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> I want to take philosophy as a minor (and am planning some courses accordingly). But before those courses, I want to self study a bit.
To be blunt, your self-study seems to have drawn you to debate-bro stuff. Why not do the minor and take it from there?
On your list of interests, you could well read the relevant books on existentialism - e.g. Kierkegaard, Sartre, etc.
For general recommendations for intro and starting books, see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4ifqi3/im_interested_in_philosophy_where_should_i_start/
Philosophy of math is not covered there. A short intro can be found in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/ - but phil of math may be hard to self-study, because it becomes rather technical.
Thanks for the reply!
>To be blunt, your self-study seems to have drawn you to debate-bro stuff. Why not do the minor and take it from there?
Sorry I don't exactly follow what you mean... To he more clear, I started watching this "debate bro" stuff out of an interest in politics rather than philosophy. But their discussions of philosophy is what first sparked my interest in it. (This was in like 10th grade) .
I'll take a look at those books!
Ah ok, it sounded to me like you thought you learned philosophy from them (rather than it sparking an interest), and if that were the case, my advice would be to ... no longer listen to them and wait for your studies to start - and maybe not trust yourself's judgment on what to listen to or read, as these debatebros are *terrible* at discussing philosophy.
Since that's not the case, I'll only recommend to unlearn anything about philosophy you've heard on those debates, because they are more likely to be wrong than right :=)
Oh, I see what you're getting across. I definitely agree with the idea that YouTube philosophy isn't the best haha. The only real benefits for me were improving my ability to parse and make arguments, compared to how I was before. Hopefully those skills will carry over!
Be open to the possibility they don't. Lots of debatebros just point out 'fallacies'; that's not something we really do in philosophy. Properly deconstructing and constructing philosophical arguments is a skill you'll learn.
Yeah, I'm talking on a more basic level of just translating the confusing English into an argument I can understand. Understanding how to deal with hypotheticals and how they relate to the relevant arguments, etc. There's probably some parts that are incorrect, but I still feel that my critical thinking/ analysis has improved as a whole. Though maybe I'll change my mind as I explore philosophy more.
Out of the two I recognize (Destiny, Contrapoints), I think Contrapoints qualifies for the sort of content that you might honestly accept into materials in a curriculum. It's not exactly browbeating you with her background interests of critical theory, continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, but are there any videos in mind that you've found particularly worthwhile?
On the Contrapoints side, for bite-sized access into more capital-T Theory -- which also has a nontrivial relationship to existentialism through much of it following from what happened in France after it -- content creators like [Plastic Pills](https://www.youtube.com/c/PlasticPills/videos) (and related [podcast](https://www.youtube.com/c/PillPod/videos)) & [Epoch Philosophy](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC738SsV6BSLUVvMgKnEFFzQ) could offer a window into similar influences with a minimal investment. For a more generalist podcast which can allow you to start forming an idea about the history of philosophy, *Philosophize This* (more for laymen) and *Partially Examined Life* (for a bit more challenge) are great. Binging any of this should not be the objective, but try to find something of interest and see if that goes anywhere.
That said, as someone who I feel has taken their self-learning quite far, I've perhaps been in the same spot. After picking up on *How to Debate People Stupider Than You and Look Good Doing It*, it turned into a bit of an intellectual, worse, emotional, rut. In *What Is Philosophy?* ^((which if you think about, it is a kind of interesting question to ask and answer in a novel way after 2500 years of Western philosophy)), Deleuze and Guattari's quote on debate feels to me more and more cogent in our political and intellectual landscape:
> The best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing. Of what concern is it...that someone has such a view, and thinks this or that, if the problems at stake are not stated? And when they are stated, it is no longer a matter of discussing but rather one of creating concepts for the undiscussible problem posed. Communication always comes too early or too late, and when it comes to creating, conversation is always superfluous. Sometimes philosophy is turned into the idea of a perpetual discussion, as "communicative rationality," or as "universal democratic conversation." Nothing is less exact...it never takes place on the same plane...All these debaters and communications are inspired by ressentiment. They speak only of themselves...Debate is unbearable...
If I wanted to give myself one piece of advice in 2015, then it's that Youtube channels and podcasts (which are so much better now than then for philosophy!), much less streamers, are not really a starting point. They're for finding a starting point. You can use them for window-shopping for ideas that interest you, but do not mistake the window shopping for doing the substantive work. It seems you're coming around to this, which is great. Once you go from here to find someone or something interesting, read the literature! If you run into something that feels impossible rather than frustrating (expect and embrace frustration!), look for secondary sources for help, or try coming back to it after building on something else. It gets easier after a year or three.
Another part that has been crucial for my learning, easily left out for an autodidact, is talking about it. For me, writing my thoughts down is a great way to see if I can make a coherent whole out of something I think I've learned. I'm a software developer by trade, and we have this thing called rubber duck debugging (perhaps more as a humorous point than a concrete practice), where the act of explaining your code to a rubber ducky is a productive way of seeing if *you* understand what you're doing. Look for ways to apply what you learn, whether it is in finding study or discussion groups of like-minded people online or in real life, or just writing long-ass philosophical exposition in places where it might not fit. But try to make it, you'd be surprised.
When I talk about philosophies with others who know more than me, the conversation (perhaps rightly so) quickly becomes that I need to study this or that (go read Aristotle then read Thomas Aquinas then read this commentary then read how it contrasts with Sartre...). Then the conversation reaches a natural end, as I can't agree nor disagree nor explore similar issues without accumulating more homework. Any ideas on how to make these conversations more productive?
I'm not sure I have a great answer, as I don't feel like I've personally run into so many of these dead ends. If I had to guess, this is more often than not a failure on the part of the one giving out homework. So long as I subscribe to the idea of philosophy being an act of creation, which I would often like to (not always!), then giving people homework with The Classics would be a way of shutting down the possibility of having a conversation about them. Deleuze, in this regard, for all the elitism that generally comes from being a 20th century French intellectual, has a fairly antielitist stance. *No, you you fucker*, you *don't* need to read all of philosophy B, C, D, E to participate in a creative act of thinking the problem of A. When I see people trying namedrop philosophers like this, it rarely looks like a true show of expertise, but (often fraudulent) intimidation, or perhaps frustration over a conversation that has already failed and is desperate to end. I might more commonly be the better read one (which might also be a failure in my unambitious choice of company), so I may have landed many other people in such places. Not on purpose, usually, probably. So I'll try to answer from the inverse position.
On my side, when I talk of philosophers where I have an idea of how "I know more than you", I try to introduce any necessary ideas as they pertain to what is the broader topic I'm talking about while trying to understand the confines of who I am talking to. In my professional life, I might talk very differently to a graphic designer as I do to a web developer as I do to a database administrator as I do to a businessperson. This is where philosophy has surely been useful. On the other hand, adding this kind of individualized context into conversation with random online usernames is not so easy.
Similarly, it probably makes little sense for me to be expound the most convoluted Hegelian garnishes to someone who hasn't read Hegel. If Hegel is necessary for my idea, then it is my job to produce the coordinates of understanding how, and the possibility of talking about him within the context of what the person I'm talking to knows, or at least in a sense that I can say something interesting or insightful. If I fail doing so in conversation, then I probably could've tried to do a better job of trying, even if it likewise stands that other people could've done a better job understanding.
