De Anima
by Aristotle

Well, as promised, I read Dune. A remarkable creation, and rightly famous I think, but not my cup of tea. By half way through I was rooting for the Harkonnens. I can only take so much humourless solemnity rendered in lacklustre prose.

Now, probably on to some more fiction. Something from: Gene Wolfe, Cervantes, Dostoevsky's Demons, Huysmans' Against Nature, Calvino's Invisible Cities, short stories by Gogol and Lem.

I've been reading some stories by Donald Barthelme: "The Balloon", "The School", and "On the Deck". Great stuff. I'd never read anything like them before.

Now, probably on to some more fiction. Something from: Gene Wolfe, Cervantes, Dostoevsky's Demons, Huysmans' Against Nature, Calvino's Invisible Cities, short stories by Gogol and Lem. — jamalrob

:cool: :up:

Reviews of previous books:

Austin's Sense and Sensibilia –
Really incredible. No idea why I hadn't read it sooner. Section VII should be mandatory reading for everyone. Sadly some of the finer-grained judgments he uses to attack Ayer strike me as either mistaken (in that I actually agree with Ayer's linguistic judgment) or too slippery to be used effectively as a methodology, and some of the ripostes struck me as ad hoc. It's a testament to how ineffective this kind of appeal to ordinary language tends to be that it breaks down precisely where interesting questions are asked, and the audience can't seriously sympathize with either party without just claiming to have one linguistic intuition over another. But, in the critique of foundational empiricism, really incredible.

Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action –
Seemed stupid, stopped reading near the beginning.

Searle's Speech Acts –
As with all Searle, this is mostly boring, and not particularly insightful beyond a few clarifying points with regards to past authors (updating the Gricean notion of meaning in terms of the Austinian introduction of illocutionary acts, for example). Some of the postulates he appeals to, like that what is referred to must exist, that reference requires being able to uniquely identify an object to be successful, etc. just seem straightforwardly wrong, and I think treating predication and reference as 'speech acts' just muddies the Austinian terminology unnecessarily.

Stevenson's Ethics and Language –
Seems promising so far, though maybe out of date by this point as a work of analytic philosophy. Only a short way into it.

Austin's How to Do Things With Words –
Rereading this one. Still a masterpiece. I see new things every time I read it, and the insights seem to hold up better and better with time.

Probably going to read Vendler's Linguistics in Philosophy and Derrida's Of Grammtology next. And maybe Barthes' book on semiotics.

The Morning Star - Karl Ove Knausgaard

Re-reading:

Manifest Reality: Kant's Idealism and his Realism by Lucy Allais

Stevenson's Ethics and Language — Snakes Alive

I've not read this, but one of my favorite texts on ethics of all time is the 3rd(?) section of Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason, where he brutalizes this book.

And maybe Barthes' book on semiotics. — Snakes Alive

Am currently reading this one atm - schematic and functional, but good.

Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Melinda Cooper — Maw

:cheer:

Also, about to start:

Michael Roberts - The Long Depression: How it Happened, Why it Happened, and What Happens Next. A defense of Marx's thesis on the 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall', in light of the post-2008 world economy.

Michael Roberts - The Long Depression: How it Happened, Why it Happened, and What Happens Next. A defense of Marx's thesis on the 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall', in light of the post-2008 world economy. — StreetlightX

:gasp:

I've not read this, but one of my favorite texts on ethics of all time is the 3rd(?) section of Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason, where he brutalizes this book. — StreetlightX

Cool, I might check it out. Stevenson is mainly referenced today as an influence on a kind of non-cognitivism about moral language, so far as I know (which I don't think is plausible).

The Anomaly, Hervé Le Tellier

On Disobedience, Erich Fromm
The Present Age, Søren Kierkegaard

Philosophy of Existence
by Karl Jaspers

When Stars Came Down to Earth, Cosmology of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of North America, by Von Del Chamberlain.

Second time through. Last time was about 20 year ago and I wasn't paying attention.

Comments on the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

The Civilization of the Middle Ages, Norman F. Cantor. An exceedingly pleasurable read, though not without its shortcomings.

In addition to the Derrida and Vendler, I've got the following on the list:

Noam Chomsky – Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought
Benjamin Lee Whorf – Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
Wilhelm von Humboldt – On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and Its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species
Abu Nasr al-Farabi – The Book of Letters

John Smith - Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis
Intan Suwandi - Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism

these sound interesting

Will let you know when I'm through!

The Origin and Goal of History
by Karl Jaspers

:up:

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson

December readings

• Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, Antonio Damasio
• A History of the Goddess: From the Ice Age to the Bible, Edward Dodge
• The Nature of Middle-Earth, ed. Carl Hostetter
• Set the Night on Fire, Robby Krieger

re-reading

• What the Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula
• Alternatives to Capitalism: Proposals for a Democratic Economy, R. Hanhel & E.O. Wright

Henry IV. Shame on me for not having read it before.

When Stars Came Down to Earth, Cosmology of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of North America, by Von Del Chamberlain. — James Riley

Whose copy are you reading? Used book prices on this are North of $500! Oh, wait! One @ $250.

Whose copy are you reading? Used book prices on this are North of $500! Oh, wait! One $250. — tim wood

"A Ballena Press/Center for Archeoastronomy Cooperative Publication." I doubt that I paid more than 20 bucks for it. Probably mid-1990s? It's a 9" tall X 6" wide paper back.

And apparently worth not spilling coffee on! Or I'll buy it from you for not more than $20.

And apparently worth not spilling coffee on! Or I'll buy it from you for not more than $20. — tim wood

Yikes! I had no idea. I'll be more careful with my coffee! Anyway, I have to go needle my wife about this. :rofl:

Careful she doesn't place it under her authority. The authority of which all married men know, and real men fear (if their wives are real women).

Careful she doesn't place it under her authority. The authority of which all married men know, and real men fear (if their wives are real women). — tim wood

:zip: :grin:

Question:

From time to time I visit this thread, to my benefit. (And occasionally as above see an interesting book that apparently is just plain not available by ordinary means.) Clearly some folks here read a lot, and a lot of what is read is some pretty esoteric philosophy. Question: why? Really, why, exactly?

I happen to like oriental carpets and wine, as most folks do. In reading and learning about both, it quickly becomes clear there are things to be learned that are obscure, arcane, have little or no practical application or value, and that are suitable for sharing with others with similar interests. Which sharing itself can certainly be of value to the people sharing....

But the rug to walk on, sit or lie on, to look nice, the wine to be drunk. Is the philosophy an intoxicant - a private pleasure? Or the prospective social pleasures of sharing the draw? If the further reaches of philosophical thinking bake any bread at all, what sort? I'm not looking for any defense of philosophy. And I recognize there is for some an imperative to publish. More a question as to what it's doing for folks here, how it rows your boat and what boat it rows.

Currently Reading:

The Revisionaries by A.R. Moxon

Re-reading:

A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality by Ralph Cudworth

Even though I very much enjoyed this book the first time through, this time now there's so much more to take out of it, it truly is a goldmine of knowledge and insight. I can surely see why Chomsky thinks these ideas are richer than Kant's, in some respects at least.

It's a bit of shame he's not much, much better known. But, being a very dense theologian does not help.