(Part 2) Best products from r/philosophy

> So is Kierkegaard is arguing that humans ought to will the good without these motivations? For instance is he saying that it would be better for a human to will the good without the anticipation of reward or fear of punishment etc.

No, the discourse is arguing that humans ought to will the good in such a way that our motives are subjected to and transformed by (rather than simply eliminated for the sake of) the good.

Thus, under (1), 2nd paragraph: “It is not that she cannot will or be motivated by] both [the good and temporal rewards]…”

> I always found it strange when people would say "if you're only doing good for a reward, then you're not really a good person."

Why is this strange? If a person is doing good in part for an external reward but primarily because it is good, or (even better) because doing the good is itself understood to be (at least partly) intrinsically constitutive of the reward, that seems unobjectionable. But if a person is doing good only for a reward, then wouldn’t his or her moral status depend on i) the kind of reward and ii) its relation to the good?

> Isn't all good ordered towards some kind of reward?

Yes, according to Kierkegaard the good is itself intrinsically related to eternal reward. It is, however, only extrinsically related to certain temporal rewards, and in many cases doing the good actually jeopardizes our opportunity to achieve them. For instance, if the reward I seek is prestige, I am dependent on those who can confer it: I am at the mercy of their values, and of their perception of my living up to those values. But if there is any actual or even perceived conflict between willing the good and abiding by their values, I cannot both do the good and seek prestige.

> If I give a homeless person food it's because I think a state of hunger is bad, and I would like to live in a society where such a state doesn't exist. Through generosity I am trying to eliminate something non-ideal from my surroundings, so is this just selfishness on my part?

Well, do you wish to live in such a state because such a state is actually bad, or do you consider it bad because you personally do not wish to live in such a state? For Kierkegaard, a person might have either good or bad motives for eliminating “something non-ideal,” so it depends on whether your generosity has as its primary motive a telos that is intrinsically related to the good itself. If you actually care about the hungry, perhaps because you view them each as having intrinsic value so that caring for them is intrinsically related to the good, then perhaps you may find yourself agreeing to Kierkegaard’s suggestion and prepare a banquet for these beautiful neighbors. But if you’re just trying to impress your date because you know he or she works at a homeless shelter, and you see nothing intrinsically good about loving your neighbor as yourself, in that case Cisco—I mean the discourse—has a couple of choice words for you.

Oh dear or dear /u/GaslightProphet - wrong again eh?

Note: I am against ALL genital mutilation of females, males and intersex. Please don't interpret this post as supporting any of these activities.

Everything I have posted below is factual; but it's supposed to be educational - to help folks clear up their confused thinking around this issue. Thanks

Genital Autonomy for all - Intersex, Male & Female

If the amputation of the mucus membranes of the male genitals results in a lowering of HIV infection; then it would not be unreasonable to assume that the amputation of the mucus membranes of the female genitals would produce the same effect. Indeed, as the total surface area of mucus membranes in females is so much greater than that of males, the effect may be even greater.

However, most western peoples will be repulsed by the idea of amputating parts of an infant female's genitals to obtain some future protection from a disease. All the more so, when nearly 100% protection can be obtain from HIV infection by use of condoms.

But this repulsion does not arise when the prospect of amputating parts of infant male genitals. This is clearly because such activity has become "normalised" in the west. This is the issue.

Like male circumcision, there are plenty of peer reviewed studies that show female circumcision is not a barrier to sexual orgasm and enjoyment. Some studies show that orgasm and enjoyment are reduced; and some show no effect.

You'll often come across members of the medical community saying that FGM has no "health" benefits, and if women have their clitoris amputated, then their sex life comes to an end. Then they say that MGM has lots of "health" benefits and that men's sex life is not affected.

But it's a myth that many women who have suffered FGM are unhappy and cannot have great sex lives. That's why they queue up to have their daughters' circumcised. Plus there are many so-called potential "health benefits" - such as a 50% reduction in HIV/AIDS.

The visible part - the glans clitoris - is only a small part of the whole clitoris. So when a woman suffers partial or total amputation of the external clitoris when undergoing FGM, only a small part of her clitoris is removed. Thus she often can enjoy a full and satisfying sex life.

The truth about the female clitoris

Learn how large the female clitoris is; and how the external glans clitoris is just a small part of it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/cliteracy_n_3823983.html
http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/sexuality/a/clitoraltruthin.htm

http://www.amazon.com/The-Clitoral-Truth-Secret-Fingertips/dp/1583224734

"Seven Things to Know about female Genital Surgeries in Africa"

— By the public policy advisory network on female genital surgeries in Africa.

