Philosophy Recommendations

[arewethereyet]

A lot of atheists have only ever heard of an oversimplified, Sunday School version of Christian theology. To understand better the grownup's version of what you're rejecting, you can read Scholastic Metaphysics by Edward Feser and The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy by Christian Moevs. 

Wait, but you said that you are not a Christian, so what exactly is the point of atheists reading these Christian philosophers that you recommend? So that we see that we are right because they did not even persuade you.

The point of this sentence is to further bash the intellect of atheists and to throw out there some more of his oh-so-genius bragging about all the things he's read, done, seen, heard of.

Surprised there isn't an illegal link to what he thinks we simpletons should read.

[Istvan]

Markus Gabriel of the University of Bonn has been writing very astute and entertaining works of neo-existentialist philosophy like I Am Not a Brain and Why the World Does Not Exist for several years now, and as a result he's my favorite living philosopher. He's a pop-culture-savvy writer who mentions Larry David as often as Kant, and he believes philosophy is relevant to our lives and our understanding of science, religion, art and politics. 

Gabriel is associated with the New Realists but nevertheless acknowledges that scientism and neurocentrism are modern biases that constitute blind spots in our understanding. Don't let the provocative title mislead you. He's not saying reality isn't real or any such thing. What he's saying is that even things like unicorns exist in the set of "fictional creatures." The world, however, represents a totality that is as self-contradictory as square circles.

The prof seems a little nervous in his TED talk, but he's an amusing and engaging speaker.

[Angrboda]

[Belacqua]

Markus Gabriel of the University of Bonn has been writing very astute and entertaining works of neo-existentialist philosophy like I Am Not a Brain and Why the World Does Not Exist for several years now, and as a result he's my favorite living philosopher. He's a pop-culture-savvy writer who mentions Larry David as often as Kant, and he believes philosophy is relevant to our lives and our understanding of science, religion, art and politics. 

Gabriel is associated with the New Realists but nevertheless acknowledges that scientism and neurocentrism are modern biases that constitute blind spots in our understanding. Don't let the provocative title mislead you. He's not saying reality isn't real or any such thing. What he's saying is that even things like unicorns exist in the set of "fictional creatures." The world, however, represents a totality that is as self-contradictory as square circles.

The prof seems a little nervous in his TED talk, but he's an amusing and engaging speaker.

Oh, yeah, good choice. Gabriel is good.

There are still a lot of people who hold that the mind is nothing more than electro-chemical events in the brain, and Gabriel makes a strong case that their view is too simple. But he's also safe for atheists, in that he doesn't posit a deity at any point.

[Istvan]

Oh, yeah, good choice. Gabriel is good.

There are still a lot of people who hold that the mind is nothing more than electro-chemical events in the brain, and Gabriel makes a strong case that their view is too simple. But he's also safe for atheists, in that he doesn't posit a deity at any point.

Science fans seem to have the ability to play both sides of the coin. If there's a gene or neuron that can explain a phenomenon, they can explain it away as the inexorable algorithmic operation of material processes; if there's not, they simply dismiss it as an illusion and that's supposed to suffice as an explanation.

Glad to find someone else who appreciates Gabriel's oddball approach to academic philosophy. I was in a bookstore in Barcelona in 2015 when I ran across Why The World Does Not Exist. I admit the title alone was Istvan-bait, but aside from my initial misgivings about his anti-constructivist stance I found his work very well-developed and lucidly presented.

[Belacqua]

Science fans seem to have the ability to play both sides of the coin. If there's a gene or neuron that can explain a phenomenon, they can explain it away as the inexorable algorithmic operation of material processes; if there's not, they simply dismiss it as an illusion and that's supposed to suffice as an explanation.

Yes, it appears that this is where the real work needs to be done. The reductionist material view leaves too many things open, and adherence to it would demand that far too many things that are just obviously real would have to get thrown out. 

Glad to find someone else who appreciates Gabriel's oddball approach to academic philosophy. I was in a bookstore in Barcelona in 2015 when I ran across Why The World Does Not Exist. I admit the title alone was Istvan-bait, but aside from my initial misgivings about his anti-constructivist stance I found his work very well-developed and lucidly presented.

That's a great pleasure, isn't it? To run across a book out of the blue like that, that ends up changing the way you see things. 

The first time I did the student backpacking thing across Europe I drove my brother crazy by insisting on scouring every shelf in every bookstore. 

I'm far from expert on what Gabriel is describing. But it seems to exist in a kind of constellation with several other wonderful thinkers who are orbiting, or reacting to, German Idealism. For example Blake and Coleridge have fascinating theories about how the subject/object divide is overcome, so that we can know the Thing in Itself -- but not in a passive, analytical way. And of course it all has roots in Plotinus, as far as I can tell: "To see the sun the eye must become sun-like; to see beauty the beholder must become beautiful." 

Now I want to go back and read Gabriel again....

[HappySkeptic]

Markus Gabriel of the University of Bonn has been writing very astute and entertaining works of neo-existentialist philosophy like I Am Not a Brain and Why the World Does Not Exist for several years now, and as a result he's my favorite living philosopher. He's a pop-culture-savvy writer who mentions Larry David as often as Kant, and he believes philosophy is relevant to our lives and our understanding of science, religion, art and politics. 