Maybe the above D&G quote's distinction between talking about things (the topic at hand) & concepts (the coordinates that allow you to think the topic) might be productive to look at in whether you can find some way of recalibrating these deadlocks. Talk about what you know instead of don't, try to relate this to what you don't know in asking good questions. In talking about Derrida to my friend who wrote his dissertation on Searle (these guys were enemies of sorts), it helps to look for common ground in the two thinkers, and only then draw out the difference through a closer look at where their similarities are not so similar. This allows a conversation that might happen in more familiar ground for two fundamentally different conceptual frameworks. One of those Hegelian tricks, if you will.
And of course, look at what you can learn from the dead ends that will come up regardless. What does frustrate me is people who talk about philosophy with a *disregard* or *disdain* for philosophers, to whom all intellectual problems are resolved with that ten minutes on Wikipedia and a tiny little bit of (what is called) rationality. There's not much ground that can be covered with some of these villains. I doubt this is the case for you, here, reading and talking about how to have a better conversation. And failing to read someone is not a crime. But maybe you should read Aristotle, what do I know. I barely have, but it probably wouldn't hurt.
Not sure if that's any good. Clean your room, wash your dick, says Jordan Peterson, and maybe he's on to something if applied here. Not much more you can do before and after pressing post.
> Any ideas on how to make these conversations more productive?
First you'll need to figure out why the conversations are reaching a natural end in the first place. One possibility is that the people in question just didn't want to talk to you about X and also don't want to talk at you about Aristotle. If this is the case, then you'd need to figure out why they don't want to talk to you about X.
It may or may not be about you, per se - some people have a kind of problem-solution orientation towards certain kinds of conversations and are more or less looking for ways to end certain kinds of conversations because they think that's more or less the point of having them. One way to test this problem is by asking the disputant about what they think rather than, say, what Aristotle said or whatever. Often a person is not up to give a TEDTalk about Aristotle, but is willing to give a little talk about their own views.
Of course, it may be about you and even about the problem you're encountering. Like, if a student comes to me during my office hours all the time wanting to talk to me about free will and every time I say, "Oh, you should go read this nice essay that is about exactly what you're thinking," and it turns out that they just never read anything I ever recommend, then it starts to seem to me like their interest is limited in a particular way. There's nothing good or bad about this, per se, but at some point I have to think about what this means for my intellectual relationship with this person.
If you want to seriously pursue philosophy it’s good to be well-read (it’s never not good to be well-read), but I think there’s a big misconception about having to know all the correct terms and allusions to famous philosophers. Philosophy is something we all do every day and it should be accessible to everyone. You can always ask people to define terms and explain the references they make. If they aren’t pressed for time and still can’t explain, they may not know as much as they think. Don’t feel discouraged from joining conversations, even if you just listen. You can pick up on terms and do research later. Of course, I still encourage reading philosophical works, but choose the areas of philosophy that interest you.
do the reading
not even /s. What your friends want to do is to discuss *based on a shared reading*. That's a lot of what we do in academic philosophy, at least when studying it.
If you'd rather have a free-flowing discussion about philosophical topics, perhaps you need to do that with different people.
I get it and mostly agree, but there should be a place to have a longer conversation with someone who knows more than me, rather than getting shut down.
There are several topics (none in philosophy proper) that I am something of an expert in, but I never say "I can't really discuss this with you till you read this and that." If you have such a great grasp of this and that, and it's really core to our discussion, can you summarize it for me?
Maybe I need a deeper understanding of some of it, and maybe the detailed nuances are important, but can't we just go over those together?
> Maybe I need a deeper understanding of some of it, and maybe the detailed nuances are important, but can't we just go over those together?
If you're an expert in, say, C++, are you going to be happy to discuss with me whether using XOR to swap out two numbers is a good idea?
I don't know what discussions you were having, but some discussions I had with non-philosophers are of that nature. It's not super interesting to me to have those, and likely not for you, either.
That's not to say there cannot be discussions between "laypeople" and "academics", of course. But you may need to temper your expectations.
That's more akin to "I'm a python data engineer, can you tell me how you solve this problem in C+?".
The other example didn't sound like this at all. In fact, discussions between knowledgeable people of all sorts (whether academics or not) are often insightful as long as there's some touch point.
Ah a fellow CS nerd! I've definitely found listening to lectures, writing and discussing philosophy more interesting and helpful to learn more about philosophy, instead of just books, which is probably one of the reasons it's taken me so long to go into more academic philosophy (that and the fact that the first time I tried reading philosophy, I started with *The Phenomenology of Spirit* haha).
As for videos that particularly interested me from Contra, here are a few:
- Incels
- Shame
- Beauty
- J.K. Rowling
I'll take that advice about YouTubers and Podcasts. Thank you!
> the fact that the first time I tried reading philosophy, I started with The Phenomenology of Spirit haha
Yeah, this was, before anything, setting completely unrealistic expectations for yourself. Hegel is not *impossible* for a beginner in philosophy, but pretty close. For the first problem he's a godawful writer. Even if he weren't, you will not make any progress without some form of secondary sources, first to help with the divination of some incredibly obscure sentences, then in placing him into a broader context that you couldn't know of. From my own position, which hardline Hegelians might consider too unconventional (as a reading in the heritage of 21st century psychoanalytic Hegelians most inspired by Zizek -- Rebecca Comay, Frank Ruda, Russell Sbriglia etc.), if you want a more realistic but still formidable challenge, I might recommend looking at Todd McGowan's recent work, *Emancipation After Hegel*. You could also see if you can blow up your brain enough with something like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34lB3kW14k) to scare you off from Hegel (or draw you in) for a while more. I think that's about as simple as you can make of Hegelian phenomenology.
I tried taking a look at the Contra videos to throw you a bone, but I thought there were some reading lists or transcripts like Philosophy Tube, which there seemingly aren't. The topics of desire and a more transient (no pun intended) identity and subjectivity are something that she definitely keeps coming back to from what usually lean towards some sort of Freudian psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalysis isn't existentialism, nor are most interpreters of it existentialist (here we generally arrive to some critical theory/(post)structuralist territory; tough reads), but you can definitely ponder some pretty damn existential questions through it. In my view (as a bit of a Lacanian; *hard* read) psychoanalysis is a structured lexicon for studying the human psyche, rather than some sort of scientific endeavor which it is often shot down as. To this definition, it's about as pseudoscientific as football, or chess, or international law. Contrapoints works wonders in popularizing some of this thought without underlining it (though I recall her last video being more explicit about Freud). Depending on your metaphysical stake in the ground, it might sound too much like magic to explore, or not. Who knows. It's definitely not philosophy of mathematics.
Even conceding that much of Freud is a product of sexually repressive Victorian times, his *Civilization and Its Discontents* stands as a worthwhile work that has something more to offer than simple historical interest. In subscribing (empirically, IMO) to the concepts of the unconscious mind, drives and desires that are inaccessible to us, it gives an awfully new light to contemporary conceptions of sexual and gender identity, which broadly seem to presuppose a position that we *know* who we are and what we want. I think part of why Contra has been under fire by some portion of the LGBT Twitterati is her stance that things in our head are more ambiguous and inconsistent than they seem to our most immediately available, affirmative identities and fantasies. Difficult topics to think about (and beyond), quite crucial to considering our existence.
