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Philosophy reading list

Does anyone know when I can expect to get sent it? I'm going to be at Catz, but the letter I got from them said the admissions office don't send out Philosophy lists, so I assume it's the faculty that does.

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Reply 1

Jigglypuff

Ozymandias

I have mine already from King's...so I think it must depend on the college. My reading list was from the DoS at King's anyway.

There are reading lists on the faculty website, but they differ from my King's one. I think the general gist is that you read what you want, but they have made some recommendations. Set texts are apparently likely to be Mill's 'On Liberty' and Hume's 'Dialogues'.

I'll post the King's reading list up for you when I have a bit more time :smile:

Reply 2

Ozymandias

Thanks

Maybe I should contact the college.

Reply 3

Rik_Rock

The list they send you before you come up is very little to do with the actual work you'll be covering. By all means read the set texts (this year it was Plato's Meno and Hume's Dialogues), but there's a completely separate reading list for each module you'll be having supervisions (and exams) on.

Nobody even asked me what I'd read before I came up, even though I'd gone through a couple books over summer. Just make the most of the long holiday before you have to get down to all the work :smile:

Reply 4

Jigglypuff

Yeah, I think aside from the set texts, the list is there mainly to make sure people have at least read some philosophy before arriving. Though I'm sure everyone will have read something before the interview anyway...

Reply 5

Adhsur

You can get it off the faculty website :smile:

Reply 6

Ozymandias

Thank you to one and all. I'm less worried now :smile:

Reply 7

Jigglypuff

I'll post the reading list up for you as promised anyway, as it's a bit different from the faculty one.

(Likely) set texts: Hume's 'Dialogues concerning Natural Religion' (OUP) and Mill's 'On Liberty' (many editions).

J L Ackrill's 'Aristotle the Philosopher' (Opus)
A J Ayer's 'Language, truth and logic' (Penguin)
Berkeley's 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous' (many editions)
Simon Blackburn's 'Think' and 'Being Good' (Oxford)
Tim Crane's 'The Mechanical Mind' (Penguin)
Descartes' 'Meditations' (many editions)
Ross Harrison's 'Democracy' (Routledge)
W Hodges' 'Logic' (Penguin)
Hume's 'Enquiries' (OUP)
Thomas Kuhn's 'The structure of scientific revolutions' (Univ of Chicago press)
T Nagel's 'What does it all mean?' (OUP)
Plato's 'Meno' (many editions)
Graham Priest's 'Logic' (Oxford)
Russell's 'The Problems of Philosophy' (OUP)
R M Sainsbury's 'Paradoxes' (CUP)
M Budd's 'Values of Art' (Penguin)

Happy reading :smile:

Reply 8

Ozymandias

Again, thanks. Have some rep (I've no idea whether you actually care about rep, but meh).

Reply 9

Reema

Of the above list, I'd recommend:

J L Ackrill's 'Aristotle the Philosopher' (Opus)
A J Ayer's 'Language, truth and logic' (Penguin)**
Berkeley's 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous' (many editions)
Simon Blackburn's 'Think' and 'Being Good' (Oxford)** (for Think, don't know about Being Good)
Tim Crane's 'The Mechanical Mind' (Penguin)**
Descartes' 'Meditations' (many editions)*
Ross Harrison's 'Democracy' (Routledge)
W Hodges' 'Logic' (Penguin)
Hume's 'Enquiries' (OUP)***
Thomas Kuhn's 'The structure of scientific revolutions' (Univ of Chicago press)
T Nagel's 'What does it all mean?' (OUP)
Plato's 'Meno' (many editions)**** (set text i believe)
Graham Priest's 'Logic' (Oxford)
Russell's 'The Problems of Philosophy' (OUP)**
R M Sainsbury's 'Paradoxes' (CUP)
M Budd's 'Values of Art' (Penguin)

As noted by a star. It's way too long!

