EPTOn July 04 2010 11:17 Pandain wrote:
Honestly, if you want to get started on learning ANYTHING, Wikipedia is the answer. Start from there, then read up more on specific subjects that interest you. Perhaps even get books if your really curios.
Honestly, if you want to get started on learning ANYTHING, Wikipedia is the answer. Start from there, then read up more on specific subjects that interest you. Perhaps even get books if your really curios.
Don't do this. Read actual books. Wikipedia is incredibly narrow and features very very limited information on any topic or work. If you want to learn about a work, read it first. Check wiki later if you're curious to see what the author of that page wrote about it.
If you MUST cop out and read up an online encyclopedia, do NOT go to wikipedia, go to stanford's online philosophy encyclopedia.
On July 04 2010 11:18 Malgrif wrote:
I suggest begin your philosophical journey by first reading some of the works of aristotle, plato, and socraties. they are generally the foundation to most of the modern day views. after you're done with them you can move onto whatever catches your interest.
I suggest begin your philosophical journey by first reading some of the works of aristotle, plato, and socraties. they are generally the foundation to most of the modern day views. after you're done with them you can move onto whatever catches your interest.
Starting with Aristotle and Plato is a great idea. However, there is no original writing by Socrates in existence today. Everything we know about Socrates, including his existence, is through Plato's works. Actually some scholars wonder if Socrates was an actual person.
On July 04 2010 11:23 Aus)MaCrO wrote:
A big part of philosophy is thinking for yourself, and nobody knows how far along you are in your intellectual development, so nobody can really tell you what you should read (ie what will be worthwhile to YOU). Still, as you said, there are thousands of books out there, so a push in the right direction is good.
A website I like is insomnia.ac, which focuses on videogames and philosophy. There is also a forum thread there with a list of recommendations:
http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2373
Eastern philosophy is mostly a waste of time as far as I am aware.
Hope that helps.
A big part of philosophy is thinking for yourself, and nobody knows how far along you are in your intellectual development, so nobody can really tell you what you should read (ie what will be worthwhile to YOU). Still, as you said, there are thousands of books out there, so a push in the right direction is good.
A website I like is insomnia.ac, which focuses on videogames and philosophy. There is also a forum thread there with a list of recommendations:
http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?t=2373
Eastern philosophy is mostly a waste of time as far as I am aware.
Hope that helps.
This is a stupid place to start. Don't do it.
And "Eastern philosophy is mostly a waste of time as far as I am aware." - Wow dude...just wow.
On July 04 2010 11:28 mainerd wrote:
the ammount of literature is enormous, and it really depends what you want to know. if you want this historical aspect of philosophy (east, west, et al), and just want to absorb as much philosophical thinking as possible, you just need to put your nose to the grindstone and do a LOT of reading. however if this is a pursuit of a more personal nature, IE learning your own views and leanings on major philosophical points, this can be more easily achieved by throwing yourself into discussions, like on IRC philo channels. real life discussion is better, but not everyone knows people irl who like to discuss such things.
the ammount of literature is enormous, and it really depends what you want to know. if you want this historical aspect of philosophy (east, west, et al), and just want to absorb as much philosophical thinking as possible, you just need to put your nose to the grindstone and do a LOT of reading. however if this is a pursuit of a more personal nature, IE learning your own views and leanings on major philosophical points, this can be more easily achieved by throwing yourself into discussions, like on IRC philo channels. real life discussion is better, but not everyone knows people irl who like to discuss such things.
Chatting in IRC channels is a very stupid place to start. In order to really learn and get to know philosophy, you need to have that background knowledge, which is vast. There is no choice B, but only the former of what you said. A LOT of reading has to be done.
On July 04 2010 11:52 tryclops wrote:
Regarding Descartes, his writing helped bring the west out of the Dark Ages and made philosophy relevant again, so I can't exactly recommend him unless you're very interested in God or want to understand the concept dualism. He also writes in a very strange style that won't really make much sense in the 21st century. Nonetheless, he is vital in the history and development of philosophy. You can find this for free on the internet so perhaps you'd want to print it out or something (it's about fifty or sixty pages in .pdf).
Regarding Descartes, his writing helped bring the west out of the Dark Ages and made philosophy relevant again, so I can't exactly recommend him unless you're very interested in God or want to understand the concept dualism. He also writes in a very strange style that won't really make much sense in the 21st century. Nonetheless, he is vital in the history and development of philosophy. You can find this for free on the internet so perhaps you'd want to print it out or something (it's about fifty or sixty pages in .pdf).
