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TLDR: There are three types of friendships. The first two are situational and, by their nature, more fleeting. The third is much more substantial and very rare.

“Friendships of Utility” are when we derive a mutual benefit from the friendship. When the benefit diminishes for one or both parties, the friendship fades. “Friendships of Pleasure” exist when we share a common interest or pursuit that we both enjoy, but that may be our only connection with the other person. Friendships of utility tend to occur more frequently among the old: business partners, work colleagues, etc. Friendships of pleasure are more common among young people: high school sports teammates, college buddies, summer friends, etc.

The third group is what he calls the “Friendship of the Good.” This group includes both mutual benefit (utility) and shared pleasure, but it is not based upon either; it is based upon virtue. You see the good in them and they in you. These friendships take time and intention to build and maintain, but they can be enduring and impactful and they may last a lifetime.

Edit: Cleaned up the summary of the third type and am including a plea to go google “Nicomachean Ethics”. :)

> Universal ethics can work for a kind of beings only if grounded in some constitutive condition of the kind, in conjunction with value-commitments shared by all members of the kind. Humanism has identified such a feature in rational agency

It sounds to me like he's trying to revive the core premise of Stoicism here, placing reason as the ultimate good. But this isn't him discovering some universal moral principle, this is him playing Weekend at Bernie's with God's corpse.

The book Homo Deus has a more interesting take on the history and future of humanism. The author defines humanism as a rejection of meaning in exchange for power: in giving up our gods and superstition we took control of the natural world, but abandoned the pursuit of heaven and objective good. The shift in epistemology from being derived from the bible to being derived from human experience (empiricism) is what allowed this exchange to happen. The catch, he says, is that we can create our own meaning. He outlines three major branches of humanism - liberal, socialist, and evolutionary, each with its own systems of value. He goes on to say that liberal humanism, the reigning philosophy of our day, is under threat because technology and inequality are changing what it means to be human.

There’s a great British mockumentary called Carnage that takes place in 2067, when meat eating is a thing of the past and kids can’t stomach the idea of eating meat: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p04sh6zg/simon-amstell-carnage

As a physicist, I hate when people use Einstein and Newton’s laws as ‘proof’ that science gets it wrong. Newton wasn’t wrong; in fact, his laws apply and are good enough in most situations we encounter (despite what this guy says). Engineers (here on Earth anyway) aren’t using the Einstein stress tensor when calculating the forces in buildings or cars. We’re not teaching you ‘wrong’ information in physics 121 just because we like Newton or something. Newton’s laws, in fact, stand up very well to scrutiny and agree well with data. It’s when you begin looking at astrophysical phenomena (or particles and nuclei) that you start to get relativistic. Go to space and Einstein’s stuff is more important (although there’s nothing special about space - things are just faster or bigger there, usually).

I don’t really know what you mean by pulling and pushing, either... gravity is attractive only, and doesn’t have positive or negative charges as far as we know. That said, there are still mysteries with dark matter and dark energy, at galactic and cosmological scales. They may hint at new forces or laws of nature, but gravity won’t turn off and send us floating away because our old theories were incomplete.

The takeaway is that in physics and science in general the scale and extent matters. I’m not saying science doesn’t make mistakes; it does, and the bar for ‘good results’ varies drastically between fields, but at the same time old theories that agreed well with data weren’t dead wrong; they were often simpler ways of looking at things that still held a lot of truth, and the process of learning and finding the truth is ongoing and involves refinement, which I think is exciting. It’s like learning checkers, getting better at it, then learning chess and getting better at that, and maybe some day an even tougher game. You were never playing checkers wrong, but you weren’t playing chess either.

One probably does not need to store vast quantities of data to get civilization restarted. For example, this book purports to be a good start: https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Aftermath-Cataclysm/dp/0143127047

I've seen it suggested that Gray's Anatomy would provide a huge amount of medical knowledge. A handful of statements like "sickness is caused by living creatures too small to see," "everything is made from tiny indivisible parts too small to see individually," something about basic physics (at the F=ma level), something about the scientific method, something about fertilizer, and then evolution and genetics, etc might save people huge amounts of effort rediscovering technology, medicine, and so on. There was an interview circuit a few decades ago where they asked dozens of famous scientists what one (or three?) books they would want to survive nuclear war, and they all made quite a bit of sense.

You could probably kickstart the industrial revolution with one 10x10x10 room full of well-preserved textbooks.

I can't comment too much on the veracity of what you're saying here; I'm not much of a philosopher so I'm a bit out of my depth in that regard. Regarding the typesetting: There might be a reason for this (perhaps the style is mandated for you?), but the legibility could be greatly improved by reducing the line width and adjusting the spacing.

I've run your text without any real modifications through latex, and got this result: https://www.docdroid.net/Umf9SuF/who.pdf#page=2. This keeps the original paragraphs in tact. I think a further improvement could be made by avoiding short paragraphs, but I can't really comment on if or how to do this here as it's highly content dependent.

(Hopefully you won't have a problem with this, I put a notice in there linking back to here; If you do have a problem just say the word and I'll take it down again).

I also noticed that you're using citations keys like "Sartre 102", but without a list of references those aren't very useful. Perhaps you have a standard list of references that you are using, but in that case it'd still be useful to explicitly spell that out in the article.

In terms of content, I did notice that you have a lot of "I believe" and "undoubtedly" and similar words in there to lay out some concept, but then don't really seem to follow those up with an explanation for why you believe these things; As such, to me they seemed like dangling assertions whereas the rest of the article read like a straightforward summary of other peoples works. If you're trying to come to a specific conclusion, I'd recommend separating the summary and your own thoughts better and elaborating further on the latter. If the summary is the goal I'd recommend not interjecting your own beliefs too much in there.

Again, I'm not a philosopher so this may be completely acceptable writing style in your field; I apologise if I pointed out something unnecessary.

