The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny
Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. And pessimists fear that might really be the case. But what is the best of all possible worlds? How do we define it? Is it the world that operates the most efficiently? Or the one in which most people are comfortable and content?
Chaotic Harmony: A Dialog About Physics, Complexity and Life
This fascinating book written by Ali Sanayei and Otto E. Rössler is not a classic scientific publication, but a vivid dialogue on science, philosophy and the interdisciplinary intersections of science and technology with biographic elements.
If you agree that there are lesser and greater evils and you agree that being imprisoned, enslaved and killed is worse than being imprisoned and killed then why believe that being vegetarian is better than only eating meat (and not other animal products)? If you only ate meat, you'd only be imprisoning and killing animals, but if you only non-meat animal products, then you're necessarily doing that and enslaving animals, which seems worse.
@philosophy If you have a hard time answering the question or if you think the two situations are the same, then ask yourself which one you'd rather be in: just imprisoned and eventually killed or also enslaved? Be honest.
I've been really enjoying these Hubert Dreyfus "Existentialism in Literature and Film" lectures. The ones on Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov are particularly illuminating.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." I wrote a piece about Isaiah Berlin's "The Hedgehog and the Fox," how he divides up thinkers and writers, and the effects of dichotomies like these https://bryankam.com/d2#literature#philosophy@philosophy@literature
"This Element examines some of their concerns. It uses evidence that critics of peer review sometimes cite to show its failures, as well as empirical literature on the reception of bullshit, to advance positive claims about how the assessment of scholarly work is appropriately influenced by features of the context in which it appears: for example, by readers' knowledge of authorship or of publication venue."
"The authors introduce the two main theoretical approaches in SM, Boltzmannian SM and Gibbsian SM, and discuss how they conceptualise equilibrium and explain the approach to it. In doing so, the authors examine how probabilities are introduced into the theories, how they deal with irreversibility, how they understand the relation between the micro and the macro level, and how the two approaches relate to each other."
The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest enigmas in the universe—the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind—and each in their own way uncovered a revelatory truth about our place in the world.
"In his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein claims, puzzlingly, that ‘the proof creates a new concept’ (RFM III-41). This paper aims to contribute to clarifying this idea, and to showing how it marks a major break with the traditional conception of proof."
At the heart of #Dewey's Reconstruction in Philosophy, written in the aftermath of WWI, re-prefaced in the wake of WWII, is an unabashed criticism of how professional #philosophy retreats from rather than openly inquires into the most urgent and present real world moral situations.
The Modern Idea of History and its Value: An Introduction
This is an original and accessible introduction to the modern idea of history and its value, and an indispensable companion to the study of history and its philosophical underpinnings.
I find myself not understanding the concept of atheism. Who wants to explain it to me in a coherent way for a beginner? With a metaphysical substantiation please, if that is at all possible.
@dingodog19@ber@cbontenbal@philosophy except evolutionary #philosophy shows us clearly how fairytales arise and can thrive. So there is evidence religion will arise without any truth to it.
Dont compromise with humbug.
"After introducing plural logic and its main applications, the book provides a systematic analysis of the relation between this logic and other theoretical frameworks such as set theory, mereology, higher-order logic, and modal logic."
"This book provides the first full history of phrenitis. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul, both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness', and their heritage in contemporary psychiatric ideas."