You're severely misunderstanding and underestimating Descartes if that's really your take on him. Like that's laughably bad.
On July 04 2010 11:59 shinosai wrote:
Taking a class in intro philosophy is a good way to start out. I'm a philosophy minor myself and enjoy the subject. Moreso than any other subject it emphasizes logical thinking. Arguments in philosophy need to be valid and sound (and in studying epistemology, you'll learn that there are some other requirements as well!)
Do not read books that reinforce your beliefs. If your interest is reinforcing your beliefs, then read someone that believes the opposite of you, and try to form an argument that logically disproves it. If you can't, then you've just learned something new.
As an aside, Descartes is highly respected for his math, but I'd be wary of his metaphysics. He made some great contributions to modern mathematics, including a proof for an "actual" infinity (great stuff for finitists vs infinitists). As far as his metaphysics go, he spent a lot of time trying to prove the existence of God. And I think it's common belief among philosophers (at least since Kant) that one cannot prove the existence of God through metaphysics.
edit: Oh, yea, I should probably mention... if you're really interested in philosophy, Kant is obviously a go to. There are more dissertations and papers written about Kant than anyone else, mostly because of how controversial his philosophy is. He's very important, you'll want to know about him.
Taking a class in intro philosophy is a good way to start out. I'm a philosophy minor myself and enjoy the subject. Moreso than any other subject it emphasizes logical thinking. Arguments in philosophy need to be valid and sound (and in studying epistemology, you'll learn that there are some other requirements as well!)
Do not read books that reinforce your beliefs. If your interest is reinforcing your beliefs, then read someone that believes the opposite of you, and try to form an argument that logically disproves it. If you can't, then you've just learned something new.
As an aside, Descartes is highly respected for his math, but I'd be wary of his metaphysics. He made some great contributions to modern mathematics, including a proof for an "actual" infinity (great stuff for finitists vs infinitists). As far as his metaphysics go, he spent a lot of time trying to prove the existence of God. And I think it's common belief among philosophers (at least since Kant) that one cannot prove the existence of God through metaphysics.
edit: Oh, yea, I should probably mention... if you're really interested in philosophy, Kant is obviously a go to. There are more dissertations and papers written about Kant than anyone else, mostly because of how controversial his philosophy is. He's very important, you'll want to know about him.
You're as bad as the last guy with your take on Descartes. That's just really stupid. Yes, he spent a lot of time on trying to prove the existence of an immaterial soul, but the actual argument he used is still relevant and is debated and written about today (conceivability argument). It's very interesting stuff and is VERY MUCH worth looking into. In addition, his skepticism is very important too.
And Kant is written about so much because the scale of his works is so damn large. Kant as a starting point isn't a great idea, in my opinion, though.
And logic is really a very basic first step. Forming arguments that adhere to logically sound structures is very easy and intuitive. It's the content making up those slots for propositions that's hard.
On July 04 2010 12:06 tryclops wrote:
Some say Descartes contributed so much that France decided not to contribute anything for the next three hundred years
Some say Descartes contributed so much that France decided not to contribute anything for the next three hundred years
LOL.
On July 04 2010 12:09 Crahptacular wrote:
Depends on what you mean by getting well educated in philosophy. If you mean the way it's taught in schools, you're looking at learning the history of (predominantly) Western philosophical thought. This involves reading a large variety of books by prominent philosophers, as well as learning about (but not necessarily reading the works of) a multitude of lesser philosophers. When learning philosophy this way, there is little to no connection between what you read and what your personal beliefs/opinions are. They might coincide or contradict with the material you deal with, but the purpose of studying the entire history of philosophical thought is to understand the way various ares of philosophy developed over time.
If you want to learn philosophy in order to further develop your own opinions on certain subjects, you can probably skip straight to contemporary philosophers who talk about what you're interested in, with just a short crash course (e.g. Wikipedia articles) on the background of that subject. For a very broad example, you might be interested in metaphysics In that case, background knowledge of someone highly influential like Kant would almost certainly be needed; and Kant's metaphysics are (partially) in response to people like Descartes, and so on back to Aristotle. Except if you're only interested in your contemporary philosopher, you only need to know very little about his/her influences in order to know what's going on, which is a really good thing, because fully understanding someone like Kant takes years of dedicated study.
As for the question of reinforcing your beliefs vs. challenging them, that's not really a problem. Almost every philosophical work is written in response to something (or everything) written before it. Moreover, many works will make direct references to other philosophers and their arguments, so you'll get a little bit of input from both sides. And if that interests you, you can go find the people who were mentioned and read their works too.