I read a modern retake on The Prince a few years back, called "The Modern Machiavelli".

Somewhat more approachable, being written in modern parlance and more like a story, but I think the key points are still in there.

https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Machiavelli-Power-Influence-Work/dp/1875889469

Last quarter I wrote an essay advocating why ethics and civil discourse should be taught in every classroom before we graduate from high-school. ("Nicomachean Ethics" and "Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight Reader" were my works cited). Imagine the changes we would see! I think your comment is right on point, here.

You mention, "It makes me sad that we live in an age where we have all the knowledge of humanity at our fingertips, but its just too hard for us to form consensus on basic obvious issues."

It is my own opinion that the problem goes much deeper than this statement, as I have noticed what seems to lead to indecision in more recent generations is the lack of discipline to research and investigate a single topic. This could be due to the strategy of marketing techniques or simply the plethora of choices available to us! (Who hasn't looked up something on wiki only to find themselves hours later reading about a different subject?)

Simply put: The knowledge is at their fingertips, but many people refuse to turn the page!! Instead they are grabbing a new book, reading the cover, and then setting it aside to grab another, and another...

It's a Machiavellian (objective) approach. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says that it's better to use your enemy's resources rather than your own. This has a double-effect; it gives you the resources you need while reducing that which is available to your enemy. When your enemy is as large and as powerful and as wealthy (in resources) as a state, standing against them without doing this can be difficult. You're basically establishing a new physical entity to conflict with the already existing one. If that entity isn't as secure as the opposition, gaining support will also be hard and you'll encounter a lot of difficulty.

Also, in Thoreau's case, he isn't trying to destroy the state, he's trying to reform it. But even if he was, I feel like his approach would still apply.

Despite your apparent disinterest, I'd still recommend you start at the beginning. There's nothing wrong with dipping into the contemporary literature so long as you remain grounded in the original sources. However, and I'm not saying that this is you, but if your intention is to study philosophy on the assumption that we're all so much more clever today that you can gloss over the main texts and rely on second-hand sources, let me assure right now that an understanding of philosophy, you will not have. And on this point, I think Schopenhauer said it best:

>Only from their creators themselves can we receive philosophical thoughts. Therefore the man who feels himself drawn to philosophy must himself seek out its immortal teachers in the quiet sanctuary of their works. The principal chapters of any one of these genuine philosophers will furnish a hundred times more insight into their doctrines than the cumbersome and distorted accounts of them produced by commonplace minds that are still for the most part deeply entangled in the fashionable philosophy of the time, or in their own pet opinions.

Caveats aside, I'd suggest the following for a program of moral philosophy:

1. Republic by Plato - Classical
   
2. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle - Classical
3. On the Ends of Good and Evil by Cicero - Hellenistic
4. Enneads by Plotinus - Roman
5. City of God by Augustine of Hippo - Early Christian
6. Summa Theologiae by Thomas Aquinas - Scholastic
7. Essays by Michel de Montaigne - Renaissance
8. Ethics by Baruch de Spinoza - Early Modern
9. Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant - Modern
10. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche - Late Modern
11. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy by John Rawls - Contemporary
12. After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre - Contemporary

There is a very easy answer to the question re: de Beauvoir and Radio Vichy, which is that Sartre (and likely the French Resistance hierarchy) knew about it entirely, and probably all had a laugh at how they pulled a fast one right under the noses of Petain and Hitler.

It must always be remembered that the Resistance was a clandestine army (and largely an extension of Allied intelligence), and in order to maintain its clandestine nature it had to allow for a certain illusion that nothing was amiss.

Nevertheless, there were formal decisions about what was allowed in order to keep up appearances and what was outright cooperation --the same as undercover cops are formally allowed to do certain crimes (say, consume drugs) but not others (like murder) for the sake of infiltration.

For intellectuals and artists, the line in radio was actually quite simple: it was considered outright cooperation to work with the German-controlled Radio Paris (which produced outright propaganda). It was considered acceptable to work with Radio Vichy, which was not under formal German control and which produced entertainment.

Simone de Beauvoir was not producing propaganda for the Nazis. According to all records, she was on a program that aired French medieval literature and practically all of her scripts were thinly disguised propagnda for the Resistance by choosing books about French outlaws and Robin Hood type figures.

Source: Edith Thomas, "A Passion for the Resistance"

Highly recommend the book “The Invisible Gorilla: How our Intuitions Deceive Us”. Engaging, insightful read on this subject.

Link to book: https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla-How-Intuitions-Deceive/dp/0307459667/ref=nodl_

(adapted from Monty Python)
So sartre's friend calls up sartre's house and get's his wife wife: hello? Friend: hey. Is sartre available? w: no, he's a bit busy right now. f: Do you know when he'll be free? w: Well, he's been trying to figure that out for years!

And yet reasoning seems to be an algorethemically driven process as well, at least with rational beings.

http://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2

Computers can be made to modify themselves in a variety of ways. This is an example of a simple way.

Understanding of the process is unnecessary for human level responses. The fact that we can not even define consciousness simply implies to me that it is an illusion. Perhaps it increases survival. Maybe beings as intelligent as humans need the illusion of consciousness to not kill themselves out of total nihilism. A great many intelligent people are depressed and have dissociative phases.

Your argument seems to me to have some sort of religious bias? Humans have no conscious creator. Evolution has no reason and does not care for us.

It's not particularly plausible that Kant had no idea these non-Western works existed. Major Chinese philosophical works, for instance, had already been translated into European languages by the 17th century, enjoyed a period of popularity among French and German philosophers in the 18th century. Leibniz and Wolff, both German philosophers who Kant would have been quite familiar with, both wrote on Chinese philosophy.