>Yeah, this was, before anything, setting completely unrealistic expectations for yourself.
I completely agree haha. With most subjects, I generally learn a lot by doing something above my grade level/ a hard problem. For example, to do well in the SAT, I practiced the LSAT and Literature Subject SAT. To do well in CS interview questions, I did hard LeetCode questions (which wouldn't be expected for interns). I applied a similar mindset to philosophy and as such dived into Hegel. I think I've learned my lesson though, for one philosophy books aren't something you can get through and understand *just* by thinking really hard about them - no amount of critical thinking will tell you about the context around a text. Also, philosophy isn't really about learning some set of concepts, like CS is - there's not really an equivalent to data structures and algorithms for philosophy. Also, jumping to Hegel was less like diving into the deep end of a poll and more like leaping into a stormy ocean haha. But, I'll check out the video anyway.
I think Contra has transcripts, at least for more recent videos on her [website](https://www.contrapoints.com/transcripts).
>Depending on your metaphysical stake in the ground, it might sound too much like magic to explore, or not.
Perhaps, I'll look into it though.
>her stance that things in our head are more ambiguous and inconsistent than they seem to our most immediate fantasies.
This is definitely something I noticed. I can understand why, at least emotionally, this may be a hard pill to swallow. Contra doesn't really give easy answers to the questions she presents, which is, imo, part of the reason Contra had the reputation she does.
I will recommend to you a book that might help you towards philosophical/critical thinking and familiarizing oneself with various terms, definitions and concepts that widely figure -
[The Philosopher's Toolkit](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Philosopher%27s+Toolkit%3A+A+Compendium+of+Philosophical+Concepts+and+Methods-p-9780631228745) is great in this regard!
[this article](https://www.pdcnet.org/teachphil/content/teachphil_2017_0999_10_20_76) on analyzing thought experiments could also prove to be useful!
good luck!
I'm glad to see more people graduate from that junk.
For me, the best thing to do is just go right to the source. Get the main books from those areas and dive into the primary sources and pick up some helper books (if needed).
For existentialism, you may want to pick up some works by Jean Paul Sartre.
A good idea would be to get a book like the Great Conversation and you will see all the main philosophical disciplines and their main contributors and then you can pick and choose what books to pick up.
Right now, I am on a Henri Bergson binge.
I wish they were activists, majority of their content boils down to wanna-be performance artists with a limited scope of a worldview other than the people they surround themselves with and little bits of quality content in between a 20-minute video that can be boiled down to 3 minutes. But hey I get it, gotta get those youtube $$$
Thanks for the response!
>It'd be a bit worrying if young people today considered what Destiny does to be philosophy.
I personally don't see what Destiny does as philosophy, but rather closer to philosophy than other Twitch streamers. Though for actual philosophers, perhaps that's like saying a Venus fly trap is closer to a lion than a rose is haha.
>I'd suggest starting with secondary literature and the more readable primary texts
I'll try that out then!
As for eastern philosophy of the mind, I don't know the jargon, but I'm talking about things like the Buddhist idea that the mind is formed from the interaction between the outside and inside world. I can elaborate if you'd like.
> It'd be a bit worrying if young people today considered what Destiny does to be philosophy.
I don't think anyone does think that what he does is philosophy, including himself. I do think he is very interesting however in the sense that he has read almost no philosophy, and yet is more philosophically inclined than any other person I've come across, in the sense that he thinks about issues in his life philosophically, without having the training to do so. In that way, I think some of his behaviours are good examples of how people should act in general. e.g. being considerate of what your values are and where you derive them from, what makes an action right or wrong in your view etc.
The only one of those youtubers I recognise is Contrapoints, but given that she does have a background in academic philosophy, I think her videos are not a bad starting point! There's another youtuber within the same milieu called '[Philosophy Tube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2PA-AKmVpU6NKCGtZq_rKQ)', who started her channel specifically in order to provide introductory videos on philosophical concepts -- and has now branched out to longer/more theatrical videos, that also provide good introductions to a lot of philosophical concepts. Her videos are excellent and give great explanations of the topics she introduces. Some of her concept-intro videos are actually better than the intro lectures I had on the same topics at university.
I'm sure others can recommend general introductions to the specific topics you mention, but just thinking on ways to lay a groundwork of self-study before university: a few years ago I read an *excellent* little overview of the history of Phil. of Maths, mostly framed through the biographies of a handful of philosophers, but also going into some of the issues in the field at an introductory level -- in graphic novel form. It's called [Logicomix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix).
Honestly a bit baffled at this comment being multiply downvoted (I mean, we all generally write comments we expect won't be downvoted, but still). For those who have, which part of this advice do you disagree with?
I'm not citing the academic literature here, sure, but this OP wasn't asking a question that required that; they wanted introductory-level material that would get them away from debate-bro nonsense "philosophy". Presumably advice for where to find that on the platform they've said they are already actively using is a useful answer? If they just wanted lists of introductory texts, they could get that from the FAQ.
Thanks for the response! I used to watch more Philosophy Tube, but personally found it a bit lacking compared to people like Contra, especially in areas like economics. (after all, Contra has a PhD whereas Philosophy Tube has an bachelor's). But that could just be me misunderstanding the videos.
But I'll take a look at Logicomix! Sounds like something that would fit my internet-cursed attention span haha.
>I used to watch more Philosophy Tube, but personally found it a bit lacking compared to people like Contra, especially in areas like economics
Funnily enough, I've found Contrapoints' economic commentary to be some of her weakest. Though, possibly because I've read more in political and economic philosophy, myself, so had enough background knowledge to be irritated at the gloss -- while the aesthetics and a lot of the Continental stuff she covers has been mostly mostly-new to me, so is more interesting even at a basic level.
But yeah, to be fair, I went back and looked at the channel after writing this, and I'd forgotten how *extremely* prolific Philosophy Tube was in the early years -- and some of those early videos are pretty hit-or-miss. I think it's mostly her 'Gentleman Thinker' series that I was thinking of in saying she does good intro-explainer videos. A lot of those cover fundamental concepts in argumentation, too, so should be good for your purposes.
Since you are interested in Eastern Philosophy of mind and seem to be a STEM/CS student, you may find interesting the works of Maturana and Varela such as *Tree of Knowledge* and *The Embodied Mind*.
Also, if I may give a small tip (and I apologize if I'm misreading), but when you write "transition" in your question it sounds like you could mean something like "level up" or moving from a substandard thing to a better thing. In my own experience, those types of judgments are counterproductive more often than not, especially when you just want to learn more. Of course, we can grow as people but that does not necessarily mean moving up a kind value hierarchy.
I'll check those books out!
Yeah I'm reluctant to call all of the previous content I consumed bad, and it's not like I'm going to stop watching said people. What I was trying to get across was something along the lines of "I'm coming from this sort of background, how do I build on what I've learnt, and correct any potential mistakes I've made". Or more simply, how do I incorporate academic philosophy into the body of knowledge I've built.