Reply 10

Jigglypuff

Ozymandias

Again, thanks. Have some rep (I've no idea whether you actually care about rep, but meh).

Haha thanks. I would care about it, if I knew where the anonymous rep was coming from. I have some rep points but don't even know who from or which post it was in response to. :rolleyes:

Of the above list, I'd recommend:

I have read or bought a fair few of the ones you recommended :cool:

Thanks for the recommendations.

Reply 11

DC_1234

Jigglypuff

I'd have thought they'd have kept three going but On Liberty is definately being added and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion being kept. It seems odd not to have The Meno but maybe Dominic Scott is going away on sabatical or something. Not sure who'd be lecturing on Mill.

The list you posted categorised with comments.

Book's I've Never Heard Of (Which Doesn't Mean They're Bad)
------------------------------------------
J L Ackrill's 'Aristotle the Philosopher' (Opus)
M Budd's 'Values of Art' (Penguin)

Canonical 'Greats
-----------------
Plato's 'Meno' (many editions)
I'm not the guy to ask about translations from ancient greek, but I've always been a big fan of Penguin Classics: readable translations, decent introductions and a nice portable size. Plus you get the Protagoras for free.

Descartes' 'Meditations' (many editions)
What would happen if you decided to lock yourself away and figure out what you actually know for sure, beyond any doubt. Apparently, you'll figure out that there exists a maximally perfect creator of the universe and that your body is a piece of clockwork operated by a ghost in another realm through your pineal gland. Still, it's the idea of an investigation from first principles which is interesting here, not necessarily the conclusions, and Descartes is the starting point for a lot of debates and (arguably) for 'modern philosophy'.

Berkeley's 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous' (many editions)
I'll reserve comment except to say that you should feel under a certain obligation to acquaint yourself with the great philosophers writing in the english language, that Berkeley's Dialogues are very readable and that you can drive yourself bonkers trying to prove him wrong (or kick a stone, or take your hand out of your pocket... whatever).

Hume's 'Enquiries' (OUP)
I don't see why they didn't recommend the Treatise instead, which has the three-way appeal of being 1) Hume's first work and as such the starting point for his later thought 2) a more densely packed piece dealing with much of the material later covered in the two enquiries and then more on top of that and 3) having a certain air of tragedy to it as it went forgotten and ignored in Hume's own time (less so the enquiries which were at least read by academics).

Good Introductory Texts
-----------------------
Simon Blackburn's 'Think' and 'Being Good' (Oxford) ***** - If you were to stop reading this post right now and go out and buy, read and digest Simon's two 'very short introductions' (the former literally so) you would be a better person for it. Fantastic, fast paced, light hearted and stimulating. Definately a way to introduce yourself to the subject.

Russell's 'The Problems of Philosophy' (OUP) **** - People will keep on telling you that Russell is a bit of a whack-job but his prose remains some of the finest in English-language philosophy and the topics covered in his 'shilling shocker' include most of the core basic questions of epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic.

A J Ayer's 'Language, truth and logic' (Penguin) **** - Exciting at least. Ayer was (arguably) wrong about a lot of things, but once upon a time this was the single best book to read as a popular introduction to contemporary british philosophy, as contemporary british philosophy has moved on it's relevance has slipped perhaps to more of a historic interest. Well written, rigorously and passionately argued, but even it's author shied away from it, calling it a 'young man's book'. Nowadays you won't get many people calling themselves a verificationist except to say a 'sort of verificationist' or 'a kind of verificationist' or 'something losely akin to a verificationist'. Well worth reading and a useful introduction to many of the topics in the 1A tripos.

T Nagel's 'What does it all mean?' (OUP) ** - Meh. A nice little book, but at 100 pages in a fairly sizeable font intended to cover the full range of philosophy it cannot possibly hope to go into anything in much depth. It is great for what it is, but that might best be described as 'slim'. Fun though.

