ideas and their significance and implications. Once you read the primary material, you'll need a guiding hand to help make sense of the text -- trying to "convey your own understanding as best you can" isn't going to cut it.

Bias is ever present, but if one wants a good introductory text of Nietzsche that's admirably neutral, Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist would make a fair compromise.

We can change our desires and tendencies, but we will change them according to our current ones which include desire to change them in the first place. Moreover, our current desires are based on our previous desires which are based on even older desires. Ultimately, if we follow causation of each desire, we will end at factors upon which we had no control.

I assume, those factors which are beyond our control are what Einstein referenced when he paraphrased Schopenhauer.

In a previous thread you mentioned Sam Harris as a person who piqued your interest in free will debate. Even though I am a layman, I came to conclusion that Sam unknowingly or even worse knowingly left out many important questions (of which Frankfurt cases are most significant) unanswered in his book and speeches. I strongly encourage you to read proper positions on free will debate. My suggestion is book called 'Four Views on Free Will'. I also recommend Derk Pereboom's lectures if you gravitate toward position similar to hard determinism.

The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer. It's a book that looks at the validity of the government coercion. It's probably the best philosophical book in defense of libertarian Anarcho Capitalism out there.

A little outside the usual as far as political philosophy goes, but if you were ever to read a book written by a libertarian it is this one.

The book is expensive, so if you don't want to buy it these two books while not as good are a great replacement.

The Machinery of Freedom PDF by David D. Friedman, son of Milton Friedman.

For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray Rothbard.

I'd recommend Friedman over Rothbard in this case. It's shorter and I think better.

I think my favourite introductory book was Blackburn's Think, which was just a good all-round explanation of lots of areas of philosophy. Another excellent book was The Philosophy Book which goes through the history of philosophy and explains the (or one of the) 'big idea' of the major philosophers. One really nice thing they do is for each of these they do a flow chart of the philosopher's argument for their view, which I found a really useful thing for understanding. Other very good introductory books are the philosophy-related books in the Very Short Introductions series by OUP, for example they have ones on lots of the big philosophers, as well as on ethics, free will, philosophy of science, existentialism, metaphysics, logic, the meaning of life etc.

For non-book stuff, I highly recommend the Philosophy bites podcast. Basically these are reasonably short (10-20 min) highly accessible interviews with professional philosophers. There have been so many now that there's one for practically any topic you find interesting and they are all very high quality philosophy.

What might also be useful to you are the resources on the Routledge site for the UK Philosophy A-Level (i.e. in the last two years of our equivalent of high school we do 3-5 A-Level qualifications, and one of the ones you can choose from is Philosophy) which Routledge publishes a textbook for. There are lots of pdf documents on there written to help students understand the various topics which are worth looking at. N.B. AS refers to the 1st year of A-Level and A2 to the second year, so the AS resources will be simpler than the A2 ones.

There are several good translations, but I'll suggest the translation by Robin Hard, which includes selected correspondence with Marcus' rhetoric teacher Fronto and good footnotes.

I also think it's helpful to have more than one translation to compare phrasing. There are older translations you can find for free online. They are a little less readable than a more modern translation, but for comparison they're useful. The best two free ones are by George Long and by George Chrystal.

Well, for starters I think we should discuss what it means to enforce justice. In whose eyes is justice determined? How is it that one comes to be a party to 'justice being served' on either side of the coin?

State justice systems are, as you indicated, built on something like the Rawlsian Leviathan whereby someone believes themselves aggrieved and transfers what would in prior systems have been their right of vengeance to the Leviathan to pursue. This is a method of breaking the cycle of revenge generated by handling this personally. It might also make the outcome more even-handed because the investigating and enforcing parties are presumed to be less personally invested in the outcome. These are good features of the system. They do not require that the Leviathan-entity be a monopoly (and in fact it is not a monopoly now unless you consider the US system to be the monopoly being enforced everywhere else to varying degrees of success).

There are a rather large number of books and articles on this subject, as libertarian dispute resolution is probably the most fleshed out portion of libertarian thinking. I would recommend The problem of Political Authority and For A New Liberty as good starting places which will allow you to self-guide to further sources.

What AnCaps are advocating for is that the services of the Leviathan can be provided by firms interacting through a market. In some ways this is what exists. A primary difference in what we want from what is available is that we think you ought to be free to choose the firm you go to. Now we (many of us) are advocating for a system based on restitution rather than the 'transferred right-of-vengence.'

So, since we are not advocating for any states, we are not advocating for anything like legislative law really but rather contractual terms and agreements negotiated either through something like an insurance company (the DROs mentioned elsewhere) or through communities of legal agreement, or probably any number of other methods we have not even dreamt of yet.

Alain Badiou recently wrote this article on Hegel's master/slave dialectic, but did so asking the question as to it's relation to real slavery. It answers the question quite nicely while also providing an extremely clear reading of Hegel's argument.

Frederick Beiser also wrote a book on Hegel (there are ways to get the PDF version of this if you look in the right places) that is clear and does a good job dispelling the common misreadings of Hegel.

Peter Singer's Very Short Introduction to Hegel (again, available as a PDF in the right places) is also extremely clear and well written.

If you're serious about reading Hegel, pick yourself up a copy of Phenomenology of Spirit and read through it with Gregory Sadler's Lecture series. He goes through paragraph by paragraph explaining the whole text. He's extremely engaging and extremely insightful.

If you can't get enough Hegel and you want to go all in, I'd recommend The Hegel Variations by Fredric Jameson, Hegel: Three Studies by Theodore Adorno, and Less Than Nothing by some Slovenian guy.

Sorry if that's overkill, hope it helps!

u/tathougies has it. There is legitimate reason for the gov't to support 1m1w marriage because it can (and usually) does produce children. Gov't has a vested interest in making sure those children are raised well. Yes, not all marriages produce children, please don't bring that up as if I'm unaware of it. Given they're the exception to the rule, it's not relevant.

There's no other valid reason for gov't to be involved in marriage, why does gov't care who you love? Does gov't care who your best friend is? No. So all this talk about love is irrelevant, you can love whomever you want but there's no reason for gov't to get in the middle of it unless there's children or the possibility of children.

I highly recommend "What is Marriage?" and "Correct, Not Politically Correct" for a lot more in-depth look at the subject. Neither quotes the Bible or relies on it to make their case. "Correct, Not Politically Correct" is a lot shorter and more "layman" in its approach. Plus it has a handy Q&A in the back.

Take care!

If you're willing to devote some serious time, Man, Economy and State is the most complete explanation that exists of the economics behind ancap ideas. It's also like 1100 pages or something so it might be more of a commitment than you're willing to make just for opposition research.

If you want to get into the philosophy behind the ideas, The Ethics of Liberty is probably the best thing you'll find. It attempts to give a step-by-step logical "proof" of libertarian philosophy.

The Problem of Political Authority is also an excellent book that takes nearly universally accepted moral premises and uses them to come to ancap conclusions in a thoroughly logical manner. I'd say if you're actually at all open to having your mind changed, it's the one most likely to do it.

If you just want a brief taste, The Law is extremely short (you can read it in an hour or two) and contains many of the important fundamental ideas. It was written like 200 years ago so doesn't really qualify as ancap, but it has the advantage of being easily digestible and also being (and I can't stress this enough) beautifully written. It's an absolute joy to read. You can also easily find it online with a simple Google search.

I know you asked for one book and I gave you four, but the four serve different purposes so pick one according to what it is you're specifically looking for.

This is the best argument I've read in support of taxation that acts as if the average an-cap isn't a lunatic.

Thank you for writing this up! You're raising the bar of discussion around here.

Since you wrote up on the idea of political authority, I wonder if you've read The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer.

I cannot summarize the whole thing here (the reviews on Amazon do it better) but I feel like he does a good line of reasoning on the topic, and it was this book that made me (reluctantly) give up the notion that a certain amount of government was required.

And I do mean "reluctantly". I'm already used to keeping my political views to myself, because even without being an an-cap, I am pretty fringe in my political views. This just pushed me even fringier.