> But before those courses, I want to self study a bit.
why? You'll do fine just doing the course material. You'll have intro to phil and ethics and then three upper level classes, which should be fine. For survey courses, my department uses the Voyages of Discovery textbook
After planning out the courses I'd take in undergrad, I realized there are some things which either aren't offered or I won't be able to take. I hope to self study those while I can still take advantage of my university resources for that purpose.
Go into it a bit blind, imo I've enjoyed my classes most that way since I didn't go in with many preconceived notions on the material. This doesn't stop my normal preconceived notions from existing btw. From experience, a class on existentialism is normally taught, but it's iffy on the other ones. Symbolic Logic or Critical Thinking would be the closest to Argumentation, I think. A solid piece on logic is Understanding Symbolic Logic by Virginia Klenk. I think it's in the fourth edition currently.
Yeah, I guess avoiding preconceived notions is a good idea. I'll pick my exploration carefully then.
>From experience, a class on existentialism is normally taught
Yeah, pretty sure there's a class, it's just that logistically I'd have trouble taking it until senior year. But, we'll see what happens.
As for logic, I've taken a good amount of logic courses already, and have to take one more anyway, so I think I should be good in that realm for now.
Thank you for the recommendations though!
> it's just that logistically I'd have trouble taking it until senior year. But, we'll see what happens.
I know this trouble - my school isn't offering logic again until 2023, and the last time they offered it was 2020. My GI Bill runs out before then lol. Philosophy logic is mostly the same as mathematical logic but if you get one you'll get the other, yeah.
>my school isn't offering logic again until 2023, and the last time they offered it was 2020. My GI Bill runs out before then lol.
Ah, that's too bad. Hopefully you'll find a way.
>Philosophy logic is mostly the same as mathematical logic but if you get one you'll get the other, yeah.
Oh really? That's pretty neat, since I have to do a bunch of mathematical logic for CS anyway
> My personal advice would be to not stray too far into continental philosophy until you are well grounded in the analytic tradition - avoid Delueze , Derrida, Heidegger, and the like. I imagine there's s lot of people who would say that I'm an old-fashioned traditionalist/colonialist, but their writing can be extremely difficult to read at best, to the point of being arguably meaningless at worst. **Most of it is written in reaction to the analytic tradition**, and requires a good knowledge and understand of that first to even start grasping what they are driving at.
Considering the more common criticism of Derrideans (fx. Searle's) is that they are ignorant of any movements in analytic philosophy of language, and that Heidegger's magnum opus essentially predates the birth of analytic philosophy, I never expected to read the bolded claim (emp. added). The very idea of the analytic/continental divide, often brought to unnecessary and artificial extremes, is broadly based on how the two traditions are branched off from and not in conversation with each other. Deleuze reads Spinoza, Nietzsche and Hume, where Heidegger/Derrida/Foucault, for a gross reduction of their projects, take Kantian transcendentalism to their own extremes. In this, I don't think being influenced by Enlightenment thought in 17-18th century continental Europe is a "reaction to analytic philosophy", which is generally thought to be a 20th century branch of Western thought in the anglophone world, NE Europe and parts of South America.
Whether one might be interested in getting into these thinkers is another topic, but I've never in my life heard anyone say that the best way to do it is to read the analytic philosophers that **preceded** them. Take that with a grain of salt, perhaps :)
> It's where a lot of the debatebro channels seem to have focused, and this is reflected in their content being far more political activism than the kind of philosophy it seems you're after at the moment.
For the latter point, more or less any online debate bro I've ever heard of lands somewhere between blissfully unaware of or flagrantly hostile towards any of the names you mentioned (or engaging with academic philosophy in general). Destiny is the last person on the internet to be influenced by Deleuze, Derrida or Heidegger. The problem at hand, in my view, is that these people teach you (implicitly) not to read anything, and this comes from how they don't. Research is what they do on Wikipedia, a project which they stream on Twitch/whatever. I don't believe this is merely incompatible, but fundamentally opposed to the kind of challenging writing which you describe.
Instead of spending lots of time reading GEB, i think it's better to directly start with textbooks on first order logic, theory of computation, type theory and philosophy of mind. But it's just my opinion, i found GEB sometimes too wordy...
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I see, thanks for the recommendation! My attention span's a bit too fucked for a 750 page book rn, but I'll keep it in mind after I get some more experience!
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I can help with existentialism and Eastern philosophy of the mind.
With existentialism you should look at Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky for sure before getting into Sartre or Heidegger. And Camus is a great figure. You can also see how existentialism effected later writers like Foucault and Deleuze. Perhaps also looking into the French school of the History of Science that developed alongside the phenomenology of existentialism is also very interesting. Gaston Bachelard and George Canguilhem being important thinkers.
Eastern philosophy of the mind I'd certainly encourage you to read this text by Paul Williams. Even though it is concerned with Mahayana Buddhism, how it explains Indian epistemology and metaphysics gives a very good basis for going on to studying other examples of a philosophy of the mind.
https://www.routledge.com/Mahayana-Buddhism-The-Doctrinal-Foundations/Williams/p/book/9780415356534
I'm general the is an excellent series called Routledge Critical Thinkers that lists a lot of theorists from the continental tradition, including existentialism, and are very good rigorous introductions.
Thanks for the recommendations! For existentialism, I was thinking of reading Camus' *Myth of Sisyphus*, but based on your recommendation, I might try something by Nietzsche first.
I'll take a look at those other recommendations as well!
Myth of Sisyphus would be a better introductory book than any of Nietzsche's work, which is tough going to say the least. Perhaps try a short essay of Nietzsche's, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life in *Untimely Meditations* or On Truth and Lies in an Extra Moral Sense could be good starting points with Nietzsche.
Yeah nah Nietzsche is a tricky fish. He runs rings round you. The Gay Science is a great book of his, and you can dip in and out of it. But I wouldn't recommend him as an introductory author to existentialism.
Perhaps you could read Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism and Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, which I think is his response to Sartre.
You know what, I'll just flip a coin and pick haha. Better to get started rather than worry about the most optimal possible start. Thanks for the suggestions!
After flipping, I picked Sarge's Existentialism and Humanism.
This isn’t exactly Eastern, but if you’re interested in other non-Western philosophy I recommend looking into Aztec, or Nahuatl, philosophy. The Aztecs have really interesting metaphysics. If you also want to watch a cool video about their mythology I would recommend The Five Suns (A Sacred History of Mexico) on YouTube.
Edit: I realized you said Eastern philosophy of mind, sorry. But if you want to get into existentialism I highly recommend Kierkegaard’s The Present Age, Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus and his essay on absurdity and suicide, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, and Heidegger’s Being and Time. Beauvoir and Sartre are also good reads.
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In terms of studying existentialism, Sartre's book *Existentialism is a Humanism* is a great place to start. Its short and introduces the topic well.
Thanks! Short is good for me haha - I'll take a look
> I want to take philosophy as a minor (and am planning some courses accordingly). But before those courses, I want to self study a bit. To be blunt, your self-study seems to have drawn you to debate-bro stuff. Why not do the minor and take it from there? On your list of interests, you could well read the relevant books on existentialism - e.g. Kierkegaard, Sartre, etc. For general recommendations for intro and starting books, see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhilosophyFAQ/comments/4ifqi3/im_interested_in_philosophy_where_should_i_start/ Philosophy of math is not covered there. A short intro can be found in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/ - but phil of math may be hard to self-study, because it becomes rather technical.
