Hi, i am new to these forums and just wondering what you would suggest as a beginner’s book to Philosophy. Now i know this is a broad statement, and im not really looking for many historical books, just ones that present ideas. I am really intrested in consciousness and truth, if anyone could guide me in the right direction.
Thanks
Welcome Manifest,
For a good beginner’s overview of consciousness, try
Mind; A Brief Introduction, by John R. Searle
The Mysterious Flame; Conscious Minds in a Material World, by Colin McGinn
And for truth
Truth; A Guide, by Simon Blackburn
For general philosophy
Think; A Compelling Intro to Philosophy, by Simon Blackburn
The Questions of Life: An Invitation to Philosophy, by Fernando Savater, et.al.
Happy reading,
Michael
Zeno and the Tortoise: How to Think Like a Philosopher
A World of Ideas: A Dictionary of Important Theories, Concepts, Beliefs and Thinkers
Thanks, a lot, ill deff check these out
6 great ideas - Adler
-Imp
Hey! I’m new here as well; just thought this would be the place to do it. I was looking for the same kind of links. I’ve always wanted to study Philosophy, and it seems proper to do it here where I’m most native to, forums. By the way, if any of you know good links to free readable material, that’d be nice, as of now, I’m flat broke. 
Cheers,
-Daniel
What I did at first was read every single synopsis of
philosophy book I could find. You know the ones like
“History of philosophy” books. I must have read 30 of them.
Then after reading those, I read books on specific
philosophers that sounded interesting.
Start simple and work your way up.
Kropotkin
I suggest you start with Socrates, then move up to plato, aristotle, kant, hegel, descard, schopenhauer, then nietzsche. They’re in my opinion the big dogs on philosophy.
i personally like The Tao Of Pooh myself. (Benjamin Hoff)
simon blackburn does an intro to ethics as well if you’re interested, in fact he seems to do an intro to everything, I liked think if i remember correctly…
Sara,
That’s right. The title is, Being Good. As with just about anything that clever man writes, it’s worth taking a look at.
He also wrote, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, which, believe it or not, is fun to sit with for a while.
Michael
words i love to hear!!! 
i have both being good and think. I prefered think, but then thats probably cos i’m not the biggest fan of ethics, his books are certainly good overviews and definitely good as intros!!
sara
xxx
Whatever you do, don’t do what I did. Which was try and read Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason first. That just hurts.
Browsing through articles of interest to you in Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy (google it, it’s free and really good) helped me A LOT.
NO book is needed to understand yourself and the world around you
Who implanted that idea into your head. that you needed someone else to tell you what you can see with your eyes and hear with your own ears?
What have you been told is the value of reading… getting. adopting other peoples ideas?
What books have you been reading?.. . . . well STOP!!
who taught you the TRUTH about walking… . talking… . . eating. . . jumping. .gravity. hot stoves . the wetness of water ?
who taught Einstein about Relativity?
who taught the first man to think of something. . to think of it. .
and why did you say you needed a book?
exactly… work your fingers to the bone, invent the universe…
and when in your wisdom you believe you have found the answer and proclaim it to the world one will say, that’s exactly what so and so said. you should have read that.
hamster wheels were invented to be re-invented…
-Imp
Do you think he would have created a theory like that if he had never read a math book?
Say you bought a really high-end camera, a thousand and one functions, a myriad of modes. Of course, you could just wing it. Point and click. Perhaps look at a couple of other people’s pics in a magazine: “Hi I’m Bill from Bognor, and I took a really nice snap of the wife on holiday in Bournemouth.” Then try and work out the big picture from all those amateur little ones.
Or you could of course, read the manual. See what makes that camera tick, what it can do, what it can’t do - How the simple mechanics of processing light into picture effects the results you will get in the end.
Sensible…?
Get hold of Dawkin’s Selfish Gene. Pick up some books on neurology/psychiatry - new ones, no Jung, no Freud. Vilayanur Ramachandran is good. Get some history books. Geoffrey Blainey’s “A very short history of the world” is super-duper. Some linguistics would be good too. Word is thought.
ie: Read the manual on your brain, before you use it to work out your worldview. Otherwise, you will never know what is simply an artifact of the process of your thinking - from what is a ‘real’ product.
Philosophy prior to Dawkins is fabrication and guesswork. Yes yes, there are a few home truths there, but hell, toss a thousand pennies in the air, and one or two will land edge up.
Reading the classics is like collecting old stamps, fine if you like that kind of thing, but useless if you actually wanna post a letter.
Searle and McGinn are the worst possible introductions to what consciousness entails. Both try to bifircate science and epistemology. Both are naysayers to any ideas of an evolutionary progression from physical to mental. Both belong in the 19th century! Maybe even before that!
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Welcome MaNiFeST. I too am new to these forums. You are interested in the truth. But you are looking for books. I do not have any book to suggest but I can suggest to you that within yourself lies the answers to your questions. Project a question/problem into space, you’ll be surprised at the answers you will receive. You may not have answers right away but usually answers come in the most unexpected way, maybe while you are dancing or cooking or swimming, or as one poster said: when Archimedes discovered the density of gold and silver alloys while ranting naked during his bath.