(He specifically addresses Kant's arguments in support of political authority. It's really good reading!)

Thank you, again, for this awesome comment. You deserve far more than the six points upvotes you have right now.

Some academics think that sounds pretty good. They are called anarcho-capitalists. There aren't very many of them, and some of them are very bad thinkers. But some are very good thinkers, and have ideas worth considering. Here are my two favorites:

• The Machinery of Freedom, by David Friedman (You might be interested in chapter's like "Police, Courts, and Laws -- on the Market" and others relevant to the specific goods mentioned in your post.)
  
• The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer (This is more of an ethical case against coercing people to pay for many of the goods you are concerned about.)
  
  In my own opinion, many public goods probably would be underproduced. But underproduced doesn't mean completely absent, and I think many of the functions you are worried about can be produced to some extent on the market (in some cases, probably with great success. Others, perhaps not.)

There's a few issues with Peterson's approach to philosophy. The foremost is the extent to which he pretends to be an expert in philosophical issues without actually having well-defended philosophical positions. His pragmatism, for instance, wouldn't pass muster in a graduate class on pragmatism -- and University of Toronto has some leading pragmatist scholars that he could talk to about the subject. This is unfortunately typical of Peterson's approach. His original commentary on Bill C-16 was ignorant and ultimately misled the public. His commentary on dominance hierarchies is also speculative, outside his ken, and misleading.

So while it's great to make philosophy more public there's plenty better people to do it and plenty better ways to do it. Simon Blackburn is a great example of a well-regarded philosopher who offers informed, accurate, work to the public in an accessible way. Dan Dennett is also stand-out example of a great philosopher who does great professional and public work. Or, also from the University of Toronto, there's Joseph Heath, who is now one of Canada's foremost public intellectuals on political and economic subjects.

Contrast that with Peterson's extremely polarizing and error-prone approach. I'd be glad to have fewer Petersons and more Heaths or Nussbaums.

I had a comment in here giving a reason for he post, though that's not an explanation.

> Note: may not be the best place to post, but I needed to post somewhere in order to link it in Dr. Feser's open thread today, which he only does a couple of times each year. I've been working through his books since early this year, and developing this concept map as I progress.

By way of explanation, this is a work in progress to visualize the relationships between the concepts brought to bear in the philosophical advances of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Beginning for the fundamental argument for the necessary reality of the distinction between actuality and potentiality, the concept map walks through the conceptual divisions of act and potency. Notably, the divisions of act arrive at a core conception of God as Pure Actuality, Being Itself, utterly devoid of any potentiality or passivity. This is not a proof of God, but rather simply serves to define God's role as the First and Unmoved Mover and Sustainer of all things.

The divisions of act and potency expand to the right of the map, where you see how actuality and potentiality come together as Form and Matter to produce concrete, material things.

Branching off of from the soul (here defined as the substantial form of a living substance), there is a section which details the powers or capacities of the different levels of living substances, which are hierarchically related, with respect to the corporeal order.

For now, the section on the Four Causes is placed on its own, as I still haven't decided where best to tie it in, since many topics make use of this principle. Particularly, Final Causation (defined as the end, goal, purpose, directedness or teleology of a thing) is essential to understanding the concept of objective goodness, which carries into the section on ethics (which, in this view, amounts to an understanding of the directedness of the will).

Also included, but not yet connected as well as it could be, is a section on the divine attributes, along with a brief explanation of how we can know them.

There is much more that can be included. As mentioned elsewhere, this was posted here so that I could link to the WIP. I had hoped that I could catch Edward Feser's attention in the comments of his open thread, which he posted on his blog site yesterday, and which he does only a couple times per year. This concept map is the result of my learning from his books:

• Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science
  
  
• Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide)
  
  
• Philosophy of Mind (A Beginner's Guide)
  
  
• Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Scholastic Editions – Editiones Scholasticae)
  
  I am still working my way through this last one, and when done I intend also to read:
  
  
• Five Proofs of the Existence of God

> I'm fine with you or someone else saying, "based on this and this definition for an objectively good movie, I find X movie to be objectively good" what I am not fine with, is if someone just says "Y is an objectively good/bad movie" without context. This would be a miscomunication as the person who said that uses a different defeinition than most others.

Yes, one needs to be clear on the conception of beauty being used.

>I couldn't disagree further

On what grounds? I encourage you to read up on epistemology - the field that specializes on knowledge, reason, evidence, and the like. Robert Audi's introduction to the field is good!

/r/ethical_living does have some interesting posts, but I'd also like more resources!

Free bonus: some other possible compassionate choices

• Don't waste, especially don't waste food (Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal by Tristram Stuart)
  
• Be generous (The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty by Peter Singer)
  
• Practise Ahimsa
  
• Donate blood and register for bone marrow and (post mortem) organ donation
  
• Volunteer
  
• Love your enemies
  
• Celebrate July 29th

What kinds of deductive reasoning? I'd recommend practice and study of a specific application of deduction over reading about it in general.

I've played several games that require deduction:

• Flow Free: Android iOS
  
• Hashi: Android iOS
  
• Slitherlink: Android iOS
  
• Paint By Numbers/Hanjie: Web (can be printed for pencil and paper), Web
  
• Electric Box: Web, requires Flash
  
  Other examples are Logic grids, Sudoku, and many others.
  
  I find that deduction is a skill that's easy to develop in a particular domain (like any of the above games), but hard to generalize. Playing the above games for fun, I've developed a better understanding of how to use proof by contradiction, but not much else.
  
  Those kinds of high-level ideas are probably best learned from a logic textbook like Introduction to Logic, but the abstract knowledge may not translate to practical skills without domain-specific practice and study.

This is a good start

and so is this!

This is, possibly surprisingly, good too.

If you're looking to jump right into a text and think you have a grip on the language, try Foucault's Madness and Civilization It's great and pretty easy to read.

Another good introduction (or at least, MY introduction to philosophy is Slavoj Zizek. He's pretty easy to read and understand, but makes ties to Lacan, Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc in a cohesive manner that makes you want to learn more. Of his work, I'd check out The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Parallax View or watch his movie! (Which is extraordinarily entertaining for how dense it is. He's also kind of amazing in a philosophical rock star kind of way.)

Hope that gets you started!

Maybe I'm wrong, but I do think appealing to the natural / biological realities of our bodies as fundamental to our ethical and theological beliefs can appeal to people. It's pretty undeniable that, biologically speaking, the purpose of our sex organs is to procreate.

Anyway, I think I see the point you're making, as well. I think I will leave it at that, but if you haven't already read this book I will recommend it to you because I think it's interesting and helpful on the topic of marriage.

>I have not yet encountered this problem.

You mentioned computers before so I'll use them here as an example:

My computer, in front of me now, is meaningful in that it is meaningful to me. It's meaningful to you, too, in an abstract way because I'm using it to transmit this message. It allows me to access stores of information I could never have dreamed of.

Now, imagine a nuclear apocalypse. 95% of the world's human population dies. Most knowledge of the post-industrial and indeed industrial world is lost to history.

I live near DC so odds are my area will be pretty radioactive; it'll be hundreds of years, if not more, before the area is habitable and longer still before it is excavated.

Imagine, then, that the descendants of the survivors of this apocalypse, generations later, find my poor laptop. It will have no meaning for them, because they have no use for it. Similarly, were I to go back in time to, say, 1500, my computer would have no meaning for the people of that time, because they have no use for it.

My computer has meaning in that it has meaning to its user. Purely extrinsic value, there. Humans, however, we possess something innate. No one knows really what to call it - some say it's a soul, some would say it's consciousness, some would call it free will - whatever it is, we don't understand it at all. But we pretty much all agree that a human has innate value, period.

So, to say that I am to God like my computer is to me is demeaning to that innate whatever-it-is, don't you think?

NOTE: the above is a restructuring of a thought experiment presented in the introduction to Alaisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue which, if you haven't already, is a dense but phenomenal work and totally worth the effort.

>I see no problem with that.

Me either :)

>Can you come up with something that would?