Gabriel is associated with the New Realists but nevertheless acknowledges that scientism and neurocentrism are modern biases that constitute blind spots in our understanding. Don't let the provocative title mislead you. He's not saying reality isn't real or any such thing. What he's saying is that even things like unicorns exist in the set of "fictional creatures." The world, however, represents a totality that is as self-contradictory as square circles.

The prof seems a little nervous in his TED talk, but he's an amusing and engaging speaker.

Honestly, his presentation is crap.  If he were any type of physicist, he wouldn't say that the "world" of things doesn't contain concepts and relationships.  

All of physics is relationships.  That's all it is.  And human "concepts" describe relationships we perceive within the world, which must already exist for us to have "concepts" about them.

[Angrboda]

I'd argue he's right, but I can see how opinions may differ.

[Istvan]

Sorry I missed this.

Honestly, his presentation is crap. 

Solid opener!

If he were any type of physicist, he wouldn't say that the "world" of things doesn't contain concepts and relationships.  

All of physics is relationships.  That's all it is.  And human "concepts" describe relationships we perceive within the world, which must already exist for us to have "concepts" about them.

This definitely hinges on a chicken-or-egg kind of question about the properties of the universe and our concepts concerning the properties of the universe.

Your Platonic view is a common one with science fans: the laws of the universe were always there waiting for us to discover them and name them. It's essentially the Garden of Eden story, except with things like atoms and formulae instead of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. We need to acknowledge that what we know about phenomena and the order we "discover" in it involves a lot of effort by historically and culturally embedded agents. We've found ways to conceptualize natural phenomena that are useful to researchers, as well as lucrative for the corporate and military interests who employ them. But the fact that we still use terminology like order and forces and laws should make it clear what sort of ideological imperatives motivated the development of the modern scientific programs that created the knowledge base we have today.

Incidentally, I don't want to imply that Gabriel himself subscribes to this kind of constructivism; in fact, as a realist he goes out of his way to bash constructivism at every turn. But he certainly believes that science is a for-us-by-us construct rather than a portal to the eternal and unchanging Truth: The "external world" or nature or the "universe" are no longer privileged domains of facts when it comes to our grasp of what it means for something to exist. There are plenty of relevant and important concepts that wouldn't exist if we weren't here to create them.

[HappySkeptic]

If he were any type of physicist, he wouldn't say that the "world" of things doesn't contain concepts and relationships.  

All of physics is relationships.  That's all it is.  And human "concepts" describe relationships we perceive within the world, which must already exist for us to have "concepts" about them.

This definitely hinges on a chicken-or-egg kind of question about the properties of the universe and our concepts concerning the properties of the universe.

Your Platonic view is a common one with science fans: the laws of the universe were always there waiting for us to discover them and name them. It's essentially the Garden of Eden story, except with things like atoms and formulae instead of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. We need to acknowledge that what we know about phenomena and the order we "discover" in it involves a lot of effort by historically and culturally embedded agents. We've found ways to conceptualize natural phenomena that are useful to researchers, as well as lucrative for the corporate and military interests who employ them. But the fact that we still use terminology like order and forces and laws should make it clear what sort of ideological imperatives motivated the development of the modern scientific programs that created the knowledge base we have today.

Incidentally, I don't want to imply that Gabriel himself subscribes to this kind of constructivism; in fact, as a realist he goes out of his way to bash constructivism at every turn. But he certainly believes that science is a for-us-by-us construct rather than a portal to the eternal and unchanging Truth: The "external world" or nature or the "universe" are no longer privileged domains of facts when it comes to our grasp of what it means for something to exist. There are plenty of relevant and important concepts that wouldn't exist if we weren't here to create them.

His argument can be summed up as saying that there are an infinite number of ways to conceptualize relationships.  I'm not sure this is true, but it is certainly a huge set, if not infinite.

He then argues that these concepts are "actual reality", and do not exist in the underlying universe as "something in space-time".

From a scientific point of view, this makes no sense.

First, concepts can either be about "actual" observed relationships, or they can be about imagined relationships that do not exist.  Observed relationships, like the Earth being bigger than the Moon DO exist in spacetime.  

The philosophical Jiu-Jitsu of changing the words "observed relationship" to "concept" makes it seem like the relationship only exists in our mind.  No, the Earth is bigger than the Moon, and this affects their orbits, what objects fall into them, and results in the Moon not having an atmosphere.  Unless Gabriel is a Sophist, those relationships exist whether he thinks of the "concept" or not.

There is a tendency for religious (and it seems philosophers) to reject physical reductionism, because so many of the relationships we see in the world (especially involving living things) is difficult to explain in reductionist terms.  That is because of emergent properties.  State changes in systems, especially chaotic systems, result in properties that are only understandable in principle (though perhaps can't be calculated) from the reductionist principles, the description of the system, and knowledge of the past system state.

Yes, reductionism only gives you the to most basic tools on which all the interesting things get built up.  But, all those interesting things owe their existence to a complex mapping of fundamental quantum relationships.  Yes, the ways these interactions can combine are huge (though I don't think infinite). That doesn't mean those "actual observed" relationships do not already exist in the universe.