In fact, there's a very specific reason this article says "since Kant", because most of what we would consider "the philosophical canon", at least pre-Kant, is an invention of the Kantians, who made an effort to deliberately exclude non-European philosophy for a variety of reason, as the article linked explains, as well as this (and the book both reference, which is a very interesting book and I highly recommend people read it if they are interested in this topic). Prior to Kant, it was by no means consensus, for instance, that philosophy began in Greece--some philosophers located philosophy's origin in India, some in Africa.

https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Arthur-Schopenhauer/dp/1604595744

I read it this summer. It's interesting because he writes so well it's easy to agree with him. Then you get to essay 3 or 4 and he starts discussing the attributes of classes of people and pretty much says; "Regular people.... OMG they're the worst!"

hahahaha

I grabbed this from "The Zen Monastic Experience"Monk #1: Does a dog have Buddha-nature, or not?

But here's a better description than from my memory in my other book i grabbed off the ol' shelf "Zen Tradition & Transition": "In Rinzai and Obaku monasteries, there are times during the morning and evening meditation periods when the monks are given the opportunity to rise from their seats in the meditation hall and "enter alone" (dokusan) into the master's room. As described in Roshi Kapleau's essay, they make a series of prostrations before the master, recite the particular koan they are investigating, and attempt to satisfy the master that they have penetrated its meaning. When a trainee, someone after a long struggle, is able to demonstrate a degree of insight into the koan that meets the master's standards, he is tested with a number of secondary "probing questions" (sassho). Finally he is asked to consult a collection of "capping phrases" (jakugo) and select one that matches the spirit of the koan. Having succeeded in all of these tasks, he receives a fresh koan to work on. If a disciple progresses steadily in this practice and remains with his master for a sufficient period of time (ten to fifteen years is typical), he may eventually be granted a "seal of approval" (inka shomei) which makes him a Zen master in his own right, qualified to guide others.

(...sorry long paragraph, but that gives you a better idea of how it is like a puzzle to the monks hopefully.)

I can’t help but crack up sometimes when people spell out each other’s usernames.

Y’all should also check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Arguments-Important-Western-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B005K04HLS

It lists the premises and conclusions of some of the most prominent arguments in all of philosophy, and points out flaws in the arguments where they exist.

This is a great option, because you can digest arguments casually like eating popcorn, or you can really dig in and look up more info on an argument that catches your attention.

Plus, I think it really emphasizes critical thinking, because it draws attention to the flaws in arguments that seem to be pretty strong at first glance.

Socrates is known to have said that philosophy is something that is spoken about, not written about. I would suggest reading Bertrand Russell's 'A History of Western Philosophy' as a beginner, but don't leave it at reading. For philosophy to be totally effective, the theories must be discussed, particularly the more complicated theories, and doing it in person rather than on reddit (heresy!) will have a good effect. Start posing question to people you know and you might find someone willing to engage.

Happy philosophizing!

Edit - grammar

SYNOPSIS

This episode features a neurologist with some striking tales to tell about who we become when our brains start to break. What happens when memories are gradually destroyed by Alzheimer's, when our personality is drastically transformed by dementia, or when a sudden surge of creativity is unleashed by Parkinson’s medication?

Dr Jules Montague’s new book <strong><em>Lost and Found</em></strong> integrates moving stories of her own patients with philosophical ideas about personal identity. The result is a fascinating insight into the fragile and complex workings of the brain, and a profound and compassionate reflection on the relationship between memory, personality and identity.

6:26 What does memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease mean for identity?

13:32 Why the notion of ‘embodiment’ offers a richer understanding of identity

16:10 The Extended Mind theory - how phones and pens are part of our cognitive apparatus.

18:23 How our selves are created jointly, through relationships

23:09 The dynamic and unstable nature of memory

27:34 Why personality can be radically transformed by dementia

33:26 How dopamine medication can cause a surge of creativity

42:49 Tools of the neurologists’ trades: how simple questions and reflex hammers can reveal brain damage

Jules' book Lost and Found is now available in paperback, check it out <strong><em>here</em></strong>.

[Cut and paste from the podcast link]

Can someone quote the part/sentence in the Nicomachean Ethics VIII the author bases this utterance on: „You’re a lot more likely to connect at this level with someone when you’ve seen them at their worst and watched them grow from that or if you’ve both endured mutual hardship together.“

This doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't read as satire; the argument is subtle and carefully made, and it's also carefully limited.

The book isn't some broad treatise to apply in power relationships, like The Art of War; it's called The Prince because he is limiting his description and recommendation to someone in a very specific role: the quasi-dictator of a mercantile state on the warpath between larger neighbors. He's not telling the Medici to do what a King of France or a Pope should do, and he's not telling him to be a good man. He's telling him that leaders are judged by how well they serve they people, and it matters less how nasty the leader has to be than how well his people are served. A good man who is a bad Prince is in fact not a good man.

But to apply it outside the Florentine context you have to translate the role of "prince" into its relevant term. Very hard to do, I think. Worthy of Machiavelli.

this. If taken seriously, LSD (and mushrooms) can introduce the most profound perspectives. However, psychedelics pushed me more towards the east. Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" explained eastern premise beautifully to this westerner, and I HIGHLY recommend it. This lead me towards the "Tao Teh Ching" and my skepticism of truths.

My philosophy education started with Epictetus' Enchiridion. It's an easy read, free, and has some thoughts and ideas that can directly benefit anyone's life rather than requiring a specific ideology. It was a great way to warm up the brain into thinking in different ways and trying to objectively and subjectively interpret points of view. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is also a good follow up - it's a fairly easy read, and also has some good, practical thoughts in it.

I am in a similar situation. I have always found philosophy (ethics in particular) interesting. I am doing CS degree, but decided to do a Philosophy minor. Consider it, as it will allow you to take some courses that cover those topics that you like.

My suggested reading: Betrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. Pretty good read; covers many different philosophers and topics. It's his interpretation of the field, so it may be a bit biased, so it is worth reading the source material. It is also great for finding names and topics to research and read.