"Western media coverage of female genital modifications in Africa has been hyperbolic and one- sided, presenting them uniformly as mutilation and ignoring the cultural complexities that underlie these practices. Even if we ultimately decide that female genital modifications should be abandoned, the debate around them should be grounded in a better account of the facts."

http://www.taskforcefgm.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/hast81.pdf

Female Circumcision & Health Benefits

"Stallings et al. (2005) reported that, in Tanzanian women,
the risk of HIV among women who had undergone FGC
was roughly half that of women who had not; the association
remained significant after adjusting for region, household
wealth, age, lifetime partners, union status, and recent ulcer."

Note: when it's found that circumcising female genitals reduces HIV/AIDS it's called a "conundrum" rather that a wonderfully exciting "medical" opportunity to reduces HIV/AIDS.

http://www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=11&abstractId=2177677

"Georgia State University, Public Health Theses" — a USA University of international renown:

The Association between Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the Risk of HIV/AIDS in Kenyan Girls and Women (15-49 Years):

"RESULTS: This study shows an inverse association (OR=0.508; 95% CI: 0.376-0.687) between FGM and HIV/AIDS, after adjusting for confounding variables."

"DISCUSSION: The inverse association between FGM and HIV/AIDS established in this study suggests a possible protective effect of female circumcision against HIV/AIDS. This finding suggests therefore the need to authenticate this inverse association in different populations and also to determine the mechanisms for the observed association."

"This study investigated whether there is a direct association between FGM and HIV/AIDS. Surprisingly, the results indicated that the practice of FGM turned out to reduce the risk of HIV. While a positive association was hypothesized, a surprising inverse association between cases of female circumcision and positive HIV serostatus was obtained, hence indicating that FGM may have protective properties against the transmission of HIV."

http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1113&context=iph_theses

"National Bureau of Statistics, Tanzania - 50% reduction in HIV/AIDS in women who have have parts of the genitals amputated:"

http://www.tzonline.org/pdf/femalecircumcisionandhivinfectionintanzania.pdf

Female Circumcision Does Not Always Reduce Sexual Experiences

"International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Female genital cutting in this group of women did not attenuate sexual feelings:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2002.01550.x/abstract

"The Journal of Sexual Medicine" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Pleasure and orgasm in women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17970975

"The New Scientist" (references a medical journal)

Female Circumcision Does Not Reduce Sexual Activity:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2837-female-circumcision-does-not-reduce-sexual-activity.html#.Uml2H2RDtOQ

"Journal of General Internal Medicine" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Female "Circumcision" - African Women Confront American Medicine

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497147/

Medical benefits of female circumcision: Dr. Haamid al-Ghawaabi

http://islamqa.info/en/ref/45528

"Pediatrics (AAP)" — a peer reviewed journal of international renown:

Genital Cutting Advocated By American Academy Of Pediatrics

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/102/1/153.short

Genital Autonomy for all - Intersex, Male & Female

>I feel like we've been approaching God incorrectly the whole time.

Humanity has mapped out a hell of a lot of territory on the God issue, from a priori arguments to a posteriori arguments, arguments from mystical experience, pragmatic arguments, appeals to faith. Are you familiar with this body of literature? If so, where is there to go from here? At this point in our cultural evolution, I find it difficult to come up with anything worth saying that hasn't already been said.

>(I come from a Christian background, and I have had to dissent with everyone who taught me the things that I know).

That must have been difficult. A lot of people go through a similar experience. I was raised in a non-religious household - it's not that my parents were atheists - the subject just never really came up. So I never got religious, but I found the subject interesting so I've done a fair bit of studying on comparative religion and arguments for and against God. If you want to look at a very readable case for atheism, Dawkins' book The God Delusion is about as good a starting place as any. Though if the idea of atheism is depressing to you, you might give it a miss. The world doesn't need more depressed people. =) I think there is wisdom in Robert Anton Wilson's quip that in order to do good, you have to feel good."

>I don't know, because I don't necessarily believe that God does exist, just that he could.

So would it be fair to call you an agnostic? I was agnostic for years.

>It is in this regard different than science, where I fully trust those who came before me, because they accepted that they could have been wrong.

I wonder if you're putting too much trust in science. Scientific conclusions get overturned all the time - that's part of what makes science awesome. To use an evolutionary analogy, science is like natural selection, forever weeding out ideas that don't live up to the evidence, whereas religion is like genetic drift, floating along unable to improve itself because it is unwilling to admit that it might have been wrong.

