"Feeling and Knowing - Making Minds Conscious" by Antonio Damasio.

I've previously written about an earlier book by Damasio - "The Feeling of What Happens."

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/724418

Damasio is a cognitive scientist who has written extensively about mental processes. The earlier book, published in 1999, did include a discussion of consciousness, but in a broad context of how the mind works with a heavy emphasis on anatomy and physiology. The newer book, published in 2021, focuses on feeling and consciousness from a process and functional perspective. In it, Damasio describes the mental processes that combine to make us conscious as well as the functions that consciousness carries out in the overall process of maintaining the internal equilibrium of human and other organisms.

Damasio clearly intends the discussion to address issues related to the "hard problem" of consciousness from the "what's the big deal" point of view. I'm sure it won't be convincing to those find the idea of the hard problem compelling.

Definitely a short book for the price, but it helped me start to put words to how I have always seen this issue.

"Philosophy as therapy," has always interested me. There is this neat New Yorker article on it. It would be interesting to me if anyone had ever tried to set up a retreat with this in mind.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/when-philosophers-become-therapists

But then I've been reading about Patristic philosophy, particularly from Syria and Egypt, because this is probably one of the key eras where philosophy is practiced as a sort of therapy on a large scale.



The Philokalia is another great example here, although obviously not focused on the laity.

Bullet Park by John Cheever.

It is nice to read about the link between the neighbours of an American suburb. Cheever was a master of describing the mysterious and dubious normality of these people.

I guess it is important to say that Cheever himself was from Massachusetts; so is Clarky ( @T Clark ). Two great human souls who belong to the same place of the Western civilisation. :smile:

I guess it is important to say that Cheever himself was from Massachusetts; so is Clarky ( T Clark ). Two great human souls who belong to the same place of the Western civilisation — javi2541997

Anabasis of Alexander the Great by Arrian.

Arrian's style of critical admiration with concise recounting of events is awesome.

Finished my last book of 2024, thus my year in review.
To my surprise and pleasure, the tales of Robert Louis Stevenson proved to be some of the most finely crafted literature I've yet encountered. I was also inspired by both the fiction and non-fiction of H.G. Wells, profound and prophetic.

FICTION
A Harlot High and Low by Honore de Balzac
Thuvia Maid of Mars (Barsoom #4) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Chessmen of Mars (Barsoom #5) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Master Mind of Mars (Barsoom #6) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
A Fighting Man of Mars (Barsoom #7) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Swords of Mars (Barsoom #8) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Mucker (Mucker #1) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Synthetic Men of Mars (Barsoom #9) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Llana of Gathol (Barsoom #10) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter & the Giants of Mars and Skeleton Men of Jupiter by Edgar Rice Burroughs
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Arabian Nights by Daniel Heller-Roazen
Gray Lensman (Lensman #4) by E.E. Doc Smith
Second Stage Lensmen (Lensmen #5) by E.E. Doc Smith
Children of the Lens (Lensman #6) by E.E. Doc Smith
Humphry Clinker: An Authoritative Text Contemporary Responses Criticism by Tobias Smollett
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson
New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Sleeper Awakes (Penguin Classics) by H.G. Wells
In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells

NON-FICTION
Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis by Marcello Barbieri
Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century Vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life by Fernand Braudel
Scientific Realism: Selected Essays of Mario Bunge by Mario Bunge
Speculum Mentis by R.G. Collingwood
How We Think by John Dewey
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays by John Dewey
Hermeneutics and the Study of History (Selected Works Vol 4) by Wilhelm Dilthey
Moral Education by Emile Durkheim
The Rules of Sociological Method: And Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method by Emile Durkheim
Outlines of Scepticism by Sextus Empiricus
The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset
History as a System and other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History by Jose Ortega y Gasset
Man and Crisis by Jose Ortega y Gasset
New Ways of Ontology by Nicolai Hartmann
Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments by Max Horkheimer
The Grammar of Systems: From Order to Chaos & Back by Patrick Hoverstadt
The Way Things Are by Lucretius
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx
Collingwood and the Crisis of Western Civilisation: Art Metaphysics and Dialectic by Richard Murphy
Philosophical Writings of Peirce by Charles Sanders Peirce
Collingwood and the reform of metaphysics: A study in the philosophy of mind by Lionel Rubinoff
Unto this Last; The Political Economy of Art; Essays on Political Economy by John Ruskin
The Construction of Social Reality by John Rogers Searle
Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization by John Rogers Searle
NOOGENESIS: Computational Biology by Alex M. Vikoulov
A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells
New Worlds for Old: A Plain Account of Modern Socialism by H.G. Wells
Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology by Alexander Wendt
Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology by Alfred North Whitehead
The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

Kicking off 2025 with

One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez

Also a History of Philosophy, Volume 1: The Project of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking
by Jürgen Habermas

I'm very excited to read this first of a brand new 3 volume history of philosophy by Jurgen Habermas at age 94! Volume 2 just came into print; volume 3 out in a few months.

...the history of Western philosophy as a genealogy of post metaphysical thinking....Habermas situates Western philosophy in relation to traditions of thought founded in the major worldviews (Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism). So says the flyleaf.