Read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated from the original. It has some really interesting insights. You'll have to draw your own conclusion from that. I'm not going skew what you're reading by saying more than that. Anyway, Enjoy! :)

Edit: Grammar

A subtype of your second type that I have actually encountered are the ones who are usually nerdy to some degree and so were labeled intelligent during their youth by the relatively dumb people around them and developed a sense of their own superiority, despite their actual mediocrity relative to the society at large. They love Ayn Rand because they love to think of themselves as heroic and strong willed even if, in reality, they are self-indulgent and again, mediocre.

They are usually the type who are into mythology, anime, The Art of War, martial arts, Cosplay, and having weird hair.

> The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made the famous observation, "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." But that begs the question: if a lion could talk, we probably could understand him. He just would not be a lion any more; or rather, his mind would no longer be a lion's mind.

--&quot;If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness&quot;

If you want something great that teaches as well as is interesting and can hold your attention, I highly recommend Sophie’s World.

It is an amazing first dive into the beginnings and history of Philosophy and is such a fun ride to boot!

It tickles the philosophical taste buds just enough to get you ready to read some real books on it.

Another great book that can do this to an extent is Ishmael.

Hope you enjoy!

Edit: fixed links

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is an excellent, lighter piece in my opinion because you don't need to deep-dive into it, it's a little like finger food for the mind haha It got me through a lot. Had a stroke at 22 and I was really struggling to make peace with it and move past the anger and feeling of injustice... That really helped, and still does for many other things that have happened since then.

It's no effort at all. Minus the editing, I keep an ongoing reading list for other purposes. That said, I didn't notice any mention of this being an introductory list. I don't understand how Aristotle's Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics, Plato's Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbe's Leviathan, or Rawls' Justice as Fairness could be labelled as entry-level texts. If you're going to go with beginner material, then you should trim those selections too.

The bias I was alluding to concerns your emphasis on analytic or academic philosophy to the exclusion of the continental and other historical traditions (e.g., Hellenistic, Roman, Medieval, etc.).

General Introduction for Laymen:

• Bertrand Russel - The Problems of Philosophy.
• Will Durant - The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
• Gunnar Skirbekk, Nils Gilje - A History of Western Thought: From Ancient Greece to the Twentieth Century

After reading this you will have a good idea about what is out there and should just read what you find interesting. Of course you should also fallow the advice given in those books about how to approach each philosopher, for example you may read most of the Ancient Greeks without any more introductory material and feel as if you were reading a text by some contemporary writer but then be totally lost in Kant -- which is understandable, I have been trying to read his works for a long time and usually I come to the conclusion I had him totally wrong after a reread.

Created a new account as I'd prefer not mix my professional and private lives, but I thought I'd share a response to Minerva and Giublini's article that was published in the Journal for Medical Ethics' special issue on After-birth abortion. You needn't agree, but given there was plenty of interest on the topic, I thought some of you might appreciate reading more.

My name is Matthew Beard, I'm an ethicist with the University of Notre Dame, Australia - a Catholic University. I think Minerva and Giublini's argument cuts philosophical corners in their accounts of both harm and personhood.

As I say, I don't expect everyone to agree, but I hope some of you appreciate the opportunity to get passed the paywall and read the article for free!

EDIT: Thanks to some kind advice, the article is now accessible for download here. I added it to my Academia.edu profile from which you can download it.

EDIT 2: I've really enjoyed all these questions! Please accept that other demands mean I probably won't be able to maintain ongoing debate with all of you, but thanks for your comments. Also, if my comments here don't seem entirely consistent with the article, assume it's because I'm continuing to learn and develop my ideas, and do change my mind every now and again! Nevertheless, I'm proud of this article and will stand by what it argues for.

I love the variety of answers.

I'd say my "wow" moment happened in two stages:

1) reading Catch-22 and writing a research paper on how Yossarian is an existentialist hero (this exposed me to Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus)

2) Robert M. Pirsig: reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" had a profound effect on my worldview, which was then "refined" when I read "Lila"

My favorite book of philosophy was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The philosophy isn't the most complex or logic driven, instead it has elements of zen sparseness, rational thought and basic Christian morality. The main tenat was the world is how it is and your job is to act and think accordingly. There is no reason to be sad when your wife dies, she came from somewhere else, you enjoyed your time with her and then she left. Sane goes if your hand gets chopped off. He was open about religion, saying either there is a afterlife ( bonus) or there isn't ( doesn't matter). I am aware he isn't the main stoic by far, but the personal nature of the writing and his background made him the most approachable. Its really a amazing book and outlook on life.

Rand despised conservatives and the intellectual conservatives of her time, like Buckley, despised her.

Greenspan is considered a sellout by every Objectivist I have ever known.

Yaron Brook on Greenspan

Peikoff on Greenspan

For those who might not know, David Gelernter was a victim of the unabomber. He wrote a fascinating book about it: Drawing Life

This is a cool illustrated version of J.S. Mill's On Liberty: https://www.amazon.com/All-Minus-One-Stuart-Illustrated/dp/0692068317

Philip Pettit returns to the Political Philosophy Podcast to discuss his latest work The Birth of Ethics. We set of the challenge of resolving the seeming paradox of ethical truth in a naturalistic universe:  In a world explained by science with 'nothing spooky' going on, how, and why, would morality emerge? (Part one of two.)

"Now put aside the fact that nature is taking such a course only because it has been altered, perhaps irrevocably, by irresponsible human activity, to the detriment of the members of other species (not to mention our own). Even so, how much weight should we give to this ‘leave nature alone’ argument? Here is an animal that is suffering. Should we (or the people who take such videos) do anything to help it?"

I don't really see the author taking on the first question - How much weight should we give to this 'leave nature alone' argument? Others in this thread are bringing this argument up as a rejoinder to the author's position.