I didn't today - ain't life fun like that? I don't think you need one meaning, all the time, forever. Meaning can change as we do. I'm not the same as I was before I met you, or before I turned 25, or before I turned 16, etc. You're not the same, either. Why should your "meaning" be so permanent when "you" are not?

>Why must it? Without God it seems that we are just chemical bonds.

I agree with you, it seems like we're chemical bonds. But I'm not a monist - there's something else there. We don't understand consciousness, not even a little bit. We don't know where it comes from, what it is, whether my dog is conscious in the same way I am and if not, then whether she is conscious at all. We just don't know.

On a personal level I still haven't decided whether the field of Noetics is doing really, really interesting scientific work or really, really interesting voodoo, but suffice to say it's really, really interesting (to me, at least). Check it out if you get a sec!

But what I said was, given that human life does have meaning and given that there is no God, then the meaning of human life cannot come from God, and must come from human life.

It depends on what you mean. In one sense, you don't really need a book to be able to have discussions about philosophical issues - just someone willing to engage in good faith discussion. But there are some resources that could help you express yourself more effectively.

Philosophers argue using the rules of logic, so one way to learn how to argue effectively is to learn about logic. There are a lot of great internet resources out there that help you learn to discern good reasoning from bad reasoning. But if you do want a book, I like this Critical Thinking textbook. Very readable and very funny.

For something that applies to philosophy more directly, there's the Philosopher's Toolkit. It explains a bunch of concepts and argument forms you're likely to see when doing philosophy.

Beyond that, there are all kinds of primers on the main branches of philosophy and on specific philosophical questions. You can get a feel for the territory by reading introductory texts or Stanford Encyclopedia articles.

Hope this was helpful.

Honestly, the hardest part of him is where to start. Ask five people and you'll get six answers.

But as a general recommendation, stick primarily to Walter Kaufmann's books, and you can't go wrong. He was one of the leading scholars on the school of his thought, and I find his translations of Nietzsche to capture the dramatic emphasis of his prose the best.

For a brief introduction I'd start with his Biography by Kaufmann, this is useful for understanding the time in which he lived, the philosophical climate, and debunking myths about him, followed by Basic Writings, and then The Portable Nietzsche which contains his more complex works, Twilight and Zarathustra. Each of these contain complete texts, as well as discussion and expositions to give them more context, and are extremely helpful in understanding the work.

Also, If you're a materialist already, an Atheist or an agnostic, start with The Antichrist and you'll fall in love with him in the first pages. Its a summary of his view on Christian morality, and it doesn't hold back at all, a quick read at about a hundred or so pages. If you want an appetizer, peruse The Will To Power, his book of aphorisms, to whet your palate (this is also where most of the romance quotes live). These were my introductions, and I never looked back.

People seems to be interested these days in symbolic logic, which in fact is believed to be superior. Nevertheless, I feel that Socratic Logic is the method preferable when trying to ascertain truth. I recommend Socratic Logic by Peter Kreeft edition 3.1.

Another field I would recommend is the study of the Stoic philosophers. There is much wisdom that is quite apt for our day and our journey through life. I recommend this site as a launching point into the subject.

>What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?" Seneca The Younger (Letter I: On Saving Time in Moral Letters to Lucius).

This book, The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten, is a very easy read. Others can vouch for its readability (I know /u/TychoCelchuuu has mentioned this book in the past) alongside me, but in regards to me recommending something like this to you: I've been a native speaker for all my life so I may not be the best in determining how well a non-native reader can understand a foreign text. Hope someone can come along to recommend you some reading from a place of similar experience, good luck!

hmmm, it depends, do you have any background in philosophy? If so I would recommend some more academic theological work like Kathryn Tanner, Leonardo Boff, Borden Bowne, Edgar Brightman, Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Barth, etc... if not I would recommend a book like this to help you understand the philosophical framework most theologians use.

As for Biblical studies, Michael Coogan has a really good intro to the Hebrew Bible and Mark Powell has a great intro to the New Testament you can supplement those readings with work focused on the historical context like Richard Horsely's work Jesus and Empire I haven't found a good book that offers a comprehensive overview of the context of the Hebrew Bible, mostly because that covers a large span of history. From there you can go on to read people like E.P. Sanders, William Herzog, Richard Bauckham, Jon Levenson, John Collins, Adela Collins, Carol Meyers, etc.

There is a ton of great academic work out there, unfortunately many seem to shy away from it because its 1) intimidating or 2) challenges embedded theological assumptions or 3) they buy into the myth that learning about theology and biblical studies only causes people to lose faith.

My comment was an attempt to answer your question, but I admit I didn't make that part very clear. Of course you can't just rely on people's goodness, because people are neither inherently good or evil. They follow incentives, and in a society where people move on from rulers, there would be natural incentives for people to try and get along even if they didn't like each other, as These guys explain as their solution.

Power and authority positions, on the other hand, are inherently defined by being able to do harm and damage to one group for the benefit of another without the threat of consequence, as this video explains. This is the kind of action that the Cycle of Hatred is based upon, and is why any real discussion of peace must question the structures of power that are involved. In contrast, a action of trade that happens between two people only occurs if both people see it as benefiting them, so the things and rules that occur are only what people agree on.

People have written whole novels about these concepts, and there are a lot to choose from, like this one, but feel free to look around.

If you have doubts about why the state is so bad, and want to understand more what the state is Anatomy of the State by Murray Tothbard is a great read, got me into libertarianism in general

If you are looking for more current anarcho-capitalist theory and it’s logistics, a great read is The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

Anatomy of the state is a great introduction of about ~50 or so pages while The Machinery of freedom goes into a lot more detail, ~350 pages and is the book I would choose.

Hope this helps!

For introductory purposes, it's best to read surveys of the literature and tradition, simply because there are many anarchist schools of thought and people often direct you to read books from the school to which they are sympathetic.

I recommend starting off with [Peter Kropotkin's 1909 essay for Encyclopedia Britannica on Anarchism] (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html).

Next, I'd recommend [Men Against the State] (http://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-State-Expositors-Individualist/dp/0879260068), a historical overview of the American Anarchist traditions, which were a kind of anarchist melting pot but admittedly skewed individualist (you could probably find a free pdf of this quickly).

These books should provide good introductions to various schools. After that, just pick up the books in whatever school suits your fancy and enjoy.

My biased recommendations are Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism and Huemer's The Problem of Political Authority. They are both works done by conteporary academic philosophers but written simply and without jargon.

edit: It would be wonderful if whoever downvoted my comment could explain why.

It was you who claimed theft is a necessary evil. It's cute you think it's my responsibility to disprove your unproved positive claim, but I have no interest not playing that game. If you're actually interested in this discussion, I would recommend you read this book. You can find it online if you like.

Good luck

It depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want a clear, intro-level overview of the subject, check out Shafer-Landau's Fundamental's of Ethics. It's a fantastic place to start, and it is the book I recommend if you really want to understand the subject and plan to read outside the context of a class.

If you want primary texts, I suggest that you get the book's companion, The Ethical Life.

If you want a textbook that is a little shorter and more engaging, check out Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy.

If you want an introduction that's informative and fun to read but less informative than the Rachels or the Shafer-Landau, check out Sandel's Justice. You can also watch his Justice lectures online. This book, as opposed to the other two, is written for a popular audience.

Readings on Metaethics

• Beginners Book (Normative ethics, not metaethics): Russ Shafer-Landau The Fundamentals of Ethics
  
• Short article overview of metaethics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/
  
• Short article on moral realism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/
  
• Short article on anti-realism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/
  
• Metaethics overview book: Andrew Fisher's Metaethics: An Introduction. 2011.
  
• Metaethics in depth book: Mark van Roojen's Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction. 2015
  
• Metaethics Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBE50_tfAIA&list=PLXKKIUdnOESH7mWijTiv4tTFAcQnEkFDJ
  
• More recommendations on the philosophy reddit
  
  Defenses of God/Christianity
  
  
• William Lane Craig is essentially the Christian counterpart to Sam Harris. If you haven't heard of the cosmological argument, fine tuning, etc he's a good place to start. Not a great destination though if you're looking for something in depth and I don't think some of his arguments work in the end.
  