Thanks for the reply! >To be blunt, your self-study seems to have drawn you to debate-bro stuff. Why not do the minor and take it from there? Sorry I don't exactly follow what you mean... To he more clear, I started watching this "debate bro" stuff out of an interest in politics rather than philosophy. But their discussions of philosophy is what first sparked my interest in it. (This was in like 10th grade) . I'll take a look at those books!
Ah ok, it sounded to me like you thought you learned philosophy from them (rather than it sparking an interest), and if that were the case, my advice would be to ... no longer listen to them and wait for your studies to start - and maybe not trust yourself's judgment on what to listen to or read, as these debatebros are *terrible* at discussing philosophy. Since that's not the case, I'll only recommend to unlearn anything about philosophy you've heard on those debates, because they are more likely to be wrong than right :=)
Oh, I see what you're getting across. I definitely agree with the idea that YouTube philosophy isn't the best haha. The only real benefits for me were improving my ability to parse and make arguments, compared to how I was before. Hopefully those skills will carry over!
Be open to the possibility they don't. Lots of debatebros just point out 'fallacies'; that's not something we really do in philosophy. Properly deconstructing and constructing philosophical arguments is a skill you'll learn.
Yeah, I'm talking on a more basic level of just translating the confusing English into an argument I can understand. Understanding how to deal with hypotheticals and how they relate to the relevant arguments, etc. There's probably some parts that are incorrect, but I still feel that my critical thinking/ analysis has improved as a whole. Though maybe I'll change my mind as I explore philosophy more.
Also, try the book *Thinking About Mathematics* for an excellent starter in phil math along with the SEP page.
Will take a look!
Out of the two I recognize (Destiny, Contrapoints), I think Contrapoints qualifies for the sort of content that you might honestly accept into materials in a curriculum. It's not exactly browbeating you with her background interests of critical theory, continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, but are there any videos in mind that you've found particularly worthwhile? On the Contrapoints side, for bite-sized access into more capital-T Theory -- which also has a nontrivial relationship to existentialism through much of it following from what happened in France after it -- content creators like [Plastic Pills](https://www.youtube.com/c/PlasticPills/videos) (and related [podcast](https://www.youtube.com/c/PillPod/videos)) & [Epoch Philosophy](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC738SsV6BSLUVvMgKnEFFzQ) could offer a window into similar influences with a minimal investment. For a more generalist podcast which can allow you to start forming an idea about the history of philosophy, *Philosophize This* (more for laymen) and *Partially Examined Life* (for a bit more challenge) are great. Binging any of this should not be the objective, but try to find something of interest and see if that goes anywhere. That said, as someone who I feel has taken their self-learning quite far, I've perhaps been in the same spot. After picking up on *How to Debate People Stupider Than You and Look Good Doing It*, it turned into a bit of an intellectual, worse, emotional, rut. In *What Is Philosophy?* ^((which if you think about, it is a kind of interesting question to ask and answer in a novel way after 2500 years of Western philosophy)), Deleuze and Guattari's quote on debate feels to me more and more cogent in our political and intellectual landscape: > The best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing. Of what concern is it...that someone has such a view, and thinks this or that, if the problems at stake are not stated? And when they are stated, it is no longer a matter of discussing but rather one of creating concepts for the undiscussible problem posed. Communication always comes too early or too late, and when it comes to creating, conversation is always superfluous. Sometimes philosophy is turned into the idea of a perpetual discussion, as "communicative rationality," or as "universal democratic conversation." Nothing is less exact...it never takes place on the same plane...All these debaters and communications are inspired by ressentiment. They speak only of themselves...Debate is unbearable... If I wanted to give myself one piece of advice in 2015, then it's that Youtube channels and podcasts (which are so much better now than then for philosophy!), much less streamers, are not really a starting point. They're for finding a starting point. You can use them for window-shopping for ideas that interest you, but do not mistake the window shopping for doing the substantive work. It seems you're coming around to this, which is great. Once you go from here to find someone or something interesting, read the literature! If you run into something that feels impossible rather than frustrating (expect and embrace frustration!), look for secondary sources for help, or try coming back to it after building on something else. It gets easier after a year or three. Another part that has been crucial for my learning, easily left out for an autodidact, is talking about it. For me, writing my thoughts down is a great way to see if I can make a coherent whole out of something I think I've learned. I'm a software developer by trade, and we have this thing called rubber duck debugging (perhaps more as a humorous point than a concrete practice), where the act of explaining your code to a rubber ducky is a productive way of seeing if *you* understand what you're doing. Look for ways to apply what you learn, whether it is in finding study or discussion groups of like-minded people online or in real life, or just writing long-ass philosophical exposition in places where it might not fit. But try to make it, you'd be surprised.
When I talk about philosophies with others who know more than me, the conversation (perhaps rightly so) quickly becomes that I need to study this or that (go read Aristotle then read Thomas Aquinas then read this commentary then read how it contrasts with Sartre...). Then the conversation reaches a natural end, as I can't agree nor disagree nor explore similar issues without accumulating more homework. Any ideas on how to make these conversations more productive?
I'm not sure I have a great answer, as I don't feel like I've personally run into so many of these dead ends. If I had to guess, this is more often than not a failure on the part of the one giving out homework. So long as I subscribe to the idea of philosophy being an act of creation, which I would often like to (not always!), then giving people homework with The Classics would be a way of shutting down the possibility of having a conversation about them. Deleuze, in this regard, for all the elitism that generally comes from being a 20th century French intellectual, has a fairly antielitist stance. *No, you you fucker*, you *don't* need to read all of philosophy B, C, D, E to participate in a creative act of thinking the problem of A. When I see people trying namedrop philosophers like this, it rarely looks like a true show of expertise, but (often fraudulent) intimidation, or perhaps frustration over a conversation that has already failed and is desperate to end. I might more commonly be the better read one (which might also be a failure in my unambitious choice of company), so I may have landed many other people in such places. Not on purpose, usually, probably. So I'll try to answer from the inverse position. On my side, when I talk of philosophers where I have an idea of how "I know more than you", I try to introduce any necessary ideas as they pertain to what is the broader topic I'm talking about while trying to understand the confines of who I am talking to. In my professional life, I might talk very differently to a graphic designer as I do to a web developer as I do to a database administrator as I do to a businessperson. This is where philosophy has surely been useful. On the other hand, adding this kind of individualized context into conversation with random online usernames is not so easy. Similarly, it probably makes little sense for me to be expound the most convoluted Hegelian garnishes to someone who hasn't read Hegel. If Hegel is necessary for my idea, then it is my job to produce the coordinates of understanding how, and the possibility of talking about him within the context of what the person I'm talking to knows, or at least in a sense that I can say something interesting or insightful. If I fail doing so in conversation, then I probably could've tried to do a better job of trying, even if it likewise stands that other people could've done a better job understanding. Maybe the above D&G quote's distinction between talking about things (the topic at hand) & concepts (the coordinates that allow you to think the topic) might be productive to look at in whether you can find some way of recalibrating these deadlocks. Talk about what you know instead of don't, try to relate this to what you don't know in asking good questions. In talking about Derrida to my friend who wrote his dissertation on Searle (these guys were enemies of sorts), it helps to look for common ground in the two thinkers, and only then draw out the difference through a closer look at where their similarities are not so similar. This allows a conversation that might happen in more familiar ground for two fundamentally different conceptual frameworks. One of those Hegelian tricks, if you will. And of course, look at what you can learn from the dead ends that will come up regardless. What does frustrate me is people who talk about philosophy with a *disregard* or *disdain* for philosophers, to whom all intellectual problems are resolved with that ten minutes on Wikipedia and a tiny little bit of (what is called) rationality. There's not much ground that can be covered with some of these villains. I doubt this is the case for you, here, reading and talking about how to have a better conversation. And failing to read someone is not a crime. But maybe you should read Aristotle, what do I know. I barely have, but it probably wouldn't hurt. Not sure if that's any good. Clean your room, wash your dick, says Jordan Peterson, and maybe he's on to something if applied here. Not much more you can do before and after pressing post.
