I’ve never read anything by Rorty or Dennet, but I am increasingly wanting to. Since I see that a lot of you talk about them, maybe some of you would be interested in going through one of their works? For Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature or Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity look like good places to spend some time. For Dennet, I’d like to read one of his works that gets into philosophy of biology or whatever you guys think is a good entry to or sample of his thought.
You know we can ask a moderator to extract the conversation here regarding a reading group and move it all to a new thread maybe titled “Reading Group” where it will be more focused and catch more attention.
Shall I ask a mod to do that? Anyone here object?
You mean Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, a very fun book.
please do, maybe help and suggs
Rorty’s cool because he basically implores us to lighten the fuck up but, having been trained as an analytic, offers strong analytic arguments for doing so. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature offers his most conventional philosophical argument. But Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity lays out the more practical aspects of his agenda. PMN is tough going. I would recommend you accompany it with Myer’s Roughtledge guide to the book. His basic push is to rid ourselves of this obsession with a epistemological system that we can use to underwrite our beliefs, and turn to the only one that matters: democratic discourse. Like me, he argues that we should just throw it all on table and let it come out in the wash. He took a lot of shit from his colleagues for undermining their exclusive claim to (and I put this in scare-quotes purposely) “The Truth”. To me, he’s heroic in that sense.
Dennett’s Consciousness Explained is, for good reason, an important survey of the of the advancements of neuroscience at the time. However, my understanding of it (having gone through my first run) is limited. But I was really impressed by his point concerning the blind spot in our eyes, that it wasn’t so much a matter of the brain filling it in as the brain just ignoring it. And I’m sure there are a lot of other profound insights in it, even if I don’t agree with the main premise.
Another thing, just in case it might help, is that Rorty, like Dennett, is considered to be a materialist. But in Rorty’s case, it was a matter of settling the issue so that we could drop it and get on to real issues such as how to live.
But, yeah, read both. Just make sure (like I have to tell you this) you come to your own conclusions.
Okay, I’ve put in a request for the posts about a reading group to be moved to a new thread in “Help & Suggestions.” I asked for the new thread to be called Reading & Disccusion Group.
OK. I got a PM notifying me that the thread is now in help and suggestions. So here is a suggestion: Someone pick something fairly light and then we give everyone a week or two to find a copy and get it read in between RL. I say fairly light because we’re going to need to “practice” for one or two discussions before we go off into heavier stuff (assuming anyone will still be interested) I have my doubts about this venture, but it would give me the opportunity to prove that old dogs can learn new tricks…
Just so that no one gets the wrong impression, being that I have, incidentally the first post on this thread.
I’m not interested or have the capacity for another, but if the unlikely chance happens that, sometime, at least a couple of people want to try that book starting where we’re at, I can ask fLuXeDup who’s been discussing that book with me if we should move the reading discussion over here. If so PM me. Otherwise good luck!
ok, let’s read this
ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html
it’s the gettier problem on knowledge, simple (relatively)
Well, there’s your answer, cap. Sometimes a great notion, but if it takes more time than reading a blurb on the back of the cereal box and more than 60 seconds to respond - nothin… I’d say more, but my 60 seconds is up…
we already had our discussion and set it up via PM, you missed out. it was really good, pushing boundaries even
Cool! Interesting that offers to play aren’t considered worth notification… You must have your own special little group.
nah I lied to make you feel bad for a moment. I guess no one else knows the value of the gettier problem to philosophy
My Heidegger group has been put on hold. There’s a new group for Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy also know simply as Ideas I. It has already got 4 or 5 people interested, it supposed to start in early February, if interested ask the OP fLuXeDuP for an ebook.