• Alvin Plantinga is a philosopher known for his contributions to modality, and is also a Christian. He's written some books on his faith, including "Warranted Christian Belief". He's basically the Christian counterpart to Daniel Dennent.
  
• David Bentley Hart is what I would consider the Christian counterpart to Nietzsche. His book "Beauty of the Infinite" is written in a similar style and has a long discussion of the will to power. That book is pretty dense though. An easier starting point is "The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss". Which attempts to disentangle an informed view of God from the somewhat corrupted popular conception of it. He has also written a response to the new atheists called "Atheist Delusions"
  
• Edward Feser is probably my favorite on this list. He's written good intros to the Philosophy of Mind and to Aquinas. He defends the existence of God in "Five Proofs of the Existence of God". His magnum opus, however, is probably "Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science". This book is a (dense) defense of Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics, which is central to his defense of the existence of God. He has also written an intro to Scholastic Metaphysics, and a response to the new atheists called "The Last Superstition"
  
  Many of the people listed above have done interviews and talks if you're not inclined to read an entire book.
  
  Let me know if this does/doesn't help or if I should narrow the list.

I can help with a few of those.

An excellent introduction to political philosophy that takes a historical view is this one by Jonathan Wolff. One that looks at contemporary political theory only is this one by Adam Swift. I recommend reading both of them. They both have excellent suggestions for further reading. I will also recommend this book on contemporary political philosophy by Will Kymlicka, which is one of my favourite books. It's not quite as accessible as the previous two books, but Kymlicka's writing is clear and powerful.

You will likely find some useful readings on social classes and equality in this syllabus^PDF from a class taught by a Canadian sociologist.

You're welcome! Another piece of advice I have is that while I firmly believe conversion is a result of grace, breaking down intellectual barriers to belief is absolutely critical for many atheists. I found I had a lot of baggage and bad history/bad philosophy in my overall worldview previously. I didn't know what I didn't know or believe in. To me, God was a silly, antiquated idea used for control and comfort. Things like classical theism, divine simplicity, act/potency, essentialism, forms, four causes...were either completely foreign to me or unintelligible.

The first part of getting past that was classical philosophy, as I previously mentioned. I don't just mean Catholic thinkers like Aquinas either (though he's the mastermind!). It was studying the metaphysics of Aristotle, the forms of Plato, Ockam's pre-nominalistic, how enlightenment philosophers shifted the thinking towards epistemology and metaphysics; that I think really broke those barriers for me. It turned out that the materialism, reductionism, naturalism, and empiricism that I took for granted...were not on the strong ground I thought they were. Indeed, philosophers like Ed Feser, David Oderberg, Peter Kreeft, GEM Anscombe, Roger Scruton, Bernard Lonergan, James Ross, and even Thomas Nagel (himself an atheist!) have been articulating strong arguments against those things for years. I never knew the power of logic, deductive reasoning, and philosophy. I took the view of scientism as the default truth without ever challenging it. But just knowing how strong the intellectual arguments are against atheism/materialism are, and for theism; has helped immensely in growing in God's grace. And that is to say nothing for my moral realism, courtesy of Alasdair MacIntyre and C.S. Lewis, that was the initial crack in my previous worldview.

For those of us who are more head than heart, like I suspect you and your wife are, this kind of deep dive into philosophy is a crucial aspect of conversion. If you can articulate the strength of theism and weaknesses of atheism from just a purely intellectual standpoint, you may at least get her to be more understanding of your shift in thinking. I think reading this book is a good start and that this one is slightly more thorough. Feser isn't the world's greatest philosopher but he is very articulate. This book of his helped me greatly in beginning to solidify and defend my own epistemology and metaphysics.

Not a website but, depending on what you mean by 'cultural', you may be interested to read Brilliant Orange by David Winner.

It draws connections between Dutch culture (including visual art, architecture, and urban planning) and the football philosophy that developed in the Netherlands in the second half of the 20th century. It's not an academic piece, and there's lots of football anecdotes in case it sounds too dry or academic. It really is a wonderful book: ambitious in scope, but accessible. Can't recommend it highly enough.

If you mean the original Hegelian idea, not Marxism, then good luck; it's bizarre and baffling. The clearest book I ever read on it was Peter Singer's Hegel, A Very Short Introduction. Singer does as good a job as anyone could. For Marx's version, Singer's Marx, A Very Short Introduction is the best introduction too.

Before diving in, Scott does a very good job of explaining why its worth paying at least a bit of attention to Hegel even given his horrible reputation among analytic philosophers

I'm amazed at how little philosophy the ""philosophers"" that write for these magazines seem to know. I've read just two books on Hegel and the very first thing that pops out is how utterly divergent he is from the enlightenment ideal of progress through incremental problem-solving. Hegel's version of progress is Mind/Spirit resolving contradictions through a dialectical struggle, then reaching a new understanding of itself, as part of a historical process with the goal of obtaining absolute knowledge. That's not a kind of progress that Kant or Mill or the American founding fathers would recognize.

my phone auto put the umlauts...
firstly, i am interpreting the words ubermensch & untermensch in the nietzsche- en ideal, so i if am off then my bad.
anyway, i describe Bean as an untermensch because, like you said, he was not a leader. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra specifically states "I love the untermensch who built the home of the ubermensch.. etc" (something like that, i do not have the book in front of me) implying that the untermensch is the follower of the uber, even if he has a larger intellectual faculty.
furthermore, in walter Kaufman's Portrait of Nietzsche, he elaborates that the niezsche- en ubermensche is one who is completely in control of his emotions (Julius Caesar was listed as an example)

basically, i am insinuating that Bean is not an ubermensch because he is distincly not in control of his passions (which NIetzsche lists as a chief quality of the over human) and is under ender, primarily because ender

> combined humanities desire for power (Peter) and empathy (Valentine) together, and therefore represented all of us



Also, you Bean doesnt have followers because he is too ubermenschen, its because he is not in control of he passions and emotion, and has too much to weigh in.



(If i am totally off then feel free to point it out, i am but a high schooler)

feel free to point out any of my mistakes or any misinterpretations

Walter Kaufman was renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. He was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet.


Thanks

For Nietzsche, or for life in general?

I'll assume the first one. Read these in the order given:

Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Walter Kaufman.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good & Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche

I would highly recommend getting the Kaufman translations. Thus Spake Zarathustra is collected in The Portable Nietzsche and Genealogy of Morals is collected together with Ecce Homo. Once you've read the ones I've listed, you'll already have his other important books if you want to read them. I'd read the Kaufman book first for two reasons: Understanding Nietzsche life and times helps to contextualize his philosophy, and Kaufman is terrific biographer, plus Kaufman gives a thorough overview of Nietzsche's ideas. And sometime it really helps to have a map of the territory before you plunge into the abyss. Nietzsche can be very challenging, especially to the 21st century reader.

David Friedman's new, 3rd edition of The Machinery of Freedom just came out. That seems like the perfect gift to me. Not only is it the best book on anarcho-capitalism ever written... it's the new updated edition. Perfect timing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1507785607/

@ninja Definitely read Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority. It is one of the best books you will ever read. http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Political-Authority-Examination/dp/1137281650

> how a free market could actually work, how justice could be dealt in a stateless society etc.

The entire second half of the book describes a stateless society with probably 10x more clarity than you will find anywhere else.

> that address common objections like who will build the roads

I've made my little contribution to this here:

http://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/who-will-build-the-roads-part-1-the-problems-with-government-roads/
http://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/who-will-build-the-roads-part-2-how-private-roads-would-work/

Well, obviously you should give Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a thorough read.

A modern philosopher well known for his attempts at reviving virtue ethics is Alasdair MacIntyre - his seminal book on the subject is After Virtue.

