Recommended Philosophical Reading

[ydoaPs]

I meant the awful "science at the bar" - rather than the terrible "the demise..."

 

You not concluding with Ruse's final rebuttal (only a few pages long - but cannot find it now)? Seems to be the natural conclusion. Presume you have a copy of Barry Gross' Philosophers at the Bar - I downloaded a hooky copy when you first posted the Ruse article - but it seems to have been removed

I didn't know Ruse had a final rebuttal. I just started with Demise, gave the criteria set forth by Ruse, and then completely destroyed Science at the Bar with a vengeance.

[imatfaal]

I had

 

LL The Demise...

The Case

MR Creation Science is not Science

LL Science at the Bar

MR Pro Judice

 

The final response from Ruse is published the next pages in the same journal as Science at the Bar. By the way noted this when checking I wasnt going mad.

 

 

 

Do you know if it ever got published?

 

 

[ydoaPs]

The final response from Ruse is published the next pages in the same journal as Science at the Bar.

I got Demise and Science at the Bar from Laudan's book. Ruse's reply was not included.

[Arjun Deepak Shriram]

Cosmologist Brian Greene states and then explains in the March 2013 issue of New Scientist magazine that "What makes us so sure that mathematics can provide answers to some of the deepest workings of nature."

 

East (Classical Buddhism) meets West (Quantum Physics) in the following three books:

 

1. The Mind and the Brain (Schwartz, Jeffrey M.; Begley, Sharon)

2. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (Doidge, Norman)

3. The Plastic Mind (Begley, Sharon)

 

Hitachi research labs: Ibid.,

p. 7.

"God does not play dice":

Einstein's exact words,

in a letter to Cornel

Lanczos on March 21,

1942, But that he

would choose to play

dice with the world...is

something I cannot be-

lieve for a single mo-

ment."

1. John Bell

2. Stapp, H.

3. Everett. H., Iii.

4. Pagels, H.

5. Wigner

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

100.

1000.

 

If the atoms never swerve

so as to originate some

new movement that will

snap the bonds of fate, the

everlasting sequence of cause and effect-what is

the source of the free will

possessed by living things

throughout the earth?

-Lucretius, On the Nature

of the Universe, Book 2

 

French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

res cogitans

res ex-tensa

 

"Restraint everywhere"

Dhammapa, Verse

361.

[Tor_Hershman]

Moi recommends "My Life As A Small Boy" by Wally Cox.

 

 

[Iamwhat?]

My own. That is the point of philosophy.

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Secret of the ages, by Manly Hall.

[Willie71]

Sam Harris, The Moral Landscap, also The end of Faith and Free Will. Not purely philospohical, but there is enough discussion of philosophy that they fit.

[chindiggy666]

Here's a site with determinism books and some other interesting content http://vipertoxicity666.wix.com/determinism-zone

[EdEarl]

For those who get into online battles and feel they should not, a thread in http://secularbuddhism.org/forum/ may help. It starts with the following post:

 

I find myself getting caught up in these endless angry debates online in regards to injustices in the world etc. Its usually very political and binary. I dont have any other voice in the world apart from having my two cents worth online and so i feel quite powerless. I like to believe that somehow it might make a difference but ultimately Im doubtful that I can ever persuade a staunch right wing christian that their anti gay rhetoric is wrong and harmful. The compulsion I feel is so strong that I end up spending hours and hours arguing with people. Its like an addiction. I feel confused about this and think it may be very unskillful and causing myself suffering. How could I try to see this through a buddhist perspective and let go more?

And, several replies tell personal stories of how they quit and work towards quitting.

[Velocity_Boy]

A Treatise of Human Nature, by David Hume, is the work of his I'm most familiar with. My senior year thesis in college was actually about this book, and how it can lend some persective to early problems in quantum mechanics. (If you can believe that.) I didn't find it dry at all, personally, but by that time I was used to reading some far more dry philosophy. If you want to know where science comes from, I recommend The New Organon, by Francis Bacon. Or A Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes, if you don't mind obnoxious Frenchmen.Other philosophers that might be of particular interest to the scientist or science enthusiast are Leibniz (probably better known as the simultaneous inventor of calculus with Isaac Newton) and Spinoza (of the frequently invoked by Einstein). But honestly, they might be more of the "don't try this at home" variety for curious laymen.Guys like Kant, Hegel, Nietsche, etc. are going to be more important to philosophy generally, but I don't know they could really be approached without a background in all the earlier philosophers they are responding to.