For an interesting attempt to establish how much weight we should give to a "leave nature alone" principle, check out Kymlicka and Donaldson's book <em>Zoopolis</em> where they distinguish between contextual differences with analogies to political citizenship. Here's an article that gives the gist: https://www.uvic.ca/victoria-colloquium/assets/docs/donaldson-kymlicka%20animals%20frontiers%20citizenship.pdf

I read this quote in Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." In the copy I read it was page 11, paragraph 3. I can't as yet find a link online to it. Not sure if it was originally his or if he was quoting Nietzsche tho.

Edit: spelling of Nietzsche

> There's nothing at the level of human systems, organs, cells, or molecules that exhibits or explains language or agency.

What does that mean? Is there something at the molecular level that explains the wetness of water?

Reductionist theories allow us to understand (and build!) computers that do crazy stuff like have a computer recognize and track squirrels and shoot at them with a squirt gun. Is there something at the electron level that explains squirrelness?

Also, is there even an actual definition of "non-mechanistic" aside from "mysterious"?

Cool and useful compilation. The "Examined Life" documentary is such a soothing watch.

Has anyone ever seen this one? I love this excerpt, Rorty's piece of wisdom here almost saved my life here a few years ago. I'd love to watch the film in full.

But the DVD on Amazon is so fricking expensive. Is it worth buying?

A long studied (and long debated) topic. The book Iron John by R Bly is a study of these rights of passage practiced by multiple civilizations and told through the story of Iron John, a fable made popular by the brothers Grimm.
If you thought this video was insightful and uncomfortable, you will feel the same about this book.
Iron John: A Book about Men https://www.amazon.com/dp/0306824264/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_v.M.CbY429K51

I really enjoyed this, thanks for the post... This sort of of talk kind of reminds me of the difference between how the brain performs cognitive tasks differently, a la "Thinking, Fast and Slow" via System 1 and System 2.

Maybe intuition versus reflection are simply manifestations of our own neurocognitive function?

Veritasium did a great short on the system 1 vs system 2 phenomenon awhile back, for those who are interested: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM&amp;t=561s)

That's how my boyfriend's was too, and it's the reason why he thinks the whole subject is stupid despite me pointing out the fact that he uses philosophical reasoning and argument skills literally all the time as an attorney.

Mine, thankfully, were nothing like that. Ethics was the closest, since we did read^1 multiple original texts in chronological order, but even it was basically "let's look at these different ways of reasoning about morality, compare them, and then use them to help structure our own original arguments."

^(1. I use "read" in a very loose sense. I don't think any of us read Nicomachean Ethics.)

Thanks for the link! Been a huge fan of Kahneman since reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow", nice to place a face to him.

There was an interesting acquaintance of the author of "Moonwalking With Einstein" (about a journalist-turned-memory athlete) who very intentionally lived his life to create memories, based on his understanding of the types of memories that get formed. Interesting read if you're bored.

Here's a very good talk by a neurobiologist/primateologist called 'The uniqueness of humans' giving a scientific view on this subject.

Logistical is not a form of "logic" whatsoever, so I don't care if you (for some odd reason) think it's incorrect English; more importantly it's incorrect semantically. Hell, the two words don't even have common etymological background, logistical refers to the movement of troops and supply lines.

I fear for our children if you're teaching philosophy (as I can't imagine you're teaching at a college level with such a poor understanding of the terminology).

Have a look at my paper on thresholds for rights here, http://publish.uwo.ca/~sbrennan/thresholds.pdf

And my paper on moderate deontology and thresholds for options here, https://www.academia.edu/4713887/Moderate_Deontology_and_Moral_Gaps?auto=download

Of course it's possible. Philosophy's great because it's something anyone can get into if they just invest a little time.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea to pick up a logic book and start working on proofs, or write up a criticism of inferentialism, but you could definitely pick up something like Russell's History of Western Philosophy and read through it, or read stuff on the Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy that piques your interest.

With the marvelous resource that is the internet, you're not really "on your own." There's tons of stuff all over the interwebs to help you out.

For instance, there's this random site I found just browsing through the 'top' list of /r/ philosophy threads.

I'm gonna kick in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow as a source that supports the claim that our intuition is not informed by rationality only, and in many cases does play a much smaller (and in some cases dangerously so) role.

I haven't yet read the article OP links, but I don't doubt that our intuition is as valuable as reason. But, I think it important to understand the sorts of areas our intuition might lead as astray, and recognize that understanding logic and training ourselves to think logically can reduce (not eliminate!) the errors of our intuition.

It seems fashionable these days to praise our intuition. And there's a lot about which to be impressed. It's fast, and It's often approximately right. It's probably what gets us through most of our days. But it's also just a natural fact about our minds that we have the intuitions we often have. They just sort of emerge from our lived experience. It's probably true that the majority of our behaviors are expressions of our intuition. But in highly technical endeavors, and in cases where we want to reduce the possibility of error, we need to train our reasoning, and recognize when we ought to be wary of our intuition and let a slower form of thinking govern our decision making and behavior. Unlike intuition, that's not a natural fact about us (we're not born good reasoners).

What I'm trying to get at is that while our intuition is impressive and very useful. Other than recognizing that fact about us, I'm not sure what there is to do about it. Our capacity for conscious reasoning is also very impressive and very useful. But unlike our intuition, it needs to be trained. I'm a little worried that all the fashionable attention and praise our intuition gets these days will mislead some people to neglect attending to training and maintaining their capacity for good, rational thought.

The purpose of a contract for a monogamous relationship is... drumroll ...to have a monogamous relationship. What else do you need?

“ I'm not going to answer to all your fallacies when you don't answer to me pointing out your fallacies. ”

Not only have you not pointed out any fallacies of mine, like, at all, but regardless I DID answer.

So... that’s a pretty lame way to fail to defend your position.

