I am interested to get a few new names to look into. I am somewhat bored with the likes of the old school philosophers and am hoping that you guys may know of some intriguing new (non-political) philosophers. Please feel free to leave a link or web address.
Try:
Daniel Dennett
Donald Davidson
W.V.O. Quine
Saul Kripke
Hilary Putnam
Just go to google.com and type in those names.
im gonna slap myself for asking this very superficial question… but what is the ‘position’ of contemporary philosophy, ie, what is philosophy concentrated upon in this day? who, in the future, do you think would embodify philosophy of our time?
Matt Ridley
The most important contemporary Philosopher is Matt Ridley for writing The Red Queen.
amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de … 4?v=glance
Quine’s a tough one though and not one to read if you don’t like logic.
How about Sartre? Or is that not contemporary enough? Parfit’s good as well, but I’m a bit obsessed with him at the mo as I’ve just been reading his work over and over again as I’m thinking of writing a website on personal identity and he’s pretty much the authority on it at the moment as far as I can tell.
Thanks for the suggestions guys, I have enjoyed them, so keep them coming.
Warrior Monk,
I checked out the first few pages of Matt Ridley’s Red Queen and found the introduction interesting. What would you say that makes him different from other psychological theorists of today? Has he made any interesting assumptions that stand out from current paradigms? Thanks for the suggestion.
Matt,
Weren’t you going to post your essay on Parfit’s Personal Identity theory? I’m still waiting. Reasons and Persons is one of my favorites although I skipped through much of the first half of the book. ‘Self-defeating theories’ and ‘Rationality and Time’ were just a little dry. 
Thanks to Kennethamy and Metavoid as well, although I must admit I have yet to look into your suggestions yet. I will as soon as I get a chance.
The outstanding thing about Ridley is not his originality. The Truth tends to be unoriginal and banal and timeless (e.g. 2+2=4). As Ridley writes in the Acknowledgements, “This book is crammed with original ideas – very few of them my own.” He continues, “Science writers become accustomed to the feeling that they are intellectual plagiarists, raiding the minds of those who are too busy to tell the world about their discoveries. There are scores of people who could have written all the chapters. My role has been to connect the patches of others’ reasearch together into a quilt.”
The outstanding thing about Ridley is his synthesis. A True genius and a True philosopher.
Skeptic - Yes I was, I forgot all about that. Ermm, let me find it, it’ll probably be up in a day or so. I might have to rehash it a bit as the beginning wasn’t very good.
Matt,
Has parfit added anything to his theory since the 80’s when he wrote the book? In fact, has he written a follow-up concerning personal identity?
Besides Matt Ridley, I would say Bill Joy for writing Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us.
Bill Joy
Raymond Kurweil for writing The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Ray Kurzweil
Hans Moravec for writing Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind.
Hans Moravec
And George Dyson for writing Darwin Among the Machines.
edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson/dyson_p1.html
George Dyson
Skeptic - Not that I’ve found so far but I haven’t looked all that hard yet. Last time I looked Parfit’s website doesn’t list his publications and that was the only attemot I’ve made, spent most of my time reading abjections and discussions about parfit, there’s a few articles listed in the bibliography of the essay, but to be honest I’d be very surprised if he hadn’t published more.
nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/facu … index.html
There are the online papers of NYU where I think Parfit teaches, there’s some damn good philosophers listed there all of which teach at NYU I think, Hartry Field, Ned Block, Dworkin, Crispin Wright, Thomas Nagel. No Parfit papers though, but he’s listed as a regular visitor rather than F/T. Depends what fields you’re interested in.
First off, AC Grayling is an unoriginal piece of eurotrash, in my opinion. He says nothing new, and he does not challenge contemporary thought at all. He’s a historian who is very good at reguritating what others have stated in a way that it sounds new. Yuck.
It’s funny, I, in general, feel this way about most contemporary philosophers, but the ONE “philosopher” (in so far as a mathematician can be) that has had the greatest influence on my way of thinking is Stephen Wolfram. His evidence of apparent randomness and descrete systems grids leaves me awestruck as the best proof for hard determinism ever. I’d greatly recommend read A New Kind of Science.
Wolfram changes everything…
Having never heard of Wolfram till now I took a quick look at the website. Immediatly I thought “Charlatan!”. Turns out he’s not, educated at Oxford nonetheless! Then a quick look at what the book is about and I’m thinking, hmmm, complex systems out of simple rules on a computer, where have I read that before?? Oh yeah, Dawkins (again!), in the blind watch maker.
So I decide on a little further investigation, type in “Wolfram objections” in ask.co.uk, lo and behold a whole plethora of objections to his work from scientists all over the world with accusations that it’s all been done before, his reasoning is shoddy, he doesn’t understand the fundamental arguments behind natural selection, etc. etc. etc.
He doesn’t present any evidence for determinism that stand up to proper philosophical and scientific query. He’s the scientific equivalent of Ayn Rand, an arrogant bullshitter who has focused on one specfic system and then jumped to a hell of a lot of conclusions because they’re not properly educated in the other fields that they try and dip their toes into.