 

Hey Sis!

 

Well I'm compelled to comment on your excellent list for a couple reasons. One, the ironic one, is that I was going to offer a philosophy book for this thread that actually had your username in its title...Yes, that one! The Myth of Sisyphus by the great Albert Camus.

 

Also, you mentioned my favorite philosopher, well, along with Socrates, that is, and he is Baruch Spinoza. Who has been called by many The Father of Pantheism. I consider myself of that same belief. And you're correct about Einstein. Christians and other Theists often like to throw some of Einstein's God quotes at atheists as proof that this great mind of science was a Theist. Well, you and I and anyone who is familiar with Einstein's works knows that is totally wrong. Einstein WAS a Pantheist, at least, he subscribed to many tenets of that ideology. His God...Is we can even call it that...Was Nature. The Universe. The exquisite appearance of Intelligent Design, that really is just the Laws of Nature and Physics and Cosmology doing their stuff.

 

I also agree that one should first get familiar with the Classic Greeks like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, before delving into the rationalists and the empiricists that came along later...Like Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, and those fellows you mentioned. The Greeks with their emphasis on Ethics will set a good base, or cornerstone for the newcomer to philosophy to build upon.

 

I mainly dig Socrates for his sheer chutzpah. LOL.

[The 321 Anomaly]

Some rather intriguing/thought-provoking philosophic texts with which I am familiar (and which I recommend) include the following: "The Will To Power" and "Beyond Good & Evil" (both by Friedrich Nietzsche), "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius, "The Discourses" (and "The Prince") by Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Perennial Philosophy", "The Doors of Perception", and "Heaven & Hell" (all three by Aldous Huxley), and "On The Soul" by Aristotle.

[detricky]

Definetely not recommend for a newcomer to philosophical works but Ray Brassier "Nihil Unbound - Enlightenment and Extinction" was pretty interesting although he is a bit too verbose for my liking. He has a couple of different lectures on Youtube too. 

[Itoero]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_philosophical_concepts

[Dissily Mordentroge]

Putting aside for now the fact ‘philosophical reading’ has yet to be defined here  - - 

Arthur Koestler’s ‘The Ghost in The Machine’ whose central thesis, as far as I know, has yet to be disproven.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2020 by Dissily Mordentroge

[MSC]

Anyone got any good recommendations for Philosophy of Music?

My current reading is Margaret Urban Walkers - Moral Context.  (Not the same field as philosophy of music but I want to branch out after this to something different.)

Edited October 6, 2020 by MSC
Additional

[Faxi]

I recommend "The Network of Time" that discusses the concept of time but touches many philosophical and metaphysical issues.    

[Dis n Dat]

The instrument of science

[rufus mosley]

Some books I've read recently (in the past two years.) This is all over my head! Well, not all all. I don't know if all of this could be pigeonholed as "philosphy." it's philosophy in the old sense of Natural Philosophy, Natural History and Natural Theology. I think this is what were the names of the earlier sciences.

Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy - Russell

Principia Mathematica - Russell & Whitehead (but I'm only through the introduction and the part of the Theory of Deduction)

Introduction to Arithmetic - Nicomachus

Genetics and the Origin of Species - Dobzhansky

Principles of Human Knowledge - Berkeley

Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume

Essay Concerning Human Understanding - Locke

Physics and Philosophy - Heisenberg

Geometry - Descartes

Some of these I've read multiple times but hardly understand a thing. I've read the entire set of the GBWW, but don't quiz me on it! I think I'll get a very poor grade. Conversation might help put my thoughts together. I am an expert at crackpot theories, though! Is that going to help me?

 

 

[Hugh Veide]

The Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau 

[Hugh Veide]

Rene Descartes, Jean Rousseau are favorites  

Edited August 18, 2023 by Hugh Veide
Edit