Also, another philosopher, with virtue ethics in the baggage, who's more politically oriented would be Martha Nussbaum. She's noted for going on about her 'capabilities approach' for many years, and some people regard this as an equally viable political option to utilitarian/liberal minimal states or Rawlsian social democracies. The literature on the approach is rather massive, so I'd go give the SEF page on the subject a go for starters, as she also makes very compelling arguments strengthened by interdisciplinary research with experts from other fields.

Also, I highly recommend [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Political-Philosophy-Will-Kymlicka/dp/0198782748/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414771070&sr=1- 1&keywords=contemporary+political+philosophy), as it has great chapters on communitarianism and citizenship theory, which draws heavily on the Aristotelian legacy - the citizenship theory chapter being especially great, since Kymlicka there points out how difficult it turns out to be trying to cultivate civil virtues in modern societies.

EDIT: grammar.

Referring to them as "Friend 1", "Friend 2", and so on seems a bit dehumanizing/clinical, no?

I any case, I think lists of questions are great under the right circumstances -- I've made ample use of them on long road trips and hiking trips on occasion, and they've provided a springboard for plenty of 10-15 hour long conversations. I think one issue with the ones you're using is that a lot of them are really boring and don't really provide fertile ground for followup discussion. I've probably most enjoyed going through Greg Stock's books (e.g. 1, 2, 3, which you can pick up used for a few bucks each), as well as the "If..." series and books of thought experiments. Each question usually provides 5-120 minutes of conversation, with median time being, I dunno, 15ish minutes.

And I'll second recommendations on getting out and doing other things while conversing with people in person. It doesn't have to be too active -- a walk will do.

Honestly, I think the "Very Short Introduction" series by the Oxford Press is the best way to go. There are literally dozens and dozens of short, easy-to-read books that break down different concepts objectively and succinctly. The Very Short Introduction to Philosophy will probably be good for him, and then he can always jump off into others [Existentialism, Epistemology, et cetera) as he'd like. Hope this helps!

An-caps don't believe the government should run the military either (or the justice system).

If you want to get familiar with their ideal proposed system, you probably want to read something like The Machinery of Freedom which lays out how a non-state could work, including justice systems and defense.

Less extreme libertarians frequently leave the government in charge of providing public goods (problems that markets can't usually solve because you can't exclude people from the service once it's provided) and wish to keep it out of everything that isn't a public good.

I just finished reading this book.

And I'm 100 pages into this book.

The first says:

> Morality is the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason - to do what there are the best reasons for doing - while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual affected by one’s decision. Moral Philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. There is no simple definition of morality. But there is a “minimum conception” of morality - a core that any moral theory should accept. What do we know about the nature of Morality?

>1. Moral Judgments must be backed by good reasons.

>2. Morality requires the impartial consideration of each individual's interests.

The second book compares morality to art. While all art is subjective, people still practice and study art and become knowledgeable. It would be foolish to think we couldn't learn something from those who devote much time and energy to the subject. In the same way, we can learn about morality.

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!

> Not beyond philosophy of science and picking up the occasional book (Singer, Nieztche, some Eastern oriented stuff) and a decent amount of political philosophy.

Ah, OK. You should maybe consider reading Think, an introduction to philosophy by Simon Blackburn. It's a good read, but more importantly, it's short and accessible.
If you want something more focused on ethics, I suggest Blackburn again with Being Good. Also short and accessible.

> The claim that 2 + 2 = 4 seems much more concrete than the claim that 'killing is bad.'

I would agree ("2 + 2 = 4" is a priori, the other is most likely a posteriori), but I am not arguing that killing is bad, I was just demonstrating that something relatively uncontroversial, like "killing is wrong", cannot be applied in a world where ethics is just subjective.

> Can one choose to just not care about right/wrong?

Sure - what one does is separate from the discussion of theory. One could believe 2 + 2 = 60 even! :D

> instead choosing to focus on the result of such behavior and how it ultimately harms oneself.

Sounds a lot like utilitarianism :-) You should read up on ethical theory - I think you would enjoy it.

We cannot. It is impossible. That ship has sailed. We have to live with the reality that, as long as the current system lasts, morality and justice will continue to decay and decline into corruption.

The reason is simple: this world is now totally in the hands of a political system, democracy, that is optimized not for morality and justice, but for giving the people what they want. And while people may say they want morality and justice, the reality is that, with the universal reality of Original Sin, what they really mean by that is: they want everyone else to do what they themselves say, and give them what they themselves want.

The entire concept of "morality" is predicated on the paradigm that who I am and who I ought to be are different. There is a gap, and morality is what defines and bridges that gap. It means what we ought to do is not what we want to do. That it requires us to sacrifice want for ought. In our current system, such a self-sacrifice has to be voluntarily chosen. And while that may happen on a limited basis in a limited way, it will never be widespread when it doesn't have to be.

Genesis 6:5 says: "Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." That is reality. Democracy is based on the Enlightenment fiction that man is perfect and perfectable.

To make it worse, we not only live in a system where morality is impossible, we have lived in it for so long, we can no longer even use the language of morality in a coherent and rational way. And justice, being a moral virtue, is included in that.

I could offer you a reading list to elucidate my points about Russia and the negatives of imperialism within burgeoning industrialist society. Right now however, I'm actually very stretched thin. I'm on a business trip that looks like will now be extended. I'm working just under 100 hours per week now that I've inherited two more projects that were supposed to be assigned to others. It's kind of a cop-out to not further expand on my earlier statements. But since I don't perceive you as being particularly close-minded (if anything you seem appropriately honest about what you do and do not know) it might actually be beneficial to simply provide you with the data as it was presented to me, and then let you draw your own conclusions.

For starters I'd recommend reading about the history:

http://www.amazon.com/Russia-Russians-History-Geoffrey-Hosking/dp/0674011147

This book gives a very wide-angle approach to Russia, Russians, and their governments.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Forever-Until-More-Formation/dp/0691121176/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c

This book offers a bit more of an intimate perspective about perhaps the most relevant generation of Post-Soviet influence.

http://www.amazon.com/Blowback-Second-Consequences-American-Empire/dp/0805075593

This book offers some insight into America's foreign policy during the 20th century. In particular the negative impact of crafting foreign policy through an aggressive campaign of global occupation. The latter chapters talk about China and the former Soviet Union and draws many disturbing parallels with the United States defense spending habits in the last decade.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/B004HZ6XWS/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300861749&sr=1-2

This book will perhaps be the most controversial read out of the list. It deals with the very unfortunate relationship between corporatism and American politics as well as the various stages of civil rights and labor movements. There is also a great deal of additional facts about imperialism in America which expands many of the points made by Chalmers Johnson.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Means-Libertarian-Charles-Murray/dp/0767900391/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300861920&sr=1-1

There are several areas of agreement in this book between the views expressed by Chalmers Johnson and Howard Zinn. While the principles certainly come from different places, there is a well-reasoned, and thoughtful common ground. It is challenging from any perspective to completely agree or disagree with these narratives, but the contrast is most refreshing.

http://www.amazon.com/Pig-That-Wants-Eaten-Experiments/dp/0452287448/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300862132&sr=1-1

This book is basically a breath mint. The subjects being tackled in the rest of these books can often be somewhat troubling. This book will offer you short thought experiments that will prove entertaining as well as provocative. They will also help provide some lightheartedness to the mix.

> So most an-caps would agree that the societies would be run with natural rights as the rule of the land, how though does one prove that humans even have rights?

Not all an-caps derive their beliefs from natural rights, and there are different understandings of the term 'natural rights.' In any case, here are what I think are some good resources:

• [Ethical Intuitionism][1]
  
• [The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey][2]
  
• A Positive Account of Property Rights
  
  [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746
  [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-Coerce/dp/1137281650
  

Hegel's really a fan of protestantism....which will shortly become apparent to you. He's also really interested in the french revolution...so that might give you some ideas. If you have any specific questions I can probably help. I found Peter Singer's introduction to Hegel pretty helpful and concise. You can probably find a pdf floating around somewhere on the internet.

Peter Singer's arguments concerning extreme poverty convinced me to donate a portion of my income to highly effective charities a long time ago, long before I started pursuing FI. And while I view FIRE as a goal worth striving for, I view donating to charity as a moral imperative. That's my reason for continuing to donate to charity. It's just more important to me.