My 2024 reading recap. It was a fruitful year:

• Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky.
• The Disoriented, Amin Maalouf.
• Life Is Elsewhere, Milan Kundera.
• Melancholia, Jon Fosse.
• The haw lantern, Seamus Heaney.
• All the Names, José Saramago.
• Art, Yasmina Reza.
• The Tunnel, Ernesto Sábato.
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce.
• Humiliated and Insulted, Dostoevsky.
• The Fratricides, Nikos Kazantzakis.
• The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety. by Alan Watts.
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
• First Person Singular, by Haruki Murakami.
• Four Walls by Vanghélis Hadziyannidis.
• White Nights; Netochka Nezvanova, Dostoevsky.
• Symposium, Nikos Kazantzakis.
• Vacaciones en el Cáucaso, María Iordanidu.
• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
• Hidden by the Leaves by Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
• Angelos Sikelianos. Selected Poems.
• The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami.
• Lucerne and Albert, Leo Tolstoy.
• Ward No. 6; The Prank, Anton Chekhov.
• Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky.
• Immortality, Milan Kundera.
• A History of Eternity; Fictions, Borges.
• Red Cavalry, Isaac Babel.
• The Dream of Heroes; The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares.
• The Elephant's Journey, José Saramago.
• The Farewell Waltz, Milan Kundera.
• The Other Name: Septology I, Jon Fosse.
• Afterlives, Abdulrazak Gurnah.
• A Death in the Family. My Struggle 1, Karl Ove Knausgård.
• The Seducer's Diary, Kierkegaard.
• Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera.
• Bullet Park, John Cheever.

Impressive. The only one on your list I've read is "The Wisdom of Insecurity." It's probably my favorite book by Alan Watts. It's one of his earliest and I have imagined it represents an early stage in his path from western toward eastern philosophy.

That is a total of 11,720 pages, which would be 32.1 pages per day if all read in one year.

I dumped that into ChatGPT and asked it. I didn't actually look each one up individually. Had I manually looked up each book for the number of pages and then did the math myself, GPT says it would have taken me about 1 hour and 20 minutes.

The only one on your list I've read is "The Wisdom of Insecurity." — T Clark

To complete that book in a year, you would need to read 0.44 pages per day. No way you read that fast.

Thanks! I am glad you also have read Alan Watts. I have some other books of him on my shelf that I didn't read yet. I also want to keep reading Russian authors. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Gogol are in my 2025 list.

That is a total of 11,720 pages, which would be 32.1 pages per day if all read in one year. — Hanover

Interesting! Yes, I tend to read 25-30 pages per day, with the only exception of Russian authors. I need to read their stories very carefully. Their prose is very deep and long.

To complete that book in a year, you would need to read 0.44 pages per day. No way you read that fast. — Hanover

I did not indicate how long it took me to read the book.

I did not indicate how long it took me to read the book. — T Clark

Neither did I. I provided the outcome of a hypothetical situation and then I commented on your ability to perform in that hypothetical situation, which would have been poorly.

Laughably poorly. As in, ha ha, Clarky can't even read 1/2 a page daily.

I'm always too busy reading (and writing) to bother spending time telling you exactly what I've been reading. other than to say fiction wise I've read several of Cormac McCarthy and Murakami Haruki and a little Albert Camus and a good deal of poetry and some philosophy.

Laughably poorly. As in, ha ha, Clarky can't even read 1/2 a page daily. — Hanover

Yes, hypothetically I acknowledge I am a very poor reader.

Or alternatively - I hypothetically acknowledge I am a very poor reader.

Or maybe - I acknowledge I am hypothetically a very poor reader.

On the Theory and History of Ideological Production: Juan Carlos Rodríguez and His Contemporaries by Malcolm K. Read

My reading list for 2024:

• The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han by Mark Edward Lewis
• Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation by Jairus Banaji
• A History of China by John Keay
• A History of Japan by R.H.P Mason and J.G Caiger
• India: A History by John Keay
• Revolutionary Jews From Spinoza to Marx: The Fight for A Secular World of Universal and Equal Rights by Jonathan Israel
• The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World by Marie Favereau
• Deconstructing Postmodernist Nietzscheanism: Deleuze and Foucault by Jan Rehmann
• The Book of Chuang Tzu
• Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
• The Castle by Franz Kafka
• Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai
• What Was Neoliberalism: Studies in the Most Recent Phase of Capitalism 1973-2008 by Neil Davidson
• Rethinking Marxist Approaches to Transition: A Theory of Temporal Dislocation by Onur Acaroglu
• Market and Violence: The Functioning of Capitalism in History by Heide Gerstenberger

Additionally, I've been reading One Thousand and One Nights each night since January 1st of 2024, so at the time of writing I am on Night 361

"The Storm before the Storm. The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic" by Mike Duncan

Quoting B Franklin's remark that the (US) Constitutional Convention had produced"...a Republic... if you can keep it..", the author indicates a/the relevance of this historical study to current times.

Easy read with sufficient references from contemporary sources not to burden the general reader.