W Hodges' 'Logic' (Penguin) **** - I'm a little sad that Reema didn't rate it, as I'm pretty sure I've recommended it enough times to enough people that maybe someone would take me up on it. It's fantastic, quite simply, but for the fact that to my mind the early section on the structure of language can drag on a little. That's it. It even uses the same notaton you'll be using in 1A (except the biconditional IIRC). Plus, it is superior to the below in that it has exercises, which make sure you've actually absorbed what you've read.

Graham Priest's 'Logic: A Very Short Introduction' (Oxford) **** - A fantastic little book. What it should perhaps be called, in fact, is 'formal logic: a very short introduction' but it nevertheless constitutes a readable and fast pased intro to formal and even has sections on basic modal, non-classical and probabilistic logics towards the end. I'm not sure what else to say but buy this book.

Good Texts for Specific Topics
-----------------------------
Thomas Kuhn's 'The structure of scientific revolutions' (Univ of Chicago press) - A major work in the philosophy of science and probably a good starting point from the whole 'locus classicus' standpoint, nevertheless I'd have probably suggested that Okasha's Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction probably fit the bill better as an introduction. I suppose it depends if you like to 'dive into the deep end' or not, but be warned that Kuhn can and has been read in a lot of different ways by a lot of different people.

Tim Crane's 'The Mechanical Mind' (Penguin)
I'm aware of it, I've heard good things about it. I haven't actually read it yet (slap on wrist). You should consider doing so.

R M Sainsbury's 'Paradoxes' (CUP)
An excellent and sadly neglected (as far as I can see) little book on many of the 'famous great paradoxes of old'. It's nothing but a shame that paradoxes aren't actually part of the tripos anymore (as far as I remember) but they're certainly worth looking into if you get a kick out of logic. I'm not really sure I agree with Sainsbury's take on Zeno though.

Ross Harrison's 'Democracy' (Routledge)
Excellent for an introduction to the history of political thought (though it makes no attempt, I wouldn't have said, to give total coverage) and superb on many of the philosophical issues surrounding the concept of democracy, I'm not really sure though why it's on an introductory list. At the risk of losing Dr Harrison a sale, I would hold off on buying it as it is one of the (few, so far) books available to read online on the cambridge network as an ebook.

Something has gone wrong here. I feel it my duty to add the following:

Mackie - Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong
The book that features in almost all the reading lists in 1A Ethics, IIRC, certainly deserves a mention. A thin paper back hides what is in fact a dense and wide ranging discussion aimed at the more-or-less general interested reader to try and argue the point that - not to be oversimplifying here - ethical discourse is basically rubbish. In the process it introduces the reader to many of the major strains of normative and metaethical thought and argues for a conclusion a lot of people would find unacceptable.

Searle - Mind: A Brief Introduction or The Mystery of Consciousness
Both manage to be good introductions to the Philosophy of Mind from a very controversial figure in the field. The former, is more of a textbook and more formal. It includes arguments and conclusions I vehemently disagree with, but also extensive references.

Dennett - Consciousness Explained
Dennett is wrong... about scaleras not filling in. He is right about everything else. Repeat as often as needed to get the mantra going: 'Dennett is right about everything, Dennett is right about everything, Dennett is...'. Seriously though, whether you like him or not Dennett's book is an example of contemporary, popular philosophy at its best, as well as serving as a decent (albeit, not 'balanced') introduction to philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology... and to psychology for that matter. And Dennett. Every list should have an introduction to Dennett.

Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy
Probably the best short, readily available general introduction there is to political philosophy going. It has recently been revised, which means you won't get to enjoy the experience of sitting on a train reading a book with naked men wrestling on the over. If you think political philosophy might be 'your thang' then be sure to look out A Swift's introduction when you get here, but at £16 you're as well just to wait and get it out your college library.