I think Dylanhelloglue has given you a good start, and I would second the recommendation that you get yourself a copy of Pinkard's translation, if not to read it in place of the Miller then to cross-reference particularly difficult passages.

When Hegel talks about the Absolute, he is talking about, well, everything. The Absolute is something like the universe construed as a whole in its most metaphysically real sense. You could think of the Absolute in Hegel on analogy with substance in Spinoza--the Absolute is the unified metaphysical reality underlying the appearance of difference and distinction. So whereas from our finite point of view thought and being (or subject and object) look distinct, from the point of view of the Absolute thought and being are identical. The sense in which thought and being are identical in the Absolute for Hegel is a bit weird--he doesn't think of identity as the inert equivalence of A=B. Rather, identity in the relevant sense is a property of processes, so that two things are identical if they can be shown to be "moments" or elements of a larger process from which they cannot be abstracted and upon which they depend. The Absolute is something like the largest possible process in which everything else is a dependent moment. Hegel talks about it as a 'self-moving whole.'

Spirit is basically self-consciousness or self-knowledge writ large--something like the collective self-understanding of a historically-situated people. The shape that Spirit takes is the beliefs and way of life of that people, that people's cultural and religious practices, etc. So Hegel thought of democratic Athens as one shape of Spirit incorporating Athenian religious, political, cultural, and philosophical ideas and practices. Basically, a shape of Spirit is what makes a given people or historical epoch distinctive. Democractic Athens was distinctive because it was a shape of Spirit. Western Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries (i.e., the Enlightenment) was a shape of Spirit. Spirit is a kind of self-understanding or self-interpretation--a way of picturing what you are, what you know, and what you do--but it is a supra-individual form of self-understanding. No one person living in democratic Athens was the arbiter of the shape of Spirit represented by democratic Athens--the shape of Spirit represented by democratic Athens was a product of the collective thoughts and deeds of Athenians.

Notion is a bit complicated. The German is Begriff, which is more commonly translated as "concept"--Miller uses Notion to try to draw attention to the fact that what Hegel means by "concept" is not what people usually think of when they think of a concept. For Hegel, a concept in the sense of Begriff is not something in human minds by virtue of which humans sort the objects of their experience into different categories. (Picture it like this: you have a whole bunch of sense data, and you sort that sense data by labeling sense datum A "table" by subsuming that sense datum under your concept of tableness, labeling sense datum B "chair" by subsuming B under your concept of chairness, etc. This is not Hegel's picture at all. Hegel calls concepts in this sense Vorstellungen, which Miller translates as "picture-thoughts.") For Hegel, the concept is something like the essence of a thing, and the more a thing corresponds to its essence the more it becomes "actual" [wirklich] in Hegel's technical sense. Hegel is inspired in a lot of this by Aristotle, so it would probably help to have some familiarity with Aristotle's Metaphysics. This might help. In short, the concept is that by virtue of which a thing is what it is, and the more a thing corresponds to its concept the more it really is, or is actual. So when he talks about the Phenomenology as describing the development of the "concept" of knowledge, he means that the Phenomenology is going to reveal what knowledge truly is, what it means for knowledge to be actual knowledge.

Hope that helps. I'd also add that you should try to pick up a commentary on the Phenomenology to read along with the text itself. The Phenomenology is super, super difficult, so you should take all the help you can get. My two favorite books on the Phenomenology are Michael Forster's Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit and Hyppolite's Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. The Forster is an extremely helpful introduction to and broad overview of the aims and concerns of the Phenomenology. (Forster identifies 11 distinct 'tasks' that the Phenomenology tries to accomplish, which he then divides into metaphysical, epistemological, and pedagogical tasks; his book then traces how the Phenomenology goes about accomplishing these tasks.) Forster offers some commentary on specific chapters, but for the most part his book is focused on the whole rather than paying detailed attention to the parts. The Hyppolite is a straight-up chapter-by-chapter commentary. Fred Beiser also has a commentary worth looking at, and I've heard good things about the commentary by Kalkavage.

Apologies for getting carried away with the length of this. (*edited to correct some typos.)

Hi, I have a degree in Philosophy and teach Philosophy/English to high schooler. The following advice and recommendations are what I give my students who are interested in philosophy. I would not recommend Kant as an introduction (not that he's bad, but he is difficult to understand). Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a book that explains philosophical topics and questions through humor and uses jokes to illustrate the concepts. It is accessible and thought provoking. If you are interested in logic you might enjoy Logicomix. It is a graphic novel that gives a biographical narrative of Bertrand Russell, an English philosopher whose work is the basis of all modern logic. It is not a book about logic per se, but it does give a good introduction to what logic is and how it can be used. Also, Russell's book A History of Western Philosophy is a good place to start your education in philosophy. If you are interested in atheism, read Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. This book goes through the most common arguments for the existence of God, and debunks them using logic and reasoning. Good luck and read on!