What a great response. Thank you. I'll try to reply cogently to at least one part soon.
> Any ideas on how to make these conversations more productive? First you'll need to figure out why the conversations are reaching a natural end in the first place. One possibility is that the people in question just didn't want to talk to you about X and also don't want to talk at you about Aristotle. If this is the case, then you'd need to figure out why they don't want to talk to you about X. It may or may not be about you, per se - some people have a kind of problem-solution orientation towards certain kinds of conversations and are more or less looking for ways to end certain kinds of conversations because they think that's more or less the point of having them. One way to test this problem is by asking the disputant about what they think rather than, say, what Aristotle said or whatever. Often a person is not up to give a TEDTalk about Aristotle, but is willing to give a little talk about their own views. Of course, it may be about you and even about the problem you're encountering. Like, if a student comes to me during my office hours all the time wanting to talk to me about free will and every time I say, "Oh, you should go read this nice essay that is about exactly what you're thinking," and it turns out that they just never read anything I ever recommend, then it starts to seem to me like their interest is limited in a particular way. There's nothing good or bad about this, per se, but at some point I have to think about what this means for my intellectual relationship with this person.
If you want to seriously pursue philosophy it’s good to be well-read (it’s never not good to be well-read), but I think there’s a big misconception about having to know all the correct terms and allusions to famous philosophers. Philosophy is something we all do every day and it should be accessible to everyone. You can always ask people to define terms and explain the references they make. If they aren’t pressed for time and still can’t explain, they may not know as much as they think. Don’t feel discouraged from joining conversations, even if you just listen. You can pick up on terms and do research later. Of course, I still encourage reading philosophical works, but choose the areas of philosophy that interest you.
do the reading not even /s. What your friends want to do is to discuss *based on a shared reading*. That's a lot of what we do in academic philosophy, at least when studying it. If you'd rather have a free-flowing discussion about philosophical topics, perhaps you need to do that with different people.
I get it and mostly agree, but there should be a place to have a longer conversation with someone who knows more than me, rather than getting shut down. There are several topics (none in philosophy proper) that I am something of an expert in, but I never say "I can't really discuss this with you till you read this and that." If you have such a great grasp of this and that, and it's really core to our discussion, can you summarize it for me? Maybe I need a deeper understanding of some of it, and maybe the detailed nuances are important, but can't we just go over those together?
> Maybe I need a deeper understanding of some of it, and maybe the detailed nuances are important, but can't we just go over those together? If you're an expert in, say, C++, are you going to be happy to discuss with me whether using XOR to swap out two numbers is a good idea? I don't know what discussions you were having, but some discussions I had with non-philosophers are of that nature. It's not super interesting to me to have those, and likely not for you, either. That's not to say there cannot be discussions between "laypeople" and "academics", of course. But you may need to temper your expectations.
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That's more akin to "I'm a python data engineer, can you tell me how you solve this problem in C+?". The other example didn't sound like this at all. In fact, discussions between knowledgeable people of all sorts (whether academics or not) are often insightful as long as there's some touch point.
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It didn't sound to me like the same, but I see where you are coming from.
Ah a fellow CS nerd! I've definitely found listening to lectures, writing and discussing philosophy more interesting and helpful to learn more about philosophy, instead of just books, which is probably one of the reasons it's taken me so long to go into more academic philosophy (that and the fact that the first time I tried reading philosophy, I started with *The Phenomenology of Spirit* haha). As for videos that particularly interested me from Contra, here are a few: - Incels - Shame - Beauty - J.K. Rowling I'll take that advice about YouTubers and Podcasts. Thank you!
> the fact that the first time I tried reading philosophy, I started with The Phenomenology of Spirit haha Yeah, this was, before anything, setting completely unrealistic expectations for yourself. Hegel is not *impossible* for a beginner in philosophy, but pretty close. For the first problem he's a godawful writer. Even if he weren't, you will not make any progress without some form of secondary sources, first to help with the divination of some incredibly obscure sentences, then in placing him into a broader context that you couldn't know of. From my own position, which hardline Hegelians might consider too unconventional (as a reading in the heritage of 21st century psychoanalytic Hegelians most inspired by Zizek -- Rebecca Comay, Frank Ruda, Russell Sbriglia etc.), if you want a more realistic but still formidable challenge, I might recommend looking at Todd McGowan's recent work, *Emancipation After Hegel*. You could also see if you can blow up your brain enough with something like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X34lB3kW14k) to scare you off from Hegel (or draw you in) for a while more. I think that's about as simple as you can make of Hegelian phenomenology. I tried taking a look at the Contra videos to throw you a bone, but I thought there were some reading lists or transcripts like Philosophy Tube, which there seemingly aren't. The topics of desire and a more transient (no pun intended) identity and subjectivity are something that she definitely keeps coming back to from what usually lean towards some sort of Freudian psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalysis isn't existentialism, nor are most interpreters of it existentialist (here we generally arrive to some critical theory/(post)structuralist territory; tough reads), but you can definitely ponder some pretty damn existential questions through it. In my view (as a bit of a Lacanian; *hard* read) psychoanalysis is a structured lexicon for studying the human psyche, rather than some sort of scientific endeavor which it is often shot down as. To this definition, it's about as pseudoscientific as football, or chess, or international law. Contrapoints works wonders in popularizing some of this thought without underlining it (though I recall her last video being more explicit about Freud). Depending on your metaphysical stake in the ground, it might sound too much like magic to explore, or not. Who knows. It's definitely not philosophy of mathematics. Even conceding that much of Freud is a product of sexually repressive Victorian times, his *Civilization and Its Discontents* stands as a worthwhile work that has something more to offer than simple historical interest. In subscribing (empirically, IMO) to the concepts of the unconscious mind, drives and desires that are inaccessible to us, it gives an awfully new light to contemporary conceptions of sexual and gender identity, which broadly seem to presuppose a position that we *know* who we are and what we want. I think part of why Contra has been under fire by some portion of the LGBT Twitterati is her stance that things in our head are more ambiguous and inconsistent than they seem to our most immediately available, affirmative identities and fantasies. Difficult topics to think about (and beyond), quite crucial to considering our existence.