If you'd like to learn more, check out this TED Talk by William MacAskill.

The Phantom Tollbooth isn't philosophy but it's a great book when it comes to critical thinking and insight.

For philosophy in particular, getting a philosophy textbook is the best way to go, imo. Especially one that presents views in unbiased format. Philosophy, a very short introduction, while not perfect, presents ideas in the proposition/critique format that encourages thinkers to always be concerned with defending their ideas, not just presenting them.

Yeah. My ethics doesn't exclude eating meat now, but if lab meat becomes a thing I will absolutely support that to eliminate the ethical grey all together. By chance, have you read The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten?

If you could provide us with a bit more information about the course, it might be easier for us to make recommendations. For example, is the course you're planning on taking an intro course or an upper level course?

Regardless of the content of the course, however, I think that something like The Philosopher's Toolkit would be a great pickup. Probably much more useful than any single historical work that you might think to pick up. You can also readily find PDF versions of it online, if you know where to look.

Hey, sorry I never replied to this! Aquinas is who I read, primarily. And the philosophers in his tradition who come after him. I think he probably presents the strongest arguments, but to consider them for what they actually are, you have to have a basic understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics. You're probably not looking for this, but I would recommend these books, in this order:

The Last Superstition

Aquinas (A "Beginner's" [quotes mine; not all that beginner-ish imo] Guide)

Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction

The first one is a polemic, so beware. But it lays out a pretty decent modern cultural context for Scholastic metaphysics. That last one is especially good if you're interested in how science plays out in Thomism. The second one (and the bulk of the last one) though is kinda meaty technical stuff. But I think that series prepares you to understand the arguments of all different sorts of metaphysicians quite well.

It is a lot of work though. I won't deny that. It sort of pissed me off at first, but truth doesn't necessarily have to be easy to comprehend. Of course that's not to say that the difficulty of all this is meritorious or anything in itself.

I do. The book was Socratic Logic by Peter Kreeft. I found it valuable because it's a comprehensive treatment of informal logic as presented by Aristotle, suitable for use in an undergraduate classroom, with practice exercises for each chapter and answers in the back of the book. The idea that stands out in my mind most sharply from that book was a throwaway observation Kreeft made at one point -- that the ends do justify the means because means are useless if they have no end, but good ends do not justify evil means. I was still in the process of trying to formulate my basic stance on moral issues at the time, so that idea hit me with a force that was almost physical. (Not sure why that particular idea should stand out so much more than the others, but it does.)

I used to identify completely with the positions presented in that book, but I've found plenty to argue with in the intervening time -- particularly on the subject of the theory of mind. If you decide to read it, it's important to remember that Kreeft has organized that book as a presentation of Aristotle's works on logic, so some of its positions can be painfully simplistic in light of subsequent research. (The example I'm thinking of is an early chapter section on the properties of the mind, which takes a naïve position that the mind actually goes to the places it imagines and changes size to encompass the things it imagines. Embodiment and phenomenology offer much better solutions than that.) That said, I think it's still the most valuable book of informal logic on the market, even if it needs to be taken cum grano salis.

If you're interested in learning more about the debate surrounding free will, causal determinism, moral responsibility, etc. I recommend reading the following book:

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Views-Free-Martin-Fischer/dp/1405134860

​

It's an excellent introduction to the issues surrounding Free Will and it gives equal time and space to the various stances, and also allows the four authors to respond to each other's arguments. On a personal note, Fischer was one of my philosophy professors in college and I still consider him a mentor years later.

That's the liberal position, yes.

If you are interested in this topic and are willing to entertain a serious and secular defense of traditional marriage, the likes of which you will never be exposed to without seeking it out, here's a read:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Marriage-Man-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225

Your views on marriage have been informed by pop culture. You can do better than that.

Eh, Marx was inevitable. He took the ideas of a genius, Hegel, and the idea of the historical dialectic and inverted it.

Marx made a good observation about a way of interpreting the driving forces behind human history. He was ultimately wrong (historical materialism is too simplistic), but that idea was going to happen one way or the other.

We ought to blame Marx as much as Stalin and Mao as well as everyone else who behaved like a total fuckwad when it wasn’t necessary to behave like a total fuckwad.

I recommend everyone to listen to Peter Singer summarize Hegel

https://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer/dp/019280197X

And Marx

https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer/dp/0192854054

Edit: Lots of overlap between Peterson and Hegel btw. Though Hagel was highly critical of the Classical Liberal notion of freedom.

Edit: Fixed spelling for all anal retentives

This isn't modern, but I'd recommend this book I read for the Philosophy of International Order class I took awhile back, it covers the history of western political philosophy in a pretty objective way, for the most part. I think seeing the development of political philosophy might be more helpful than just jumping into modern times.

[book in question]
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/019929609X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1456905875&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=intro+to+political+philosophy&dpPl=1&dpID=41g5XpBgoSL&ref=plSrch)

It depends on if you want to learn about "philosophy" as in the ideas that philosophers have put down and discussed, or if you want "philosophy" as a method of working with those (or any) ideas. Personally, I've always been more interested in philosophy as a method, so if you'd like to eventually be able to have meaningful discourse on philosophical subjects, something like The Philosopher's Toolkit would be a worthwhile read.

four views on free will. good book if you're interested in free will. each author has an article arguing for their position, and another responding to the other three articles. all four authors are leading writers on free will

Four Views of Free Will is a good survey of the major positions.

But yeah, I agree with you. I've never been able to make sense of what Libertarians want (or, rather, how what they want isn't totally implausible); it seems to me also that the position demands something like magic. I know enough about philosophy to suspect that this is probably my failing, not theirs, though. Very few positions that lots of people hold are totally absurd; I'm sure there are stronger accounts of Libertarianism that I'm not familiar with. It's never been a deep interest of mine; I took a class on it as an undergraduate, came out of it thinking some flavor of compatibilism was probably right, and haven't thought too much about it since.

You're welcome! I think one of the best resources out there for these distinctions and other important preliminaries to philosophy is The Philosopher's Toolkit. Chapter 4 does a good job on many of the distinctions.

The best book for debating with statists is The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey by Michael Huemer. He recommends to ask questions and put the burden of proof on your interlocutor. Would it be fine if I taxed you for leaving on your property? Why then the IRS allowed to do so? The conversation goes like that:

• Why obey?
  
  
• Because social contract.
  
  
• How to exit?
  
  
• Leave it or love it.
  
  
• Why they can claim land?
  
  
• Because social contract. (oops. logic circuit. Somebody tries to justify the implicit application of the social contract in certain land by the contract itself)
  

There have been many threads asking the same question; you should search or you haven't searched well. Anyway, I popular recommendation in another post was Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Blackburn. I downloaded it and it's pretty lay (compared to the Kant and Nietzsche I tried to read xD), but still pretty interesting.

I think you will learn the most by reading five textbooks, such as A History of Philosophy, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; or something like Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, and An Introduction to Political Philosophy.

If what you have in mind is more of a "Great Books" program to get your feet wet with some classic works that are not too difficult, you could do a lot worse than:

• Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, often published together under the title The Trial and Death of Socrates. Socrates is so important that we lump together all Greek philosophers before him as "the Presocratics," and this cycle of dialogues is a great window on who he was and what he is famous for.
  
• The Basic Works of Aristotle. "The philosopher of common sense" is not a particularly easy read. Cicero compared his writing style to "a flowing river of gold," but all the works he prepared for publication are gone, and what we have is an unauthorised collection of lecture notes written in a terse, cramped style that admits of multiple interpretations. Even so, one can find in Aristotle a very attractive system of metaphysics and ethics which played a major role in the history of philosophy, and holds up well even today.
  
• René Descartes, Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy, not so much because modern philosophers have widely followed his particular positions (they haven't) but because he set the agenda, in a way, with his introduction of methodological scepticism.
  
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I think Elizabeth Anscombe had it right in judging Hume a "mere brilliant sophist", in that his arguments are ultimately flawed, but there is great insight to be derived from teasing out why they are wrong.
  