Yes. Trust me when I say that you'll need second literature if you are willing to understand one line of, for instance, the Critique of Pure Reason. There are good introductory books on Kant out there that can help you.

If you know almost nothing about his philosophy, I recommend Scruton's or Wood's books that approach his whole philosophy without any details, making it accessible. A good start. At the same time you could give the Prefaces A and B, and the Introduction of the first Critique a try.

For what I call "intermediary literature", there is Gardner's "GuideBook", and having "A Kant Dictionary" by your side would help a lot.

Some might recommend Allison's defense of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, I think it is great, started to read it some weeks ago, but as well as Strawson's The Bounds of Sense or Heidegger's Kant and the Problems of Metaphysics, it is way advanced.

The most important thing is that you (or any other who is reading this and is also interested in Kant) are motivated, that you don't quit when read at the first time and understand barely nothing. With effort and persistence it gets better.

p.s.: I do not intend to advertise for Amazon, you can read the synopses and reviews and buy somewhere else.

It's hard to say, but this is probably your best bet:

http://www.amazon.com/Source-Book-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/0691019649

The guy is somewhat of a God in China, as he translated all of these texts into English himself. If nothing else, that is a major achievement, as it gives you a clean interpretation of the major Chinese writers where the translation of key terms remains the same.

That being said, his footnotes don't really fill you in on how to really understand the texts - they're helpful, but you might need other companion books. To get a full understanding, you'll certainly need to read other texts. But, having all major Chinese works in one place, all translated by the same author, AND for the translations to be pretty decent, makes it a must-by for someone serious about Chinese philosophy.


Might be able to torrent it too - I dono.

EDIT: companion texts that are good: A short history of Chinese philosophy (Feng You Lan), or A history of Asian thought (probably a bad title), by Bernard Schwartz (google the author to find it). Both good, i really like Schwartz, but Feng You Lan's is more introductory.

>For those interested in Seneca anybody ever, I can highly recommend this superb collection. Reading him played a major part in sparking my interest in philosophy.

FTFY

For those interested in Seneca, I can highly recommend this superb collection. Reading him played a major part in sparking my interest in philosophy.

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!

Social and Political Philosophy. Is the best place to start in my opinion. A lot of good excerpts that would give you a good understanding of where the major thinkers stand of various political and social issues. You can go on from there once you've decided what thinker interests you the most.

Also, take a look at:

Political Thinking by Glenn Tinder

Matt Lawrence's Like a Splinter in Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind the Matrix Trilogy - This is a MIND-BLOWING book!

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.

I loved to read Plato and a Platypus... to review my knowledge of philosophy learned from high school. It explains several philosophical branches through jokes, so it serves as a great introduction and as an amusing read!

Edit: Formatting, grammar.

I also enjoyed The Passion Of The Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. Personally, I think that Tarnas did of better job than Russel at giving context to the philosophical frameworks that these guys were working within, but that's just my opinion (I've read both books). Russell comes across like a professor giving you his specific interpretation - hence the bias slant - where as Tanas seems able to give you a little more perspective - not that I'm attempting to claim that he is completely without bias, himself.

You might also what to look into Sophie's World.

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger may be a good one for your purposes. There is a talk by him on the basic ideas here.

Though he would probably not describe it this way, I think his view has a lot of similarity with buddhist psychology. One way of thinking about meditation is as a technique for learning to be more aware of the medium of your experience, making it less 'transparent' (in Metzinger's sense) and therefore reducing the illusion of selfhood. But just loosing the illusion isn't enough to be happy. You have to develop compassion as well.

The Philosophy Book is great fun for getting your feet wet with both the history and ideas of philosophy. It keeps the topics exciting and informative.

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!

A book I love that describes a secular, reason-based method for generating meaning: The Atheist's Way by Eric Maisel. It's also a highly existentialist book so it might be a good fit.

http://www.amazon.com/Atheists-Way-Living-Well-Without/dp/1577316428

Honestly... I quite enjoyed DK publishing's 'The Philosophy Book'.

It's a broad overview primer on philosophy as it evolves... and while it doesn't really get deep on philosophy in general, it does do a good job of introducing you to a broad range of ideas and allows you an understanding of how philosophy in general has evolved across the centuries.