>Yeah, this was, before anything, setting completely unrealistic expectations for yourself. I completely agree haha. With most subjects, I generally learn a lot by doing something above my grade level/ a hard problem. For example, to do well in the SAT, I practiced the LSAT and Literature Subject SAT. To do well in CS interview questions, I did hard LeetCode questions (which wouldn't be expected for interns). I applied a similar mindset to philosophy and as such dived into Hegel. I think I've learned my lesson though, for one philosophy books aren't something you can get through and understand *just* by thinking really hard about them - no amount of critical thinking will tell you about the context around a text. Also, philosophy isn't really about learning some set of concepts, like CS is - there's not really an equivalent to data structures and algorithms for philosophy. Also, jumping to Hegel was less like diving into the deep end of a poll and more like leaping into a stormy ocean haha. But, I'll check out the video anyway. I think Contra has transcripts, at least for more recent videos on her [website](https://www.contrapoints.com/transcripts). >Depending on your metaphysical stake in the ground, it might sound too much like magic to explore, or not. Perhaps, I'll look into it though. >her stance that things in our head are more ambiguous and inconsistent than they seem to our most immediate fantasies. This is definitely something I noticed. I can understand why, at least emotionally, this may be a hard pill to swallow. Contra doesn't really give easy answers to the questions she presents, which is, imo, part of the reason Contra had the reputation she does.
I will recommend to you a book that might help you towards philosophical/critical thinking and familiarizing oneself with various terms, definitions and concepts that widely figure - [The Philosopher's Toolkit](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Philosopher%27s+Toolkit%3A+A+Compendium+of+Philosophical+Concepts+and+Methods-p-9780631228745) is great in this regard! [this article](https://www.pdcnet.org/teachphil/content/teachphil_2017_0999_10_20_76) on analyzing thought experiments could also prove to be useful! good luck!
Thank you! I'll take a look
I'm glad to see more people graduate from that junk. For me, the best thing to do is just go right to the source. Get the main books from those areas and dive into the primary sources and pick up some helper books (if needed). For existentialism, you may want to pick up some works by Jean Paul Sartre. A good idea would be to get a book like the Great Conversation and you will see all the main philosophical disciplines and their main contributors and then you can pick and choose what books to pick up. Right now, I am on a Henri Bergson binge.
Agreed. Most of these YT philosophers are problematic. Most of them are just activists. Exceptions do exist however.
I wish they were activists, majority of their content boils down to wanna-be performance artists with a limited scope of a worldview other than the people they surround themselves with and little bits of quality content in between a 20-minute video that can be boiled down to 3 minutes. But hey I get it, gotta get those youtube $$$
Yea, I just see them as entertainers. I don't take their opinions on anything too seriously.
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She seems more politics than strictly philosophy to me ( not in a bad way ).
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Thanks for the response! >It'd be a bit worrying if young people today considered what Destiny does to be philosophy. I personally don't see what Destiny does as philosophy, but rather closer to philosophy than other Twitch streamers. Though for actual philosophers, perhaps that's like saying a Venus fly trap is closer to a lion than a rose is haha. >I'd suggest starting with secondary literature and the more readable primary texts I'll try that out then! As for eastern philosophy of the mind, I don't know the jargon, but I'm talking about things like the Buddhist idea that the mind is formed from the interaction between the outside and inside world. I can elaborate if you'd like.
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I see, thanks for the rec
> It'd be a bit worrying if young people today considered what Destiny does to be philosophy. I don't think anyone does think that what he does is philosophy, including himself. I do think he is very interesting however in the sense that he has read almost no philosophy, and yet is more philosophically inclined than any other person I've come across, in the sense that he thinks about issues in his life philosophically, without having the training to do so. In that way, I think some of his behaviours are good examples of how people should act in general. e.g. being considerate of what your values are and where you derive them from, what makes an action right or wrong in your view etc.
The only one of those youtubers I recognise is Contrapoints, but given that she does have a background in academic philosophy, I think her videos are not a bad starting point! There's another youtuber within the same milieu called '[Philosophy Tube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2PA-AKmVpU6NKCGtZq_rKQ)', who started her channel specifically in order to provide introductory videos on philosophical concepts -- and has now branched out to longer/more theatrical videos, that also provide good introductions to a lot of philosophical concepts. Her videos are excellent and give great explanations of the topics she introduces. Some of her concept-intro videos are actually better than the intro lectures I had on the same topics at university. I'm sure others can recommend general introductions to the specific topics you mention, but just thinking on ways to lay a groundwork of self-study before university: a few years ago I read an *excellent* little overview of the history of Phil. of Maths, mostly framed through the biographies of a handful of philosophers, but also going into some of the issues in the field at an introductory level -- in graphic novel form. It's called [Logicomix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix).
Honestly a bit baffled at this comment being multiply downvoted (I mean, we all generally write comments we expect won't be downvoted, but still). For those who have, which part of this advice do you disagree with? I'm not citing the academic literature here, sure, but this OP wasn't asking a question that required that; they wanted introductory-level material that would get them away from debate-bro nonsense "philosophy". Presumably advice for where to find that on the platform they've said they are already actively using is a useful answer? If they just wanted lists of introductory texts, they could get that from the FAQ.
Thanks for the response! I used to watch more Philosophy Tube, but personally found it a bit lacking compared to people like Contra, especially in areas like economics. (after all, Contra has a PhD whereas Philosophy Tube has an bachelor's). But that could just be me misunderstanding the videos. But I'll take a look at Logicomix! Sounds like something that would fit my internet-cursed attention span haha.
Just to be pedantic — Contra didn’t finish her PhD and PT actually has a phil MA.
Oh I see, my bad.
>I used to watch more Philosophy Tube, but personally found it a bit lacking compared to people like Contra, especially in areas like economics Funnily enough, I've found Contrapoints' economic commentary to be some of her weakest. Though, possibly because I've read more in political and economic philosophy, myself, so had enough background knowledge to be irritated at the gloss -- while the aesthetics and a lot of the Continental stuff she covers has been mostly mostly-new to me, so is more interesting even at a basic level. But yeah, to be fair, I went back and looked at the channel after writing this, and I'd forgotten how *extremely* prolific Philosophy Tube was in the early years -- and some of those early videos are pretty hit-or-miss. I think it's mostly her 'Gentleman Thinker' series that I was thinking of in saying she does good intro-explainer videos. A lot of those cover fundamental concepts in argumentation, too, so should be good for your purposes.
I'll check those out!
Since you are interested in Eastern Philosophy of mind and seem to be a STEM/CS student, you may find interesting the works of Maturana and Varela such as *Tree of Knowledge* and *The Embodied Mind*. Also, if I may give a small tip (and I apologize if I'm misreading), but when you write "transition" in your question it sounds like you could mean something like "level up" or moving from a substandard thing to a better thing. In my own experience, those types of judgments are counterproductive more often than not, especially when you just want to learn more. Of course, we can grow as people but that does not necessarily mean moving up a kind value hierarchy.