Edit:

Here’s a link to a book which substantiates my prior claims:

https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Passion-Jealousy-Necessary-Love/dp/0684850818

This was explained to me as "resistance" in the book "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. Life-changing, absolutely. The feeling of recognizing and dispelling this invisible wet blanket that holds you back from doing slightly difficult things is so liberating. All sensations are inherently equal, so I just think of whatever task I'm doing, and the feelings associated with it, as nothing important or stressful. Really has turned my health and productivity 180.

Summary:

Chris Surprenant (University of New Orleans) discusses the account of human well-being and the good life presented by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. He explains why Aristotle believes that a human being lives well when he acts rightly and possesses all virtues, both intellectual and those relating to good character.

Thanks for watching!

-WiPhi

Not OP but Cognitive Therapy Basics and Beyond by Beck is the standard text AFAIK. The Feeling Good Handbook by Burns is a good layperson's/patient's resource for CBT. /Licensed Mental Health Counselor

I just listened to Plato's Republic on audio book now I'm seeing stoicism all over reddit and youtube. The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius was recommended to me too. Makes me feel like my interests aren't my own.

Eh, I've been into it for several years, ever since a classmate of mine suggested I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

When I got over the giddy excitement of reading words written over a millennium ago, I found a lot of the ideas resonated with me. I'm definitely glad it's getting a wider audience.

Only ten minutes but people like David Foster Wallace's "This Is Water" commencement speech.

You could also get Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy one tape. He's relatively easy to follow, though self-admittedly biased in his conspectus.

Like Zombiescout said, tell your friend to read up on the psychology of decision making. Emotional thinking is not "inferior", and doesn't make you "delusional"; rather, emotion is vital to all of our decision making, and brain damaged patients who have difficulty interpreting affective signals tend to make objectively poor judgements.

Damasio's Descartes' Error covers this well, whereas Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is a good discussion of how intuitive (fast) thought is core to much of our decision making. Both of them would be excellent books for either of you to read.

1. A History of Western Philosophy - Russell. The best one-volume history of philosophy.

2. A book on the subject that interested you most in (1).

3. A book on the subject that second-most interested you in (1).

. . .and so on.

&quot;The parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. … The parent <strong>should</strong> have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.&quot;

Funny thing, Cambridge dictionary has separate entries for American and British use of the word. In the British version it is mentioned that it can mean "or not punish them for something", while in the American section that part is omited. Editor mistake or subtle cultural nuance? In my language the main definition is literally "to spare somone of punishment", even though in practice the word is used the same as in english.

You'll just have to read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics yourself to find out. But (spoiler alert) the gist is that an excellent human is one who possess the human "excellencies" or "virtues" ("Arete" in Greek). The four most important among these, according to Aristotle, are prudence (basically having sound judgment), temperance, courage, and justice (so treating other people well and justly). So if you possess high practical intelligence, are courageous enough to attain your goals and stick to your guns, exercise moderation and self-restrains, and treat others justly and with respect, then the chances of you being an excellent human being, and thus being capable of excellent friendships is probably going to be quite high.

And then if you find yourself asking, "why are those human virtues?", or "why should I buy any of that", then I suggest checking out NE, cause Aristotle's doesn't just assert this stuff, he gives convincing (by my estimation anyhow) arguments for why we should believe him.

Even more problematically, he's paraphrasing Aristotle, and Aristotle's works are translated from Ancient Greek, and the works are not certainly Aristotle's own writing but may in fact be in part lecture notes from some of his students later compiled as a set of books, etc. and so on and so forth. Point being, the sentiment is Aristotle's beginning premise in the Nicomachean Ethics but the exact wording often repeated is Will Durant's exegesis.

Siddhartha at least does have merits as literature and as a (relatively) early Western reading of Buddhist and Hindu thought. I do think there's merit in that work. I haven't read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and can't speak to its value.

Haters gonna hate. No, it's not any sort of rigorous philosophy, and no, it hasn't had any impact on the academic philosophical tradition (I know I've seen Pirsig referenced by a few big names, but it's never all that kind a reference), but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a very popular book that shaped a lot of minds, and while it's got its flaws, it's not spurious or ridiculous on the level of, say, Castaneda or The Secret.

Among other things, it's a very passionately-attempted synthesis of Eastern philosophy with post-industrial Western culture; unlike someone like Alan Watts, who tried to transplant the ideas he found in Eastern mysticism directly into American culture, Pirsig really tries to unify the two. How does one apply these principles in a world full of machines? And how can one hold and use these ideas in a public discourse (for Pirsig, an academic discourse) that rejects ideas unless they're analytically or empirically-based?

Philosophy is everywhere.

How about -

The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse

Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki

The Stranger - EDIT: Camus (I originally wrote Sartre, the explanation is a coupla posts down)

Valis - P.K. Dick

A lot of people who advocate for what they think is 'laissez faire' economics just read the first three pages of The Wealth of Nations. Smith writes later on that the division of labour will kill the soul.

Here's Sober's original paper on the subject. Great food for thought on the value of parsimony in-and-of-itself https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231786320_Explanation_in_Biology_Let's_Razor_Ockham's_Razor

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=bertrand+russell&amp;kn=signed&amp;sts=t&amp;tn=mysticism+and+logic

If it is signed by Russell, it seems it could be worth a nice little chunk of change - probably not the $385 with the one in very good condition, but still might fetch $100 or so.

This is just one of his lectures on the topic, and I actually find this TEDtalk from Sir Ken Robinson much more interesting. Changing Education Paradigms

Sartre carried water for Mao and Stalin, once calling the Great Leap Forward &quot;profoundly moral.&quot;

And yet somehow their intellectual reputations barely take a hit. I wonder why this is?

Population growth rate has declined dramatically. because more countries are entering the first world, like I said. It peaked in the 1960s, and has almost halved since then.

1) The program is from 2001

2) The strong AI hypothesis was refuted by John Searle. 30 years ago.

3) Chatbots are not intelligent by anyone's measure

> Me:"If I told you I was a dog, would you find it strange to be that talking to a dog?" bot:"No, I hate dog's barking." Me:"Isn't it weird that a dog is talking to you on the internet?" bot:"No, we don't have a dog at home."

