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Find books about General
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World Without
Design: The Ontological Consequence of
Naturalism
Philosophical naturalism, according to
which philosophy is continuous with the
natural sciences, has dominated the
Western academy for well over a century,
but Michael Rea claims that it is without
rational foundation. Rea argues
compellingly to the surprising conclusion
that naturalists are committed to
rejecting realism about material objects,
materialism, and perhaps realism about
other minds.
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Mind,
Language, and Society: Philosophy in the
Real World
John Searle's summation of earlier
writings is not just an essential tie-up
volume for existing readers; it is also a
perfect introduction to the work of one of
the clearest heads in the philosophy of
mind. Searle's book is a riposte to all
those academics who make a career out of
contradicting and complicating such
default positions as the existence of an
external reality, the reality of personal
consciousness, and the reasonable fit of
language to the perceived world.
Certainly, we should examine these
positions! But the first duty of
philosophy, Searle argues, is that it
should attempt to accommodate what is
known. As far as we can tell, for example,
consciousness is a biological product, but
there is a long-running contention between
the materialists--whose reductive
descriptions of consciousness arrive,
finally, at an embarrassed denial that
consciousness exists at all--and the
dualists, who cannot describe
consciousness without evoking some
supernatural involvement. Neither position
is tenable: each offers some corrective to
the other.
The good explanation is in there
somewhere, but the sheer intractability of
the debate won't let it be expressed. In
situations like this, Searle argues, it is
always the terms that are wrong--terms,
mind you, that in this case include
"matter," "mind," "physical," and
"mental." Searle--married as he is to
common sense--is of necessity one of our
most iconoclastic and creative
thinkers.
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Philosophy in
the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western
Thought
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson take on
the daunting task of rebuilding Western
philosophy in alignment with three
fundamental lessons from cognitive
science: the mind is inherently embodied,
thought is mostly unconscious, and
abstract concepts are largely
metaphorical. Why so daunting? "Cognitive
science--the empirical study of the
mind--calls upon us to create a new,
empirically responsible philosophy, a
philosophy consistent with empirical
discoveries about the nature of mind,"
they write. "A serious appreciation of
cognitive science requires us to rethink
philosophy from the beginning, in a way
that would put it more in touch with the
reality of how we think." In other words,
no Platonic forms, no Cartesian mind-body
duality, no Kantian pure logic. Even Noam
Chomsky's generative linguistics is
revealed under scrutiny to have
substantial problems.
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Introduction
to the Metaphysics of Thomas
Aquinas
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