Blackburn - Truth
What's that you say 'I have so much time on my hands, I don't know what to do with it. I just wish one of the Cambridge Professors wrote a popular work which wasn't just about 'philosophy in general'; something I could use to really stick it to the SPS students that think continental philosophy isn't an oxymoron.' - Look no further, folks. Simon Blackburn's Truth is the book for you.

Grayling - Philosophy: A Guide Through Subject
Your college will have them (if not the faculty has something like five of each), but they are useful to have and regularly come up second hand on ebay. They are what they say on the tin: fairly comprehensive guides to the various topics of philosophy, written by various individuals active in the field: for example the section on philosophical logic is written by Mark Sainsbury, Ethics by Bernard Williams, Philosophy of Science by Papineau, Philosophy of Mathematics byl Dummett, Philosophy of Psychology by Block and Philosophy of Language by Chris Peacocke. At the cost second hand of about six pints per volume you could do a lot worse things with your money (like... buy twelve pints with it).

Smith - Formal Logic
As this will probably be the set text for logic again next year you might want to look at acquiring a copy, though your college parents/2nd years will quite probably be willing to sell/give you their copy as they won't especially need it any more. It's pretty good, but not very playful which is a shame as it's author certainly has a sense of humour.

There are, needless to say, more - many more. But I'd question their relevance on an 'introductory list'. Mind you, I'd also question the above works I haven't heard of. Since when did an introductory list include aesthetics but only have one book on ethics? Why the lack of any general history of philosophy books (of which there is no lack: Russell, Magee, Durant, Tarnas, Monk & Raphael's series, the Very Short Introductions series, Magees books of interviews....) and since when did a book on Aristotle which sells for £20 on Amazon come before something a little more conventional like Guthrie?

Reply 12

Jigglypuff

Thanks for your input...am I right in thinking the Grayling book is the fat yellow one? That took me the whole of Easter to read. It was a good read though, except for the logic section. Let's just say logic is at least one exam I will fail if I get my grades this year.

With regard to your comments at the end, I'm guessing they didn't put the general history of philosophy books in because they are less useful in teaching someone how to think philosophically? It was a reading list from King's, so quite possibly it doesn't reflect completely what the faculty as a whole want us to read.

Reply 13

DC_1234

Jigglypuff

Actually that confuses me even more. As the list is from King's I assume Halvard had a role in its construction but I can't see why Halvard wouldn't have had 1) more ethics and 2) Kant's Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. I know he was recommending it (2) to people at the open day, so he obviously doesn't think it's at too high a level for people who aren't here yet. 'Tis a puzzle.

Reply 14

Reema

Duncan, I'm pretty sure (if I recall correctly from conversations with Kings people) that Hallvard isn't actually a DoS at Kings...although that might be way off. I was surprised with regard to the sparsity of Ethics - particularly the Mackie book (crucial reading IMO).

The Hodges book never really clicked with me - I got very bored reading it. I certainly don't think it's essential for the first year, but then I never really loved or was much good at formal logic all that much. I much prefer philosophical logic....

In fact, having gone through the 2nd year - any suggestions for reading? I got recommendations from Arif for Logic & Metaphysics, but am probably going to do Politics and Ethics as well (still stuck on whether I should do ancient philosophy or not)...ideas..?

Reply 15

Jigglypuff

Reema

Duncan, I'm pretty sure (if I recall correctly from conversations with Kings people) that Hallvard isn't actually a DoS at Kings...although that might be way off

I'm obviously not at Cambridge yet, but on all the letters I've received and any website I've seen he has been listed as the DoS for King's. :confused:

Reply 16

DC_1234

Jigglypuff

I'm obviously not at Cambridge yet, but on all the letters I've received and any website I've seen he has been listed as the DoS for King's. :confused:

He's listed as such in the handbook, but that's not necessarily incompatible with what Reema was saying; it's possible he was on sabbatical for some or all of last year. I saw him around Cambridge a couple of times in May Week though.