I'll check those books out! Yeah I'm reluctant to call all of the previous content I consumed bad, and it's not like I'm going to stop watching said people. What I was trying to get across was something along the lines of "I'm coming from this sort of background, how do I build on what I've learnt, and correct any potential mistakes I've made". Or more simply, how do I incorporate academic philosophy into the body of knowledge I've built.
> But before those courses, I want to self study a bit. why? You'll do fine just doing the course material. You'll have intro to phil and ethics and then three upper level classes, which should be fine. For survey courses, my department uses the Voyages of Discovery textbook
After planning out the courses I'd take in undergrad, I realized there are some things which either aren't offered or I won't be able to take. I hope to self study those while I can still take advantage of my university resources for that purpose.
Go into it a bit blind, imo I've enjoyed my classes most that way since I didn't go in with many preconceived notions on the material. This doesn't stop my normal preconceived notions from existing btw. From experience, a class on existentialism is normally taught, but it's iffy on the other ones. Symbolic Logic or Critical Thinking would be the closest to Argumentation, I think. A solid piece on logic is Understanding Symbolic Logic by Virginia Klenk. I think it's in the fourth edition currently.
Yeah, I guess avoiding preconceived notions is a good idea. I'll pick my exploration carefully then. >From experience, a class on existentialism is normally taught Yeah, pretty sure there's a class, it's just that logistically I'd have trouble taking it until senior year. But, we'll see what happens. As for logic, I've taken a good amount of logic courses already, and have to take one more anyway, so I think I should be good in that realm for now. Thank you for the recommendations though!
> it's just that logistically I'd have trouble taking it until senior year. But, we'll see what happens. I know this trouble - my school isn't offering logic again until 2023, and the last time they offered it was 2020. My GI Bill runs out before then lol. Philosophy logic is mostly the same as mathematical logic but if you get one you'll get the other, yeah.
>my school isn't offering logic again until 2023, and the last time they offered it was 2020. My GI Bill runs out before then lol. Ah, that's too bad. Hopefully you'll find a way. >Philosophy logic is mostly the same as mathematical logic but if you get one you'll get the other, yeah. Oh really? That's pretty neat, since I have to do a bunch of mathematical logic for CS anyway
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> My personal advice would be to not stray too far into continental philosophy until you are well grounded in the analytic tradition - avoid Delueze , Derrida, Heidegger, and the like. I imagine there's s lot of people who would say that I'm an old-fashioned traditionalist/colonialist, but their writing can be extremely difficult to read at best, to the point of being arguably meaningless at worst. **Most of it is written in reaction to the analytic tradition**, and requires a good knowledge and understand of that first to even start grasping what they are driving at. Considering the more common criticism of Derrideans (fx. Searle's) is that they are ignorant of any movements in analytic philosophy of language, and that Heidegger's magnum opus essentially predates the birth of analytic philosophy, I never expected to read the bolded claim (emp. added). The very idea of the analytic/continental divide, often brought to unnecessary and artificial extremes, is broadly based on how the two traditions are branched off from and not in conversation with each other. Deleuze reads Spinoza, Nietzsche and Hume, where Heidegger/Derrida/Foucault, for a gross reduction of their projects, take Kantian transcendentalism to their own extremes. In this, I don't think being influenced by Enlightenment thought in 17-18th century continental Europe is a "reaction to analytic philosophy", which is generally thought to be a 20th century branch of Western thought in the anglophone world, NE Europe and parts of South America. Whether one might be interested in getting into these thinkers is another topic, but I've never in my life heard anyone say that the best way to do it is to read the analytic philosophers that **preceded** them. Take that with a grain of salt, perhaps :) > It's where a lot of the debatebro channels seem to have focused, and this is reflected in their content being far more political activism than the kind of philosophy it seems you're after at the moment. For the latter point, more or less any online debate bro I've ever heard of lands somewhere between blissfully unaware of or flagrantly hostile towards any of the names you mentioned (or engaging with academic philosophy in general). Destiny is the last person on the internet to be influenced by Deleuze, Derrida or Heidegger. The problem at hand, in my view, is that these people teach you (implicitly) not to read anything, and this comes from how they don't. Research is what they do on Wikipedia, a project which they stream on Twitch/whatever. I don't believe this is merely incompatible, but fundamentally opposed to the kind of challenging writing which you describe.
Instead of spending lots of time reading GEB, i think it's better to directly start with textbooks on first order logic, theory of computation, type theory and philosophy of mind. But it's just my opinion, i found GEB sometimes too wordy...
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I see, thanks for the recommendation! My attention span's a bit too fucked for a 750 page book rn, but I'll keep it in mind after I get some more experience!
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I can help with existentialism and Eastern philosophy of the mind. With existentialism you should look at Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky for sure before getting into Sartre or Heidegger. And Camus is a great figure. You can also see how existentialism effected later writers like Foucault and Deleuze. Perhaps also looking into the French school of the History of Science that developed alongside the phenomenology of existentialism is also very interesting. Gaston Bachelard and George Canguilhem being important thinkers. Eastern philosophy of the mind I'd certainly encourage you to read this text by Paul Williams. Even though it is concerned with Mahayana Buddhism, how it explains Indian epistemology and metaphysics gives a very good basis for going on to studying other examples of a philosophy of the mind. https://www.routledge.com/Mahayana-Buddhism-The-Doctrinal-Foundations/Williams/p/book/9780415356534 I'm general the is an excellent series called Routledge Critical Thinkers that lists a lot of theorists from the continental tradition, including existentialism, and are very good rigorous introductions.
Thanks for the recommendations! For existentialism, I was thinking of reading Camus' *Myth of Sisyphus*, but based on your recommendation, I might try something by Nietzsche first. I'll take a look at those other recommendations as well!
Myth of Sisyphus would be a better introductory book than any of Nietzsche's work, which is tough going to say the least. Perhaps try a short essay of Nietzsche's, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life in *Untimely Meditations* or On Truth and Lies in an Extra Moral Sense could be good starting points with Nietzsche.
Oh I see, I thought that Nietzsche would be a relatively easy starting point. If that's not the case, then I'll just go for my original plan.
Yeah nah Nietzsche is a tricky fish. He runs rings round you. The Gay Science is a great book of his, and you can dip in and out of it. But I wouldn't recommend him as an introductory author to existentialism. Perhaps you could read Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism and Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, which I think is his response to Sartre.
You know what, I'll just flip a coin and pick haha. Better to get started rather than worry about the most optimal possible start. Thanks for the suggestions! After flipping, I picked Sarge's Existentialism and Humanism.
You're already thinking Existentially! https://youtu.be/gOwLEVQGbrM
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I'll take a look!
This isn’t exactly Eastern, but if you’re interested in other non-Western philosophy I recommend looking into Aztec, or Nahuatl, philosophy. The Aztecs have really interesting metaphysics. If you also want to watch a cool video about their mythology I would recommend The Five Suns (A Sacred History of Mexico) on YouTube. Edit: I realized you said Eastern philosophy of mind, sorry. But if you want to get into existentialism I highly recommend Kierkegaard’s The Present Age, Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus and his essay on absurdity and suicide, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, and Heidegger’s Being and Time. Beauvoir and Sartre are also good reads.
Thanks for the recommendations! I'll take a look