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explained/dp/0756668611

And from there, when you read the books from the philosophers introduced by 'The Philosophy Book', you'll get a much better sense of the context of their works.

Yeah, it involves a lot of trail and error. At first the network's output is just random noise. But every time the network gives a wrong output, you nudge the connection weights a little (or get a computer algorithm to do it since it's a tedious process). You keep doing this until the network is performing really well on the training set. Then you start giving it inputs from outside the training set and see how it performs.

The trained network's behavior might be describable in terms of a set of instructions, but it has no programming language, so it's mechanisms are not in the form of instructions, they way the mechanisms of a serial computer are.

The best resource I know for understanding neural networks and their application to philosophy is Paul Churchland's The Engine of Reason. This is one of my all-time favorite books.

I think S. Blackburn's Think is an excellent introduction to some of the major areas in philosophy. You might also what to look at some of the philosophical books in the "Very Short Introduction" series, for example the Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Philosophy of Science and Free Will ones, which as you can guess are good places to start.

A book I quite enjoyed as an introduction to the great philosophers was The Philosophy Book, which not only gave clear descriptions of each of the philosophers' views, but also often gave a clear flowchart summary of their arguments.

The Philosopher's Toolkit and The Story of Philosophy both seem like great places to start.

Sophie's World is a good recommendation. If you don't want fiction, I'd suggest (and have in other, similar threads) Simon Blackburn's Think as a good, high-level overview of Philosophy. I'd also pick up a text specifically about logic and/or critical thinking that covers basic argument structure and the common fallacies (perhaps The Philosopher's Toolkit ). After reading those, you should have a grasp on both how philosophers do their thing as well as an overview of the various topics in philosophy. From there, you can start reading more about the areas that particularly interest you.

Oriental is usually considered derogatory. Eastern philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Asian philosophy... This is the book I had in college, that I still think is pretty good. http://www.amazon.com/Source-Book-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/0691019649/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416496265&sr=8-3&keywords=Chinese+philosophy

Throw in Sophie's World, arguably the best education fiction philosophy book for an intro. Essentially reads as a History of Philosophy 101 textbook framed in a narrative that has it's own philosophical twist and turns, which helps drive home the material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_World
http://www.amazon.com/Sophies-World-History-Philosophy-Classics/dp/0374530718

Just keep in mind that books have been written about the philosophy in the Matrix trilogy, so we've either got to steer clear of that one or go into especially methodical and comprehensive detail.

For that age group, the hive mind usually recommends Gaarder's Sophie's World. I prefer Scruton's An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy.

If you're interested in Consciousness read Thomas Metzinger's new book The Ego Tunnel. You can thank me later.

I actually found Hughes & Cresswell's A New Introduction to Modal Logic to be a great text.

Reading Kant on your own would be difficult, especially without a concrete understanding of the philosophers who preceded him. My advice would be to start with shorter texts of his - such as his essays "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" and "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" - in order to get a feel for his style, and also to read and listen to introductions from experts:

• Geoffrey Warnock on Kant [1][2][3][4][5]
  
  
• Kant: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton
  
  
• Hegel on Kant
  
  
• Michael Sandel of Harvard: Introductory lecture on Kantian Ethics
  
  
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Kant
  
  With that being said, I would start with "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals" if you're interested in Ethics and "Prolegomena" if you're interested in Epistemology.

My favorite has been Wing-Tsit Chan's Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy

The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger is supposed to be good.

Just read Seneca Epistles 1 and Episltes 2.

These two include pretty much everything you'll find in Letters from a Stoic, which is one of the best books.

I highly recommend the letters on the Shortness of Life, On the Torment of Death, and On Rest and Restlessness.

You can pretty much ignore ignore anything he has to say about factual aspects of the universe, since by that time the Ionian scientific revolution had already started to fade, so there isn't much of value there, although Seneca tends to take a refreshing humility to the limits of knowledge, although occasionally he over steps the boundaries of what is reasonable to claim to know (specifically about the nature of "Nature").

Like this?

Here

They've gone through the effort of showing why it's worth paying attention to. It's on you to read it.

I would reccomend http://www.amazon.com/Plato-Platypus-Walk-into-Understanding/dp/081091493X. Not critical thinking per say, but it'll get one to think critically.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar

https://smile.amazon.com/Pig-That-Wants-Eaten-Experiments/dp/0452287448

http://www.amazon.com/Sophies-World-History-Philosophy-Classics/dp/0374530718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1250137948&sr=8-1

Seneca's Letters From a Stoic.