4) Convincing 33% of observers is not the Turing test. The test calls for the program to be indistinguishable from a human. Which from the above it clearly is not.

Hello, im a PhD student and im teaching at the moment to science students in a London university. I've realised that the younger they are the easier they relate to simple ways to explain some basics and then built on more abstract ideas to sort of cement your logic. This basically explains to them that trivial things are not so trivial.

A nice video I just saw is: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/rethinking-thinking-trevor-maber

A suggestion would be you could built a lecture around this and somehow link it to literature and art? Maybe argue that literature is a minds way to accept possible scenaria of situations that happened and value the books outcome thus embedding deep lessons linked to family and old memories and change ideals in society, eg deep concepts such as Marxism and various ideals you can find even in childhood folklore of various people.

This article is drawing a lot on the book Doing Good Better by economist William Macaskill, who outlines these ideas in more depth. While this author emphasizes the intake of charities, MacAskill also points out that there's a an efficiency in the output.

It's easier to save a life in the developing world (eg through polio vaccination and malaria prevention or neonatal resuscitation) than in the developed world (eg through research into more effective cancer treatments). So it may be a lot easier to save a human life across the world than to save someone you actually know.

Is part of it the relative costs? Are we ok spending more money per life in the west because everything else is more expensive? Or is it emotional connection to people we know while polio and malaria seem so remote?

I much prefer Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy, which I had read first years ago so maybe I'm biased. My negative reaction to Russell's A History of Western Philosophy I think is because I skipped to his chapter on John Dewey. I had recently finished The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand in which John Dewey was featured and I was curious as to what Russell had to say about his American contemporary. What a disappointment. It was mostly about how he thought Dewey was wrong on this and that without really giving an overview of Dewey's thought. Durant, at least gives a succinct neutral summary of each Philosopher he chose to include and why they are important today, but also subsequent critiques and counter arguments detailing in what ways their ideas had been negated or supplanted by later Philosophers. That seems a more balanced way of treating the subject. Russell on the ancient Greeks was good though.

I have the same view as you in regards to the suicide hotline. The majority of lives saved from those operators are likely individuals experiencing intense, irrational emotions, instead of those that have carefully considered each option over an extended period of time. Nevertheless, it's still a kind gesture.

I've gone through extended periods of depression as a product of adopting a nihilist life view for quite awhile. I felt completely lost and saw no reason to continue on if I wasn't enjoying my life after realizing nothing really matters. I don't think free will exist, so I don't believe in the idea of the self, but this has allowed me to laugh at the darkness in my life. It allowed me to adopt a stoic and zen mentality, and after years of hard contemplation I've found contentment with my existence. A book I strongly suggest is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius if you've yet to read it. It had a profound impact on my life, and has been a pivotal part in my transformation into a rather happy individual today.

If you are interested in a primer on philosophy in general, Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy is really excellent. Very easy to follow and compresses a lot into a very small space. It's readily available for download if you Google, for example:

http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/History%20of%20Western%20Philosophy.pdf

The Stanford Encylopaedia of Philosophy is also good, free and online:

http://plato.stanford.edu

I don't know much about the modern opinion on the topic, but I can regurgitate my understanding of the ideas of the Greeks.

Aristotle delves into this issue in books six and seven of Nicomachean Ethics.

In order for the act to be just or unjust, the person does not necessarily have to be aware. In your example given, the act of giving the baby bleach is unjust, but the person is not unjust (nor just), because they are under the illusion that what they are doing is a just act. The only way the person can be classified as just or unjust is by being aware of the proper thing to do, and either doing it (a just person), or not doing it (an unjust person).

In short, you must know the ramifications of what you're doing in order for you to be deemed just or unjust based on the action. It's hard to tell how deep this goes, and what level of understanding of the topic is required to be able to know if someone is just or unjust in their action.

For another perspective: Plato believed that all unjust acts were also acts of ignorance, and that nobody, knowing what was right and wrong, would act unjustly. Therefore it may not be proper to blame anyone for unjust actions, but rather to educate them.

Here's a basic list, going over a shit load of different subjects *Platonic/Socratic dialogues (Philosophical inquiry, ethics, metaphysics) *Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, optional: De Anima (Morality, virtue) *Descartes: Meditations (Epistemology/Theology) *Aquinas: Summa Theologica (Theology) *Mill: Utilitarianism and On Liberty (Ethics, political philosophy) *Hobbes: Leviathan (Political Philosophy, Human-nature) *Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (epistemology, ethics, human-nature) *William James: Dilemma of Determinism (epistemology, free-will) *Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (ethics) *Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals (existentialism, ethics) *Beauvoir: The Second Sex (existentialism, ethics, feminism) *Camus: Myth of Sisyphus (existentialism)

I tell this to anyone looking to learn philosophy. Read The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. He does an excellent job of explaining many influential philosophers' ideas and putting it in a historical context. Learning philosophy is much easier from the Greeks forward because many philosophers reference and base ideas on previous ones. Durant goes in order.

Here's a link but I would recommend buying a copy online.

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized".

The Art of War gave me a lot of good things to ponder. The above has always been my all time personal favorite quote from the writings. It has a lot of personal meaning for me, and in my life. The harder I work, the more I gain, the more people I meet, the more opportunities present themselves, the more I end up having to gain, profit, win, or share. It's the idea of having compounding returns on not just financial things, but social, educational, and professional. Everything can increase exponentially as your work hard towards your goals, and more and more doors will keep opening as you gain new foot holds.

It's because of quotes like that, that make me love The Art of War. It's a timeless piece, and can be applied to almost all aspects of life from a philosophy standpoint, and will always remain relevant.

"No."

