Branches of Philosophy Podcast

An introduction and summary of "From a Biological Point of View Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy" By Elliott Sober 1994 Elliott Sober is one of the leading philosophers of science and is a former winner of the Lakatos Prize, the major award in the field. This new collection of essays will appeal to a readership that extends well beyond the frontiers of the philosophy of science. Sober shows how i...

An introduction and summary of "Being You A New Science of Consciousness" By Anil Seth 2021 Being You is not as simple as it sounds. Somehow, within each of our brains, billions of neurons work to create our conscious experience. How does this happen? Why do we experience life in the first person? After over twenty years researching the brain, world-renowned neuroscientist Anil Seth puts forward a...

An introduction and summary of "A New Philosophy of Society Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity" By Manuel DeLanda 2006 In A New Philosophy of Society Manuel DeLanda offers a fascinating look at how the contemporary world is characterized by an extraordinary social complexity. Since most social entities, from small communities to large nation-states would disappear altogether if our cognitive...

An introduction and summary of "Becoming Human From Pointing Gestures to Syntax" By Teresa Bejarano 2011 What do the pointing gesture, the imitation of new complex motor patterns, the evocation of absent objects and the grasping of others’ false beliefs all have in common? Apart from being (one way or other) involved in the language, they all would share a demanding requirement – a second mental c...

An introduction and summary of The Life of the Mind An Essay on Phenomenological Externalism By Gregory McCulloch 2003 The Life of the Mind presents an original and striking conception of the mind and its place in nature. In a spirited and rigorous attack on most of the orthodox positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, McCulloch connects three of the orthodoxy's central themes - externalism,...

An introduction and summary of "Why Solipsism Matters"By Sami Pihlström 2020 Solipsism is one of the philosophical thesis or ideas that has generally been regarded as highly implausible, or even crazy. The view that the world is “my world” in the sense that nothing exists independently of my mind, thought, and/or experience is, understandably, frowned up as a genuine philosophical position. For th...

An introduction and summary of "Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit"By Martin Heidegger 1988 The text of Martin Heidegger's 1930-1931 lecture course on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit contains some of Heidegger's most crucial statements about temporality, ontological difference and dialectic, and being and time in Hegel. Within the context of Heidegger's project of reinterpreting Western thought throu...

An introduction and summary of "Consciousness Demystified" By Todd E. Feinberg, Jon M. Mallatt 2018 Demystifying consciousness: how subjective experience can be explained by natural brain and evolutionary processes. Consciousness is often considered a mystery. How can the seemingly immaterial experience of consciousness be explained by the material neurons of the brain? There seems to be an unbrid...

An introduction and summary of "The Human Evolutionary TransitionFrom Animal Intelligence to Culture" By Magnus Enquist, Stefano Ghirlanda, Johan Lind 2023 A major new theory of why human intelligence has not evolved in other speciesThe Human Evolutionary Transition offers a unified view of the evolution of intelligence, presenting a bold and provocative new account of how animals and humans have...

An introduction and summary of "Kant and Phenomenology" By Tom Rockmore 2011 Phenomenology, together with Marxism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy, dominated philosophy in the twentieth century—and Edmund Husserl is usually thought to have been the first to develop the concept. His views influenced a variety of important later thinkers, such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, who eventually turne...

An introduction and summary of "The Experience MachineHow Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality" By Andy Clark 2023 For as long as we've studied the mind, we've believed that information flowing from our senses determines what our mind perceives. But as our understanding has advanced in the last few decades, a hugely powerful new view has flipped this assumption on its head. The brain is not a passi...

An introduction and summary of "When Animals DreamThe Hidden World of Animal Consciousness"By David M. Peña-Guzmán 2022 A spellbinding look at the philosophical and moral implications of animal dreamingAre humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosoph...

An introduction and summary of "The ImaginaryA Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination"By Jean-Paul Sartre 1940 A cornerstone of Sartre’s philosophy, The Imaginary was first published in 1940. Sartre had become acquainted with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Berlin and was fascinated by his idea of the 'intentionality of consciousness' as a key to the puzzle of existence. Against this b...

An introduction and summary of "The Recursive MindThe Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization" By Michael C. Corballis 2011 The Recursive Mind challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our though...

An introduction and summary of "The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness" By Edmund Husserl 1964 An exploration of the terrain of consciousness in the light of its temporality from the father of phenomenology. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness is a translation of Edmund Husserl’s Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins. The first part of the book was origi...

An introduction and summary of "Making SpaceThe Development of Spatial Representation and Reasoning"By Nora Newcombe, Janellen Huttenlocher 2000 Spatial competence is a central aspect of human adaptation. To understand human cognitive functioning, we must understand how people code the locations of things, how they navigate in the world, and how they represent and mentally manipulate spatial infor...

An introduction and summary of "Space and Sense" By Susanna Millar 2008 How do we perceive the space around us, locate objects within it, and make our way through it? What do the senses contribute? This book focuses on touch in order to examine which aspects of vision and touch overlap in spatial processing. It argues that spatial processing depends crucially on integrating diverse sensory inputs...

An introduction and summary of "Out of Our Heads Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness" By Alva Noë 2010 Alva Noë is one of a new breed—part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist—who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads...

An introduction and summary of "The Singularity Is Near When Humans Transcend Biology" By Ray Kurzweil 2005 At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic...

An introduction and summary of "Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason" By Martin Heidegger 1977 The eminent philosopher delivers an illuminating interpretation of Kant’s magnum opus in what is itself a significant work of Western philosophy. The text of Martin Heidegger’s 1927–28 university lecture course on Emmanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason presents a close inter...

An introduction and summary of Hume on CausationBy Helen Beebee 2006 Causation is one of the most important and enduring topics in philosophy, going as far back as Aristotle. In this lucid and enthralling account, Helen Beebee covers all the major debates and issues in the philosophy of causation, making it the ideal starting point for those approaching the subject for the first time. Beginning wi...

An introduction and summary of "Experienced WholenessIntegrating Insights from Gestalt Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Predictive Processing" By Wanja Wiese 2018 An interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity, investigating how experiential wholes can be characterized and how such characterizations can be analyzed computationally. How can we account for phenomenal unity? That is, how can we...

An introduction and summary of "The case for mental imagery" By Stephen M. Kosslyn, William L. Thompson, Giorgio Ganis 2006 When we try to remember whether we left a window open or closed, do we actually see the window in our mind? If we do, does this mental image play a role in how we think? For almost a century, scientists have debated whether mental images play a functional role in cognition. I...

An introduction and summary of "Mental Imagery Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience" By Bence Nanay 2023 Mental Imagery: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience is about mental imagery and the important work it does in our mental life. It plays a crucial role in the vast majority of our perceptual episodes. It also helps us understand many of the most puzzling features of perception (like the way it...

An introduction and summary of "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness Our Leading Theories of how Your Brain Really Works" By Patrick House 2022 A concise, elegant, and thought-provoking exploration of the mystery of consciousness and the functioning of the brain. Despite decades of research, remarkable imagery, and insights from a range of scientific and medical disciplines, the human brain r...