Scientists who are also entrepeneurs are very dangerous individuals, the media may love him, but the scientific world is appreciative for parts of his work, but scathing about the rest.
Always read with a skeptical eye.
As for Grayling, what exactly is wrong with summarising all the previous work in a field so that it can easily be picked up by someone else without them having to read 100s of books? Surely that’s commendable?
Not all academics have to produce wholly new thought, they are teachers as well don#t forget and sometimes they give most valuable contributions by presenting saubjects to others in an easily understandable way.
Nothing’s wrong with it, but in my opinion, that does not make one a philosopher. It makes them a philosophical historian. Perhaps it’s a term issue for me.
I’ve read the book, I don’t agree with the views you found. Type “Nietzsche objections” in the happy go lucky search engine and I’m sure you’ll find just as much against his stance. shrugs
As for Dawkings, Dawkings did NOT do what Wolfram did. Dawkings showed closed systems, using a simple lifegen-esque type program, and tried to prove a particular result 100% of the time.
Wolfram worked backwards from Dawkings. He didn’t try to prove a result, he analyzed results. So you take this simple ruleset structure, make simple rules for it, and let it run. Take those results, view them, and classify the results. In otherwords, he didn’t play god and try to manufacture his own reality, he played man and showed how god manufactures reality.
To be even more specific, in Dawking’s trials, he attempted to make a ruleset that would produce a particular phrase through simple rules. “Methinks it is a weasel.” being his famous one.
Wolfram, on the other hand, created thousands of rulesets and base conditions, let them run, and then he, himself, stated, “This looks like a snowflake, doesn’t it?” See the difference? Dawkings attempted to play god, Wolfram attempted to play man.
Hence why Wolfram’s work speaks as evidence for hard determinism. Guess what, Wolfram never came out and said “I am attempting to prove hard determinism”…he… just… did! Well, he didn’t, but he provided clear evidence that hard determinism is rationally and scientifically sound.
Naysayers can nitpick his work all they want, I think the man in brilliant in his mindset, if even his methods are nothing new.
At the moment I don’t actually see the difference that you are talking about, of course if you run thousand of base sets some of them are going to look like a snowflake. Humans are very good at noticing patterns that vaguely match recognisable pictures, it’s what kept us alive. Dawkins pointed that out himself.
And unless I’ve got a really bad memory there would be absolutely no point at all to running a Wolframesque experiment for evolution, evolution doesn’t get to test run thousands of base programs and see what works best, it gets to create an ever increasing number from a single instance that grows more different from the parent with each generation. Rather than scattering thousands of seeds, it grows one tree, losing branches along the way.
I can’t talk too much, not having read his work, but I think it sounds like there’s been some pretty big conclusion jumping been done and I HAVE seen the errors that Wolfram made, and let me tell you, they’re so shockingly schoolboy I wouldn’t take his word for anything other than his specialist area. And complex seemingly geometric patterns from simple rules is pretty much a given, that’s been known about for quite some time.
I see…so you probably read THIS article. This one is much better.
It ignores, however, many MANY key points. For instance, Wolfram’s concept of “apparent randomness” is extremely well grounded. When one considers the idea that nothing is, in fact, random, then this DOES impact evolutionary biology…as that is much of what mutation is built upon. However, I concede, his arrogance is astounding. Perhaps with age he will learn humility, and be able to “cut the crap” from his ideas.
So, I agree, his take on Darwinism is shitty.
However, you haven’t even read the book and you are making claims based on various “skeptical” sources. Why? Did you read the counter arguments to Nietzsche before the arguments? Did you read Sartre before Kierkegaard? Is it logical to put Descarte before Deshorse?
I dunno, that’s in bad taste, in my mind.
What it comes down to is that if you flush away his arrogance, he does not prove free will as he claims, he proves hard determinism. If you brush off his pride and call five second rule on his methodology, you’d find that he’s done some interesting things while attempting to alter one’s perspective of systems. He’s not wrong in his course of reasoning. Where he’s wrong is when he makes assumptions.
Which leads me to you. Dawkings attempted to control the output by categorizing a series of inputs. Wolfram attempted to categorize the output by running various inputs.
Dawking’s Model:
Input ---- Interpretation ---->Output
Wolfram’s Model:
Output — Interpretation ---->Input
I’m well aware of what Dawking’s did, and this is not the same. Wolfram’s work extends far beyond Dawking’s in terms of application…but…
The second article makes a valid point I never considered. Just because the out put is the same, does not mean that the rules the output abides by are the same. For instance, I can achieve the output (1/3) by adding two and two, or by using decimal exspansion series to find a series that adds to (1/3) (specifically 3*sigma(n=1;n->inf;10^-n)).
Different methods, different application, same result. He did NOT find a new kind of science as he claimed, but he found a new kind of computation. This new, discrete computational method will leave a lasting impact though, as applications of his work are already being tested.