Reema

Ethics:
Actually we're in the same boat for ethics as while I didn't do it in my... er... 'first second year', I'm going to do it in my second (political in IB seemed to deal with meatier subjects so it won out over ethics and I wanted to do psych so couldn't take both). I'd say as Hume's Enquiry is required reading it's pretty much a nobrainer to familiarise yourself with it, and it's never a bad time to read Parfit's Reasons and Persons. Aside from that I'm really not sure. I'd suggest Miller's An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics, but I'm looking at one of Cambridge's four/five copies right now in Glasgow - the philosophy faculty's ones are checked out and the UL is not really an option for a second year. If you haven't read Warnock's Contemporary Moral Philosophy I'd recommend it, and Williams seems to be quite important in the IB tripos, so I'd suggest Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy as a fair overview of his work and maybe 'Philosophy Now: Bernard Williams'. Aside from that possibly Smith's 'The Moral Problem' but, you know, you are allowed not to read everything during the holidays.

Hume: Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Warnock: Contemporary Moral Thinking
Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
Parfit: Reasons and Persons
Smith: The Moral Problem

Political Philosophy:
There are two really good 'general' introductions to political philosophy (well maybe more, but two that I know of) - Wolff's and Miller's Very Short Introduction to. Really important is Adam Swift's book called something like 'An Introduction to Political Philosophy': it covers pretty much all the topics at the right level. If you can get a hold of that it would be really useful. Erm... There's the two 'contemporary classics' Rawls' 'A Theory of Justice' and Nozick's 'Anarchy, State and Utopia' but as the latter is a required text in the IB tripos I'd make it your priority (though curiously only part I of it). If you're still in Cambridge, try and get your hands on 'Reading Nozick' as it's a really handy collection of responses to ASU (and maybe Nozick's other writings - I don't remember). IIRC the SPS faculty has four copies or so and the Casmyr Lewy has two. There are lots of compilations of articles on the various topics (e.g. every book on Liberty is required to be called 'Liberty' by the cosmos) but they should probably wait. The really important articles to wrap your head around are probably (listed at the bottom, though with incomplete citations). ((Oh and this is maybe the time to push Simmon's 'Moral Principles and Political Obligations' which is awesome but not very prominent in the reading list). You should definately consider taking Politcal as it's a nice wide ranging though well integrated course and there's every chance you'll get Martin O'Neill as a supervisor (he's awesome).

Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy
Swift - Political Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide
Nozick - Anarchy, State and Utopia
Various - 'Reading Nozick'
Rawls - A Theory of Justice

Berlin: 'Two Concepts of Liberty' - might be able to get it online, if not find a copy of 'Four Essays on Liberty' or... any anthology of articles about Liberty.
Rawls: 'Two Concepts of Rules' PR 1955 and 'Justice as Fairness' PR 1958.
Dworkin: 'What is Equality 1: Equality of Welfare' and 'What is Equality 2: Equality of Resources' PPA 1981
MacCallum: 'Negative and Positive Freedom' PR 1976

Metaphysics:

Could you maybe send me Arif's list? I'd be interested to find out what he thinks are the priority ones. I'm probably not the person to ask about IB Metaphysics as I did extended essays, one on Consciousness and one on Truth. I could give you a ridiculously long list of books on Philosophy of Mind if you want but for Truth I pretty much stuck to Simon's book, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, stuff on Peirce (I got interested in modifying Peirce's account of convergence, only to learn Williams had got there first :frown:

) and what was in Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Truth (edited by Simon and... shoot, I don't remember. Look up Blackburn and Truth on Amazon and you'll get 'em both. For mind the best thing you can do is get a hold of Searle's new 'Introduction' or Maslin's Philosophy of Mind (don't get me wrong - I love Peter Smith, but I think there are better PoM introductions out there), Dennett's Consciousness Explained and the anthology on philosophy of mind by David Rosenthal which has some of the older stuff which is on the IB tripos missing from Chalmers.