Finally, if you're mostly concerned about more "ordinary" or "everyday" philosophical issues (e.g. ethics), you honestly don't need any background information. It's useful and interesting to read what others think, but if I ask you if doing something is right or wrong, you're just as qualified as anyone else to give your opinion regardless of whether or not you can name drop famous philosophers to support your opinion.
Depends on what you mean by getting well educated in philosophy. If you mean the way it's taught in schools, you're looking at learning the history of (predominantly) Western philosophical thought. This involves reading a large variety of books by prominent philosophers, as well as learning about (but not necessarily reading the works of) a multitude of lesser philosophers. When learning philosophy this way, there is little to no connection between what you read and what your personal beliefs/opinions are. They might coincide or contradict with the material you deal with, but the purpose of studying the entire history of philosophical thought is to understand the way various ares of philosophy developed over time.
If you want to learn philosophy in order to further develop your own opinions on certain subjects, you can probably skip straight to contemporary philosophers who talk about what you're interested in, with just a short crash course (e.g. Wikipedia articles) on the background of that subject. For a very broad example, you might be interested in metaphysics In that case, background knowledge of someone highly influential like Kant would almost certainly be needed; and Kant's metaphysics are (partially) in response to people like Descartes, and so on back to Aristotle. Except if you're only interested in your contemporary philosopher, you only need to know very little about his/her influences in order to know what's going on, which is a really good thing, because fully understanding someone like Kant takes years of dedicated study.
As for the question of reinforcing your beliefs vs. challenging them, that's not really a problem. Almost every philosophical work is written in response to something (or everything) written before it. Moreover, many works will make direct references to other philosophers and their arguments, so you'll get a little bit of input from both sides. And if that interests you, you can go find the people who were mentioned and read their works too.
Finally, if you're mostly concerned about more "ordinary" or "everyday" philosophical issues (e.g. ethics), you honestly don't need any background information. It's useful and interesting to read what others think, but if I ask you if doing something is right or wrong, you're just as qualified as anyone else to give your opinion regardless of whether or not you can name drop famous philosophers to support your opinion.
I agree with most everything you said...but I think background knowledge is important anywhere you go. It's not so you can "name drop famous philosophers to support your opinion", but so you understand where that author is coming from, what s/he's responding to, what s/he's seen before, etc. Jumping right into modern day stuff is probably harder than the old classics. With stuff from back then, you have a finite set of books by one author who was trying to build something huge from the ground up on his own. Nowadays, projects arent nearly as big, and usually people are writing essays or sets of essays on one topic in response to something else, or to try to stir up more discussion in a single field. You aren't going to learn anything if you don't know the context from which he's writing.
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OP:
The most important thing to keep in mind when reading philosophy is to understand that it's not going to help any of your beliefs or ideological dispositions. It's only going to get them more confused and disoriented. Keeping an open mind is the most important thing to studying philosophy.
Things are constantly in flux in philosophy, especially with the way scholars communicate now (email and whatnot). Modern philosophy is broken down into many different subjects and subdivisions of them. How it works is basically...people come together and start writing/talking about those subjects. Then others come in and will contribute their own ideas to the pool of stuff. Then others still will come in and criticize current thought and the direction it's heading in, etc, and the pot of ideas in this subject area just gets bigger and bigger. Then when it approaches an area that people are generally satisfied with or can't find anything wrong with, people sort of stop talking about the subject and it kind of dies...until someone comes back in and stirs shit up again.
There's a lot of stuff going around right now. If you really want to get into the meaty stuff, I'd suggest finding a professor you can talk to to get your pointed in the right direction. The amount of literature there is in this field is absurd. I'm an undergraduate major in philosophy and I've studied this shit for four years and have taken more classes than my major's required and I still don't know shit, to be honest. It will take tons and tons of reading to get a decent background on any subject area. It will take years to become well versed in it.
The best way for you to start, provided you're not aiming to become a scholar in the field, would be to first find the stuff you're interested in, and figure out the big name works that are important for it.
Like say if you're interested in mind/body philosophy (mind and consciousness' relationship to brain and physical body etc), you'd want to start with Descartes, then jump to the 20th century where the action really started (likes of Nagel, Jackson, Dennett and the new wave of embodied mind or consciousness proponents). When you read one essay, look at the essays that guy refers to and cites in his. Then go and look into and read those. Then when you read those, look at the works they cite and refer to and look into those, etc.
). Personally, I would argue you shouldn't ever expect a single book or author to perfectly reflect the beliefs you hold or end up holding - in the course of reading around subjects that interest you you become better at thinking about them, and this is what ends up giving you new perspectives and beliefs.