• If I can cheat just a little more, I will lump together three short, important treatises on ethics: Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Anscombe's paper "Modern Moral Philosophy".

https://smile.amazon.com/Life-You-Can-Save-Poverty/dp/0812981561/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473030892&sr=8-1&keywords=the+life+you+can+save

This book is about applied ethics rather than normative ethics. But its still tied to one of the most important concepts in ethics. Namely that most people think of ethics as day to day niceness, but in reality certain things they can do simply dwarf others in terms of importance. So those are the better ones to focus on.

> gishgallop me

"Bro you gave me so many alternatives to my stemlord hyperdeterminism wtf gish gallop"

Amazing take

> mutually exclusive

If you read the first 10 pages of Tse's book he literally says that Robert Kane's model of Ultimate Responsiblity and Self Forming Actions are compatible with his criterial causation model, so no, they aren't mutually exclusive, he explains a different physical method of it occurring though the primary requirements for both forms of free will are the same.

> I'll start challenging them one by one.

Or you could just... read a fucking book :)

Harris's doesn't count btw.

> Pretending that Kane's position is not ridiculous is the opposite of being serious about the conversation.

I guess if i only read one page critiques and none of Kane's responses or none of the alternative formulations and explanations done by Mele like you did this conversation, then sure, I can see that being your take.

Whatever brother, I'll let you go back to complaining about Jordan Peterson and incels, you really are doing God's work, or just work once you finish that little endeavor of yours.

Popper's ideas are of the practical kind, regarding scientific inquiry. It is not epistemology in the traditional sense. For example, would you say that your empirically based idea X is knowledge? If you say yes, how do you know that tomorrow you won't discard it for an idea that fits the criteria even better, even if today you don't think anything could possibly fit the criteria better than your current idea? Many ideas that fit the criteria are eventually discarded not because a detail or a few in them can be improved, but because they turn out to be completely false (look at the history of physics, for example). Such epistemology is practically useful, however, it says nothing about epistemic justification.

There are a lot of theories in epistemology. Read the 'epistemology' entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Find a book about epistemology, such as this

I assume it is The Damned United which the movie was based on?

You might also enjoy Walking on Water, Clough The Autobiography and I personally look forward to this, Nobody Ever Says Thank You.

> Any suggestions of other soccer related books is appreciated as well.

Would highly recommend Fever Pitch, Miracle of Castel di Sangro, Inverting the Pyramid, Brilliant Orange and Behind the Curtains.

Do you have a specific interest? Otherwise a general introduction like Think, Problems of Philosophy, or Justice are all well regarded. Though, all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are tons of accessible introductions though and depending on your interests it might be better to use one rather than another. All of those are fairly general

I just bought this book for kindle. It seems alright, I'll check out "taking sides" as well. Thanks for the help. :)

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!

I don't think classical metaphysics is that popular today in philosophy at least in analytic philosophy as far as I can tell. I think for the most part this is true because most people don't know what Aquinas said. However, that really shouldn't by itself that classical metaphysics (at least the one that Aquinas argues for) is false. You basically gotta look at the arguments for classical metaphysics written by defenders in the past and today. One good book is called "Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction" by Feser (http://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Metaphysics-Contemporary-Introduction-Scholasticae/dp/3868385444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463600373&sr=8-1&keywords=scholastic+metaphysics). Also the title is a bit misleading and should honestly be renamed Thomistic metaphyics. Not all Scholastics are Thomists and Scholastics in general have a lot of diversity in their views like Scotists, Ockamists, etc.

I finished reading the book, but I plan to go back to it relatively soon and take notes on and really digest it. Honestly I think his arguments are pretty good. He really fleshes out the details and defends many of the background stuff.

A big point about the stuff I read from the book, is that the metaphysics it is arguing for is true primarily because of the existence of change. I'm painting with a very broad brush and ignoring many important details, but basically its 1) Change exists 2) Change can only exist if potentiality and actuality are truly distinct otherwise change would not exist (insert argument by Parmenides for the non-existence of change) 3) the distinction between potentiality and actuality imply much of classical metaphysics like teleology, substance metaphysics, and some other stuff. So basically Feser is saying that classical metaphysics is necessarily true as long as change exists (and I'm not talking about the argument from motion about God).

Edit #1: Also I think most people don't know about Aquinas and other Scholastics, primarily because they just don't read their stuff. Its not that people have rejected classical metaphysics because they investigated. Its like how I have not tasted a meal from certain restaurants. I can't tell the meal is bad because I haven't tasted it. And I in a way "reject" the restaurant because I just ignore or just don't even know it exists.

I should also add that by most people I mean philosophers today.

Reddit doesn't like Amazon links with a bunch of options because it assumes they are associate links (links where the referrer get a cut of the sale). So when linking Amazon books on Reddit it best to use bare links such as:

• http://www.amazon.com/After-Virtue-Study-Moral-Theory/dp/0268035040
  
• http://www.amazon.com/dp/0268035040
  
  Both of which do the same thing because the book title in the url is ignored by Amazon. In fact you can do the following as well and it would still work:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/digifork-is-da-bomb-diggity/dp/0268035040
  
• http://www.amazon.com/the-sex-toy-bible/dp/0268035040
  
  Which means you can prank people with Amazon links pretty easily.

I have a great book that discusses formal logic in general. It covers a lot of different types of formal logic, such as syllogistic, propositional, quantificational, and modal.. It not only explains the ideas simply, but also extremely well for beginners. It's called Introduction to Logic. I found it via torrent a couple months back.

The best thing about the book, at least from a philosophy perspective, is that it covers many of the important arguments used by philosophers throughout history and how their arguments are structured while simulataneously teaching you how to do the types of logic they're using in the arguments. It's pretty cool.

I'm just a beginner but Peter Kreeft's book on Socratic Logic is very good. I've learned a lot from this introductory book. He's very effective at communicating rather complex concepts with simple language. There are also a plethora of exercises in the book at the end of every section.

https://www.amazon.com/Socratic-Logic-Questions-Aristotelian-Principles/dp/1587318083

A child's first words are adorable.
My son just told me no for the first time.
Are all first words adorable?


I'm sorry the class is ending, but that opens up room for new classes that may be equally awesome!

An item for you.

There is a book that I recently bought.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Philosophers-Toolkit-Compendium-Philosophical/dp/1405190183

It is the best resource I could find on philosophical arguments and terms for a beginner.

I started reading philosophy 2 months back and have made some progress thanks to this book. So I wanted to share and hear your views on it if anyone else has given the book a shot.

The "A Very Short Introduction" series has pretty killer philosophy entries, based on time periods and world regions.

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Short-Introduction-Edward-Craig/dp/0192854216

This is the more basic of them. 200-level instructors might use these, but I was surprised to find that they contain a lot of information that was useful even for a 400-level Aristotelian metaphysics class. Also, Sue Hamilton is a distinguished Indian philosophy expert and wrote a VSI on it which is probably better and more accessible than just about anything.

>Also, where can I read more about Natural Law?

Edward Feser is very good at explaining it. Here's a blog post to get you started: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html

And if you want to read more, I'd recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Scholastic-Metaphysics-Contemporary-Introduction-Scholasticae/dp/3868385444/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1PQZCBY62513VPV3H3SE

On Hegel in particular, I would recommend Hegel: A Very Short Introduction or the more scholarly An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History.

CGP Grey mentions the teleport thought experiment in this episode.

If you enjoy those sort of discussions I very highly recommend the pig that wants to be eaten

A fantastic collection of similar thought provoking excerpts from novels. You might recognize the title from the Hitchhiker's Guide series.

This is easily my favourite question from this sub - "surely we are all too lazy?" In fact I don't have any meaningful comeback to you. I think you're largely right at the moment thanks to general inertia of the population. It's harder going against the norm than it is to go with it.