Blackburn & ?: Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Truth
Blackburn: Truth

Searle: Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction
Maslin: Philosophy of Mind
Dennett: Consciousness Explained
Rosenthal: Philosophy of Mind

Also Dennett's 'Quining Qualia' is important to the whole Qualia debate, and is available IIRC online.

Logic:
Again, Arif's recommendations are always gratefully recieved. The thing you have to remember about IB logic is that you only answer questions on three topics out of a possible nine in the exam, so it really depends on what you'd be interested in doing. In any case....

Names and Reference:
Frege: Uber Sinn und Bedeutung / On Sense and Reference
Russell: On Denoting and On Refering
Kenny: Frege - think of it as 'Frege: A Very Short Introduction'
Kripke: Naming and Necessity
Evans: Varieties of Reference - not sure if it's on the reading list, but very good.
Kremer: 'The Argument of On Denoting' PR 1994 - VERY good, very long article about the Gray's Elegy argument.

Modal Logic and Possible Worlds:
Loux: The Possible and the Actual - collection of articles
Lewis: On the Plurality of Worlds
Jackson & Priest: Lewisian Themes - a neat book on Lewis.
Hughes & Cresswell: A New Introduction to Modal Logic (cause in some possible world everyone loves modal logic and so everyone loves modal logic in some possible world).

Other stuff:
I didn't do anything on intentions and speech acts the first time around, but I'd say How to Do Things with Words (Austin), Speech Acts (Searle) and Spreading the Word (Simon - with hippy hair on the back cover!) can't hurt.

Non-Classical Logics by Priest is a good textbook on... er... Non-Classical Logics. Priest if you remember is, among other things, the guy that wrote Logic: A Very Short Introduction. Also Haack Philosophy of Logics is, if you've not yet come accross it, very very good.

Option Choices:
Pick experimental pychology! But seriously, I'm not the guy to speak to about the history papers because... I don't really like them. As a concept I mean. I dunno... I'm not dead against them or anything, and can certainly see a merit in them, I'd just think the history bits would be as well being integrated with the actual subject papers which are probably more 'important' (let's say)
than 'history of'. As you only have two options doing 'History of...' seems like a bit of a waste, but then I'm not trying to argue it, I'm just saying how I feel personally.

Reply 17

Reema

Thanks Duncan :smile:

. Arif's recommendations were very brief but they are:

Chalmers - The Conscious Mind
Block - Troubles with Functionalism (article)
Lewis - Mad Pain and Martian Pain (article)
Davidson - Essays on Actions and Events
Berkeley - Essays and Principles (both)

He went a little 'mind' happy.

For logic his recommendations were, as you yourself wrote:
Frege: Uber Sinn und Bedeutung / On Sense and Reference
Russell: On Denoting
Kenny: Frege

He also recommended:
Blackburn: Spreading the Word (as a general intro to Philosophy of Language)

Reply 18

DC_1234

Chalmers - The Conscious Mind

A good book because IMHO it argues rigorously and clearly for an absurd conclusion (or perhaps that should be 'a conclusion which entails absurd things' - vis Searle and to a certain extent Chalmers make a pretty good case that Chalmer's property dualism entails panpsychism which... is pretty absurd in and of itself but furthermore appears to suffer from the same problem as epiphenomenalism - that by it's definition of consciousness I wouldn't know if I was conscious or not). Probably a good way to get properly into the recent stuff in the field.*

Block - Troubles with Functionalism (article)
Lewis - Mad Pain and Martian Pain (article)

Yeah, they're pretty much key articles in the whole 'what, if anything, is wrong with functionalism', along with 'What Mary Didn't Know' by Frankfurt, though as I understand it he has recently changed his position to something of a Higher Order Theory. Shoemaker has also written a lot of stuff on what is known as the Inverted Qualia argument, and most of the various functionalismy, qualiaish stuff has an article by Block on the subject.