/utilitarian

Things are objects, but happiness is a state of being that can be increased by the presence of things or by their removal. Many people don't realize how easily obtainable happiness is but how ineffable it remains. Humans like to think that life is a contest and that winning over others is the goal. Turns out there is more than enough to give humans peace of mind.

There's a brilliant TED talk on it here.

This was the only study I could find, but the claim that they are smarter than (or at least equal to) dogs seems to be quite a prevalent claim.. (They are about as trainable, at least.) So are dogs as smart as 2 year olds?

I know that most of you are probably already aware of the Khan Academy, but for those who are not:

http://www.khanacademy.org/

It the same idea. Free online lectures on a large array of subjects. An incredible resource.

I recommend anyone interested in learning more visit this website. It's a goldmine of free courses in all kinds of subjects; not just philosophy.

EDIT: accidentally repeated a word.

>drunkentune probably deleted it then without telling you, which means he should be removed as moderator immediately.

The post doesn't say it's been deleted or banned. Here's a screen capture from my computer as support. Now, would you kindly stop throwing mud?

I don't know all the practical applications. But most of the field of microeconomics is based on decision theory (Savage was himself an economist). And a major current controversy in statistics (the conflict between Bayesian and frequentist methodology) turns on the relation between epistemology and decision theory.

I would also recommend reading Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" for an understanding of how theoretical descriptions of rational belief and decision might differ from the way humans actually work.

I often suffer from the same dilemma, but perhaps the problem lies in seeking external meaning for our acts, because meaning is relative to the observer and the parameters within which it is judged. Instead, it is best to define meaning internally, i.e., to decide on the person we want to be in relation to the environment we live in, and allow that to form our code of conduct.

It may very well turn out that the life we choose now has no meaning in the context that comes to prevail several centuries down the line, but I strongly believe that we have to act based on the information at our command at this point of time; particularly because the process of defining a meaning/objective, and striving to achieve it is fulfilling in itself.

There's so much you could read on this, but I would start by recommending Viktor Frankl's account of his experiences at Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, titled Man's Search for Meaning.

Viktor Frankl's work is a nice starting point as well. He was a survivor of WW2 death camps, and ended up practicing a form of therapy he called logotherapy (he was a psychiatrist before he landed in the camps). His book is called Man's Search for Meaning.

Honestly, I'd rather recommend Bryan Magees "The Story of Philosophy". It's not as hardcore as Russels History of Western Philosophy (which is still the gold standard), but Magee is a great writer. Also, Magee's series "The Great Philosophers" on youtube, where he discusses all the big names with actual philosophers from the 20th century (A.J. Ayer, W.V.O. Quine etc.).

In the first book of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes plain that, when discussing eudaimonia, the most correct path of study is focusing on politics and the nation, because that was the "good" towards which all other "goods" are pursued. In a world where the well-being of the state is the chief good, there isn't much room for anarchism.

Anyone more experienced with this subject matter than I, feel free to correct me.

> I have read Nicomachean Ethics (albeit some time ago), and I find Eudaemonia to be an intuitive thing to strive for, but only if one desires to live an enjoyable life. What makes striving for an enjoyable life "ethical" though?

Eudamonia doesn't mean "enjoyable" but rather something like "flourishing" or "successful."

>Create good/do good, or don't do bad/diminish bad can be stated as the objective for any ethical system, each system just has different parameters for what good and bad mean.

This is the concept of "consequentializing a moral theory." It's unclear that we can do this with all moral theories.

Weren't the big philosophical works (Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, Russell, etc) written without expecting prior knowledge on the reader's part? I'm not so sure since I haven't read them myself, but given how disjointed philosophy education tends to be compared to the hard sciences it would make sense for it to be that way.

Well, two introductions used for philosophy are Bertrand Russell's famous A History of Western Philosophy and Antony Flew's An Introduction to Western Philosophy. There may be better ones out there, though.

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant is a great overview and introduction to the major figures in western philospohy. Walter Kaufman's 'Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre' was one of my favorites as a teenager. Bertrand Rusell's 'History of Western Philosophy' is worth a read, but skip the chapter on Nietzsche as it's an uncharacteristic exercise in utter ignorance. Also I agree with 'Sophie's World' as suggested above, a great book.

The locus classicus is Aristotle's function argument in the Nicomachean Ethics. He draws an analogy there between the functions of craftsmen or the eye and a human. According to his metaphysics, all objects in the changeable world are formed by nature to realize certain functions. For example, a stone has no function because it is changeless. Aristotle argues that all changeable things have a distinctive function, which he defines as what a thing alone can achieve, or achieve better than any other object. This classification is used to determine the species to which different objects belong. So, we could say that the distinctive function of a knife is to cut; the heart, to circulate blood; a unicellular organism, to replicate genetic copies of itself. While changeable objects can perform a range of different activities, there can be only one proper function. It's this line of logic that leads Aristotle to conclude that the distinctive function of a human being is to reason actively. The purpose or goal of a thing is to perform its function. And this, it can do well or badly. This is generally called the interdefinability of function, virtue, and goodness. So the distinctive function of a knife is cutting. Its virtues may include sharpness and the metals of which it is composed. Its goal, telos, or purpose is to cut-well. You can then extend the analogy to human beings. The distinctive function of a human is to reason actively. The exercise of reason can include different virtues, such as understanding, intuition, deliberation, planning, and so on. Thus, the purpose of a human is to use these traits to reason excellently. I should probably add that functions are nested hierarchically. Reasoning in humans serves certain lower-order needs that are captured in our animal (i.e., perception and locomotion) and vegetative (i.e., replication of form) nature. Reason is used to carry out these more basic requirements.

I'd recommend Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. It's dense and interesting, but can still be a quick read.

Probably a good book to read about this: "Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankl. In the first half, he describes being in a concentration camp from a more psychological/mental point of view (whereas most other accounts focus on the physical aspects of it) and in the second half he explains his theory that people are born with a desire for meaning in their life, and why they are. It's a good read even if it doesn't answer everything you're wondering!