So let's put your question aside and I want to write to you personally. For me, the path to veganism involved being an addict, being 60kgs (120lbs) overweight, being in chronic pain, being chronically depressed and anxious. I didn't become vegan specifically to stop those things (except to help me lose weight), they were just part of my partying lifestyle for 30 years. In fact, the catalyst for me was one day telling my friend that if I had any self control I would be vegan. I was explaining to her about bobby calves after she asked. I was not even a vegetarian. I realised after then that the story of my life was one in which I had no self control. I literally didn't even want to do my basic self-care (washing, eating properly) every day. I realised that my work was based around reducing suffering for poor people, but my personal life was entirely concerned about increasing suffering to myself. That really ate away at me. I realised that knowing about and agreeing with the ethical aspects of veganism but not being a vegan was just another element of not having any self-control. Once I decided to become vegan, it really helped me with the other issues I had because it's something that can keep me steady despite myself. Like an anchor - I can float away to some extent but it will always keep me from harming myself too much. I realised that veganism was actually the easiest thing to manage compared to all the other shit I had created for myself. But luckily the healthy eating aspect that I choose to follow has helped me with most of my problems. I am still working on my addictive personality, but my addictions are far less destructive now.

The other thing I want to tell you is that we all have cognitive dissonance about our lifestyles but that shouldn't stop us from making some good steps towards positive change. I mentioned above that I work to reduce suffering. I have always donated a substantial amount of money to charity and am a researcher working specifically to improve poverty around the world. I'm also a gamer btw. Noone in their right mind would ever call me a monk. As I mentioned I have lived this lifestyle for a lot longer before I became vegan. So you don't have to be an extremist in order to live a decent life.

The way I see it is that I am always going to make some bad choices but the main elements of my life are anchors that mean that when I do have trouble with decisions, I know I'm not far off where I need to be. This has been helpful for me for a long time.

If you want to figure out how to walk a more ethical path when making decisions about charity, I really recommend reading The Life You Can Save. If you want to just shoot the breeze with me about poor life choices, feel free to PM me.

This is the book "Brilliant Orange" I was referring to. For anyone with an interest in Dutch football, I'd suggest giving it a read. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brilliant-Orange-Neurotic-Genius-Football/dp/0747553106

Feser is great. Chapter 0 of his Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction also does a great job of refuting New Atheism.

/u/ksan recently wrote a good piece that lists a number of introductory texts for Hegel here. I'm currently in the middle of reading Beiser's Hegel and it's very manageable. If you want something lighter, I'd recommend starting with this first but it is a very short introduction. Whilst it's a hundred pages or so you'll be left feeling like you just read an abstract. You should be able to find a copy of both texts online in PDF form without any trouble.

At the very least, you'll probably want to get a grasp of what the structure of Phenomenology PoR is and what Hegel is trying to convey before Marx's Contribution will make any sense.

While some of OP's responses make me question that this is being asked in good faith, I will nonetheless try to answer.

First, one needs to consider the fact that there is literally a book on non-religious reasons why Gay marriage is bad policy. This is a pdf of the article that the book was later spun into with more arguments and sources. It is only 43 pages long and easy to understand.

Ultimately, it comes down to a couple of things: if you think there is value in humans procreating, then marriage policy should encourage biological sex (reproduction) in any shape or form to the exclusion of other relationships, otherwise, there is no added incentive to have children.

Similarly, you need to think of people as having natural ends, limited as they may be. Biologically, humans tend towards survival, reproduction, and expansion. If you do not think humans are supposed to, by our nature (because you deny that humans have a particular nature, which many people do and have done) do anything of the aforementioned, then this argument will ring hollow to you. You might say, is a computer natural? I would say yes, any tool is a natural expansion of our desire to survive and expand. Computers included.

Therefore, you might see then that while a liberal approach (classically speaking) might want to leave gay people alone to enjoy their rights to self determine, the same people might not want to extend incentives designed to reward a stable family unit to a relationship that will neither result in children, nor can.

From the article above:

> A thought experiment might crystallize the central argument. Almost every culture in every time and place has had some institution that resembles what we know as marriage. But imagine that human beings reproduced asexually and that human offspring were self‐sufficient. In that case, would any culture have developed an institution anything like what we know as marriage? It seems clear that the answer is no....The essential features of marriage would be missing; there would be no human need that only marriage could fill....Because marriage uniquely meets essential needs in such a structured way, it should be regulated for the common good, which can be understood apart from specifically religious arguments. And the needs of those who cannot prudently or do not marry (even due to naturally occurring factors), and whose relationships are thus justifiably regarded as different in kind, can be met in other ways.

You can take it or leave it, but it is rather meaningless now that gay marriage is the law of the US.

Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction will certainly cover it, but from a definitely Thomistic point of view. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy, and don't know much about the argument, save I'll probably agree with Aquinas because he's larger and easier to hide behind.

Have you read Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue? It is a great book. In the opening chapter he points out that the classic moral/ethical debates (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, pacifism, animal rights, etc.) are all marked by the inability to step out of one pre-determined system of argumentation. People simply argue past one another. Your comment here about 'human goods' vs. 'penis in vagina' is getting at Alasdair's point. When we have these (optimistically named) conversations, we simply entrench ourselves within the system we affectively choose to be in. "If only these would see that (insert assumed premise), then they would understand." This whole thread is a great example of this dilemma. The premises we assume are usually not even assumed consciously and they end up destroying our ability to have a conversation. Natural law or virtue ethics? 'Penis in vagina' or fidelity?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brilliant-Orange-Neurotic-Genius-Football/dp/0747553106

Brilliant Orange by the famous Dutch team of the 70s. Haven't read it but it's really popular among the football community. I know I'll read it first chance I get.

A recent work by David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God is well worth reading (it is more philosophical than its title lets on).

Ed Feser's The Last Superstition is good and I would also recommend his Scholastic Metaphysics.

Hey me too :) But Biochem. Which UC (if you don't mind my asking)?

Let's see, what to read... How about this? Or personally I recommend The Mind's I by Dennet and Hofstadter or Godel, Escher and Bach by Hofstadter. They are really good philosophy/science/intelligence books, and are largely well-formed and thoughtful arguments on various philosophical questions.

Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football and Those Feet: A Sensual History of English Football by David Winner were both very well-written and enjoyable reads.

I personally didn't care very much for Franklin Foer's How Football Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, just found it to be a bit glib in its characterization of the game in different parts of the world, and somewhat reductive in its treatment of specific clubs and their supporters.

Also, I haven't read Soccernomics myself, but have heard/read many rave reviews so that's probably a good bet as many ITT have already mentioned it.

You should check out a book by Peter Singer called The Life You Can Save. He goes into some detail addressing your point that "You can be an ethical person by simply doing things that aren't unethical."

For example, say you were walking in a park next to a lake. You see a young child drowning in the lake and you are the only one who can do anything about it. Do you have a positive obligation to save that child? By your logic, as long as you did not actively push the child into the lake, you are in the clear morally. But I think in a direct example like this, you would agree that you do in fact have a positive obligation to help.

That is the moral obligation to give to charity, but because the starving child is not in front of us we don't feel like we are on the hook.

Get a basic background in logic and statistics and their respective fallacies. This will give you the knowledge and tools you need to think critically of 99% of what you find in news media and websites. A good introduction to logic is Harry Gensler's Introduction to Logic textbook. A good guide to statistical fallacies and how to spot them is [The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb] (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable-ebook/dp/B00139XTG4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421288487&sr=1-1&keywords=the+black+swan+taleb).

The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau. Note it's a two volume edition in which one book is the theory with exercises and the other is an anthology of excerpts from ethical texts. https://www.amazon.ca/Fundamentals-Ethics-Russ-Shafer-Landau/dp/0199997233

Hands down best intro to ethics I ever had.

You should check out Edward Feser's books. He's a philosopher who specializes in Thomism and he has written several books about Thomist philosophy. His book Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide is a pretty clear introduction to Thomas Aquinas' work. If you're interested in the metaphysical aspects specifically, check out his book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction.

A brilliant buddy of mine loves this book: https://www.amazon.com/Socratic-Logic-Questions-Aristotelian-Principles/dp/1587318083