Branches of Philosophy Podcast

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality" By Jennifer Greenwood 2015 A novel, wide-ranging, and comprehensive account of how human emotionality develops, proposing a process in which “nature” and “nurture” are integrated. In Becoming Human, Jennifer Greenwood proposes a novel theory of the...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight" By Thomas Suddendorf, Jonathan Redshaw, Adam Bulley · 2022 "Apes can do a lot of things that we can, too: they can use tools, tell bigger from smaller, and even say hello. But one thing they can't do is say "see you tomorrow." That's not just because...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of Memory: A Self-referential Account By Jordi Fernández 2019 Jordi Fernandez here offers a philosophical investigation of memory, one which engages with memory's philosophically puzzling characteristics in order to clarify what memory is. Memories interact with mental states of other types in a particular way, and they also have associated...

Ai generated. Human edited. "The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality" By Hanno Sauer 2024 For almost five million years, humans have been locked in a relationship with morality, inventing and reinventing the concepts of 'Good' and 'Evil', and weaving them into our cities, laws and customs. Morality is a concept that can feel joyless and claustrophobic,...

Ai generated. Human edited. "Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life" By Agnes Callard 2025 Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” ye...

Ai generated. Human edited. An introduction and summary of "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will" By Robert M. Sapolsky 2023 One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, mounts a devastating scientific and philosophical case against free will—an argument with profound consequencesRobert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do go...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Transcendence of the Ego" By Jean-Paul Sartre 1936 First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Ego was one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to fin...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice" By Ruth Garrett Millikan 1993 The title essay discusses meaning rationalism and argues that rationality is not in the head, indeed, that there is no legitimate interpretation under which logical possibility and necessity are known a priori. In other essays, Millikan clarifies her v...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference" By Jeffrey A. Bell 2006 From the early 1960s until his death, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) wrote many influential works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. One of Deleuze's main philosophical projects was a systematic i...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Heidegger and the Problem of Consciousness" By Nancy J. Holland 2018 Nancy J. Holland turns to the thought of Martin Heidegger to help understand an age-old philosophical question: Is there a split between the body and the mind? Arguing against philosophical positions that define human consciousness as an overarching phenomenon or...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" By Kevin J. Mitchell 2023 An evolutionary case for the existence of free will. Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agenc...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Working Memory, Thought, and Action" By Alan Baddeley 2007 'Working Memory, Thought, and Action' is the magnum opus of one of the most influential cognitive psychologists of the past 50 years. This new volume on the model he created (with Graham Hitch) discusses the developments that have occurred within the model in the past twenty years, and places it wi...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st century’s only plausible metaphysics" By Bernardo Kastrup 2024 As the failures of physicalism begin to shake the confidence of even the most biased of its supporters, a new view on the nature of reality is establishing itself as the only tenable alternative: Analytic Idealism. According...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Becoming Human:A Theory of Ontogeny" By Michael Tomasello 2019 Virtually all theories of how humans have become such a distinctive species focus on evolution. Becoming Human looks instead to development and reveals how those things that make us unique are constructed during the first seven years of a child’s life. In this groundbreaking work, Michael Tomas...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness" By Henri Bergson 1889 Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (French: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) is Henri Bergson's doctoral thesis, first published in 1889. The essay deals with the problem of free will, which Bergson contends is merel...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Perplexities of Consciousness"By Eric Schwitzgebel 2011 A philosopher argues that we know little about our own inner lives. Do you dream in color? If you answer Yes, how can you be sure? Before you recount your vivid memory of a dream featuring all the colors of the rainbow, consider that in the 1950s researchers found that most people reported dreaming in...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness" By Pierre Keller 1998 In Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness, Pierre Keller examines Kant's theory of self-consciousness and argues that it succeeds in explaining how both subjective and objective experience are possible. Previous interpretations of Kant's theory have held that he treats all self-conscious...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Naturalizing The Mind"By Fred Dretske 1995 Naturalizing the Mind skillfully develops a representational theory of the qualitative, the phenomenal, the what-it-is-like aspects of the mind that have defied traditional forms of naturalism. How can the baffling problems of phenomenal experience be accounted for? In this provocative book, Fred Dretske argues th...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck" By David Spiegelhalter 2024 From the UK’s ‘statistical national treasure’, a clever and data-driven guide to how we can live with risk and uncertaintyWe live in a world where uncertainty is inevitable. How should we deal with what we don’t know? And what role do chance, luck and coin...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness" By Etienne Balibar 2013 John Locke’s foundational place in the history of British empiricism and liberal political thought is well established. So, in what sense can Locke be considered a modern European philosopher? Identity and Difference argues for reassessing this canonical figure....

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Attention and Effort" by Daniel Kahneman 1973 Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, but his 1973 book Attention and Effort, which claimed that attention can be identified with effort, cemented the association as a research paradigm in the cognitive sciences. Since then, the paradigm has rarely been q...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "The Self in QuestionMemory, The Body and Self-Consciousness" By Andy Hamilton 2013 The Self in Question offers a humanistic account of self-consciousness and personal identity, providing a much-needed rapprochement between Analytic and Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In Analytic philosophy, a resurgence of interest in the topic of self-c...

Ai generated introduction and summary of Charles S. Peirce's Phenomenology Analysis and Consciousness By Richard Kenneth Atkins 2018 No reasonable person would deny that the sound of a falling pin is less intense than the feeling of a hot poker pressed against the skin, or that the recollection of something seen decades earlier is less vivid than beholding it in the present. Yet John Locke is quic...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "Creative Evolution" By Henri Bergson 1907 The most famous and influential work of distinguished French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Creative Evolution features the fullest expression of the philosopher's ideas about the problem of existence, propounding a theory of evolution completely distinct from these of earlier thinkers and scientists. In di...

Ai generated introduction and summary of "The Spaces Between UsA Story of Neuroscience, Evolution, and Human Nature" By Michael S. A. Graziano 2017 Each of us has a protected zone two or three feet wide, swelling around the head and narrowing towards the feet. This zone isn't fixed in size: if you're nervous, it grows; if you're relaxed, it shrinks. It also depends on your cultural upbringing. Per...