Davidson - Essays on Actions and Events

As far as I understand Davidson's Anomalous Monism it seems pretty 1) facile and 2) banal. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume I've just misunderstood him by not giving him the care and attention due. I'm overdue to have a long and quite read through his stuff, but for the moment it seems that Davidson's work is a little... 'over there'; disconnected from the actual debates about actual things which actually matter. I made the mistake of dismissing Rorty without giving him a proper shot, so I'm making a point not to do it with Davidson but... well see what you think. As it strikes me so far Anomalous Monism appears to boil down to 'there are two sets of descriptions we can use to talk about minds which are irreducible to each other but basically about the same stuff' which is 1) probably true, 2) pretty simple and 3) leaves one with a profound feeling of 'yeah, so what??' I mean if that is the 'theory' then it ain't really a theory 'cause it hasn't said anything. Perhaps it has more meat seen in context with the rest of Davidson's work, my knowledge of which is, embarassingly, zero.

Berkeley - Essays and Principles (both)

Hmmmm.... Arif likes Berkeley which makes me think I should like him a little more than I do. This is one of those 'What Arif says goes' I think, but I wouldn't say it was an integral work vis a vis the cutting edge of philosophy of mind.

He went a little 'mind' happy.

For logic his recommendations were, as you yourself wrote:
Frege: Uber Sinn und Bedeutung / On Sense and Reference
Russell: On Denoting
Kenny: Frege

Frege and Russell's articles are near enough set texts, and Kenny's book strikes a good balance between too basic (random notes you get online) and too complex (Dummett?). Noonan's is of a similar standard/level (I'd say) to Kenny's but Kenny's is probably easier/cheaper to obtain. Frege's Letter to Jourdain is one to look at if you're having problems figuring out just what exactly Frege is trying to say. It makes a good companion to On Sense and Reference. It's in Moore's Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Naming and Reference and also The Frege Reader.

He also recommended:
Blackburn: Spreading the Word (as a general intro to Philosophy of Language)

Yeah. Also Lycan's book is pretty good (I think it's just called 'Philosophy of Language', but you'll recognise the series its in).

*Simply put it goes a little something like this: under epiphenomenalism consciousness is a thing which supervenes upon the actual functional/causal stuff going on in my head. Unfortunately the stuff going on in my head is both in reality and under epiphenomenalism the thing which is operating when I comment about my consciousness and say 'oooh - I have consciousness'. In a manner of speaking, regardless of what consciousness is, it is the causal/functional stuff in my head which does the knowing, commenting and speaking. Thus this thing which speaks couldn't know if I am conscious or not and so an end result of epiphenomenalism is that if it is true I would not know if I was conscious or not. Thus the epiphenomenalist must turn to either dualism 1) consciousness is phenomenal, but two ways or 2) physicalism of some ilk.** The same seems to be true of property dualism to me, at least so far. I've not given it enough thought to firmly committ to it yet, but it seems that if mental properties are supervenient upon the causal arrangement of the world the same applies as with epiphenomenalism a fortiori - that is, if 'zombies' were able to act like us in every way they would have to think they were conscious too as that appears to be a function of the causal/physical dimension and not the mental one. If this is true I would not know if I were a zombie or not as there would be no discernable difference for me, the me that matters, down here on the ground where I think, and type, and speak and conclude. Consciousness might be floating about up there but I wouldn't know about it.

**Thoroughly irritatingly I came up with this argument/conclusion all on my lonesome (to my knowledge at least) only to later find out that Dennett knows and is aware of the same argument. This keeps happening to me (see previous mention of Williams on Peircean style convergence)! For Dennett's take see his Meaning of Life TV interview here: http://meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=dennett&topic=complete (Regardless of how he may come accross in the interview, Robert Wright isn't all bad - his book The Moral Animal is well worth a read. Just no one could look good next to Dennett.)

Reply 19

FadedJade

i really hope On Liberty is a set text, i studied it at A level and adored it, i really like Language Truth and Logic aswell, sorry this is only a quick note - but hi from Florence!

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