PhiloComp: Philosophy and Computing The Best Textbooks on Every Subject For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff's Notes. How inefficient! I've since discovered that textbooks are usually the quickest and best way to learn new material. That's what they are designed to be, after all. But textbooks vary widely in quality. What if we could compile a list of the best textbooks on every subject? Let's do it. There have been other pages of recommended reading on Less Wrong before (and elsewhere), but this post is unique. Post the title of your favorite textbook on a given subject.You must have read at least two other textbooks on that same subject.You must briefly name the other books you've read on the subject and explain why you think your chosen textbook is superior to them. I'll start the list with three of my own recommendations... Subject: History of Western Philosophy
Navarasas Human life is a rich fabric that is given colour and texture by the many happenings that shape it. The mundane actions that characterize every day as well as the extraordinary happenings that make and keep our lives interesting are all threads that get woven together to form this tapestry. The one thing that is common to all these threads is the fact that they evoke feelings in us, we respond to them with our emotions before they can become a part of our internal life. Thus it is not surprising that most performing art, which tries to present to the viewer a slice of human life focuses precisely on these rasas, or emotions in order to appeal to the audience. Shringara Shringara means love and beauty. Hasya Hasya it the rasa used to express joy or mirth. Bhibatsya Bhibatsya is disgust. Rowdra Rowdra is anger and all its forms. Shanta Shanta is serenity and peace. Veera Veera is heroism. Bhaya Bhaya is fear. Karuna Karuna is grief and compassion. Adbhuta Adbhuta is wonder and curiosity.
Glossary of philosophy A glossary of philosophy. A[edit] the position that in a particular domain of thought, all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false: none is true for some cultures or eras while false for other cultures or eras. These statements are called absolute truths. A common reaction by those who newly criticize absolutism is the absolute truth statement: Absolute truths do not exist. Enlightened absolutisma form of governing by rulers who were influenced by the Enlightenment (18th-century and early 19th-century Europe).Moral absolutismthe position that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act.Political absolutisma political theory that argues that one person should hold all power. Absurdism philosophy stating that the efforts of man to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because no such meaning exists (at least in relation to man). Acosmism
Great Books Lists: Lists of Classics, Eastern and Western As seen in A Guide to Oriental Classics, Whole Earth magazine, Winter 2002. (A revised version of the article is available at author Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site.) This page: Introduction | Western Canon | Eastern and World Canons | Contemporary Canon | Other Lists of Great Books | My Reading Lists | Indexes to these Great Books Lists Introduction Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) What are the Great Books? Western Canon Eastern and World Canons Approaches to the Asian Classics. Contemporary Canon Other Lists of Great Books Other Lists of Great Books - An annotated bibliography of some other sources of Great Books lists, both in books and on the Web My Reading Lists My Reading Lists (Ancient Near East, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, China, Middle Ages) Indexes to these Great Books Lists
What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit? | 2011 Annual Question | Edge James Flynn has defined "shorthand abstractions" (or "SHA's") as concepts drawn from science that have become part of the language and make people smarter by providing widely applicable templates ("market", "placebo", "random sample," "naturalistic fallacy," are a few of his examples). His idea is that the abstraction is available as a single cognitive chunk which can be used as an element in thinking and debate. The Edge Question 2011 The term 'scientific"is to be understood in a broad sense as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great people in history, or the structure of DNA. [Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Daniel Kahneman for advice on its presentation.] 165 CONTRIBUTORS (115,000 words): Daniel Kahneman, Richard Dawkins, V.S. Paul Jáuregui This year, the question posed by Edge was: "What scientific concept improve our cognitive tools?". ... [Continue] DIE ZEIT January 20, 2011
Process philosophy Process philosophy (or ontology of becoming) identifies metaphysical reality with change and development. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have posited true reality as "timeless", based on permanent substances, while processes are denied or subordinated to timeless substances. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, whereas the substance is essential. Therefore, classic ontology denies any full reality to change, which is conceived as only accidental and not essential. History[edit] In Ancient Greek thought[edit] An early expression of this viewpoint is in Heraclitus's fragments. Twentieth century[edit] Process thought describes truth as "movement" in and through determinates (Hegelian truth), rather than describing these determinates as fixed concepts or "things" (Aristotelian truth). Whitehead's Process and Reality[edit]
Winter Is Coming | Opinion For a show filled with fire-breathing dragons and Machiavellian politics, Game of Thrones is surprisingly rich with economic metaphors that resemble the world we live in. To start, although the Seven Kingdoms of the Westoros continent, where the saga unfolds, have the social and technological characteristics of medieval Europe, its economy ebbs and flows like the modern business cycle. Seasons on the continent lasts years. For an agrarian society, summer is like an economic boom and winter is like an economic depression. The grumpy old characters often deride the young ones as “summer children,” who have not experienced the hardship of a prolonged winter. The wise Northmen’s motto? And just like the fictional long winter, everyone knows that the economic depression is coming—but no one knows when. The economy of the Seven Kingdoms reached a sorry state during the show. But the fate of the Seven Kingdoms was perhaps sealed before the show’s start. Jonathan Z.
Responses | 2011 Annual Question | Edge There's a lot of stuff in the world: trees, cars, galaxies, benzene, the Baths of Caracalla, your pancreas, Ottawa, ennui, Walter Mondale. How does it all fit together? In a word… Supervenience. Supervenience is a shorthand abstraction, native to Anglo-American philosophy, that provides a general framework for thinking about how everything relates to everything else. Supervenience is a relationship between two sets of properties. This definition, while admirably precise, makes it hard to see what supervenience is really about, which is the relationships among different levels of reality. The pixels and the image are, in a very real sense, the same thing. The concept of supervenience deserves wider currency because it allows us to think clearly about many things, not just about images and pixels. It would seem that humanists and scientists study different things. There is a sense in which a TOE really is a TOE, and there is a sense in which it's not.
Carnet philosophique Books that should be read before starting a Ph.D. in economics « Mostly Economics Ajay Shah points to some books one should read before starting a PHD in economics: I thought it’s useful to pick a set of books that touch on the great themes of the world, often going into troublesome terrain that the models aren’t very good at, so as to lay a foundation of background knowledge and historical knowledge which can pave the way to usefully assimilating what’s taught in the economics Ph.D. Of course, they should be books that are fun to read and un-putdownable. Here’s my suggested compact checklist of books worth reading. Please do suggest books, and disagree with this list, in the comments to this post. He says one could disagree/add more books on the comments section. Like this: Like Loading...