@javi2541997,

Mikhail Sholokhov is an early Soviet Russian writer with reasonably balanced (politically for the times) story lines and some intellectual depth that might interest you if you're interested in early Soviet Russian literature. "Quiet flows the Don" is often quoted as his best, but that is arguable. He wrote several Russian Civil War novels with noticeable undertones/influences of the late Imperial greats.

Working with 55-60 year old memories, so treat above with care. Was into Russian literature around 12 to 16 years old. 1960s, shows tolerant ( or ignorant ) parents. Lucky!

encouraging smile

Hello Kazan,

I know about Sholokhov, but I haven't read anything from him yet. My parents have a special edition of 'Russian Masters,' and Sholokhov's 'The Don' is included in the collection. If I am not mistaken, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but the Soviet Union forced him to decline the prize.

I am interested in Russian literature in general, but now I want to be focused on classical Russian writers, when Russia was under the Tsar dynasty.

@javi2541997,

"... but now I want to focused....... under the Tsar dynasty."

That will keep you busy for sometime.

Recently read a very Modern Russian short stories compilation. Some good, some not. The eternal question "What makes good reading?"

cheery smile

The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess.

A brilliant and fascinating dystopian science fiction novel, written in the same year he wrote A Clockwork Orange. The author’s homophobia, which he expects the reader to share, makes it difficult to endorse the book, but somehow Burgess’s contradictions and prejudices only make him more interesting. Not to let him off the hook, but it’s worth pointing out that while The Wanting Seed appears banally homophobic, and in an interview in the 80s he talked about the “gay mafia,” his epic Earthly Powers, with its gay main character, has been called the greatest gay novel of the twentieth century.

How about highly pathetically a very poor reader?

How about highly pathetically a very poor reader? — Janus

The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy.

Russian literature to start 2025 with! It is a novella about—mainly, amongst other topics—sexual abstinence. It was censored by the authorities when it was published the first time.

"The Storm before the Storm. The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic" by Mike Duncan

I have this sitting on my bookshelf because I really like his podcasts. I haven't read it yet though because I am pretty well versed in the period, but it would be nice to stroll down memory lane again at some point. I often contend to those afraid of President Trump making himself a dictator that he is, at best, a Sulla, but probably more a Gracchi. He isn't competent enough to be a Caesar, let alone an Caesar Augustus. Maybe a Marc Antony lol.

His Revolutions podcast is coming back. He is going to be doing Cuba, Iran, etc. It's a shame he is dodging the Chinese Civil War though; it'd only take him a few years to cover all 50 years of it after all...

On Monday, my daughter and I finished reading and discussing "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. We've been reading it 100 pages/month starting last January. It's the story of Robert Moses, the man primarily responsible for infrastructure construction in New York City, Long Island, and throughout New York State starting in the mid 1920s through the mid 1960s. He was amazing and brilliant man and a monomaniacal promoter of cars and highways at the expense of rapid transit. No one in history has had a bigger effect on the day to day life of New Yorkers. Great story, well told.

Now we have to find a new book for 2025. The criteria 1) We're both interested 2) We would never read it ourselves because of it's length 3) We'll get bragging rights and be able to pontificate for the rest of our lives. We're thinking about "Infinite Jest."

On Monday, my daughter and I finished reading and discussing "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. We've been reading it 100 pages/month starting last January — T Clark

Wonderful. I imagine you had a great time reading and discussing a book with your daughter. She has to be very proud of you, so you of her, of course. It is important the culture that we receive by home.

Now we have to find a new book for 2025. The criteria 1) We're both interested 2) We would never read it ourselves because of it's length 3) We'll get bragging rights and be able to pontificate for the rest of our lives. We're thinking about "Infinite Jest." — T Clark

"Infinite Jest" is a good choice, indeed. A long book and seems interesting; holding a lot to discuss. I was about to recommend you "One Thousand and One Nights" because I imagine it might be interesting to read a tale each night and then choose your favourite at the end of the year, for example.

I was about to recommend you "One Thousand and One Nights" because I imagine it might be interesting to read a tale each night and then choose your favourite at the end of the year, for example. — javi2541997

We haven't decided finally yet. We may yet pick another book.

I was merrily reading The Power Broker until Moses started getting really nasty. Caro is a great biographer. You could start on his bio of Lyndon B. Johnson, if you think you'll live long enough.

A shorter book, The Public Burning by Robert Coover, (1976) an account of the events leading up to the execution of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, might be a nice change of pace. It's historical fiction -- most of the characters are historical; you might even consider The Phantom (communists) and Uncle Sam (jingoism cubed) real. The story is narrated by Richard M. Nixon, who spends quite a bit of time reflecting on his own virtues.

It's quite funny, despite the subject matter. For instance, in the prologue the execution is scheduled to take place in Times Square with a replica of the Sing Sing execution chamber on a stage. Times Square is decorated in red, white, and blue bunting, flags, etc. This is Uncle Sam's doing. Happily the plan is spoiled by The Phantom (presumably). Signage on the stage begins to be corrupted: "AMERICA THE HOPE OF THE WORLD" mysteriously changes into "AMERICA THE JOKE OF THE WORLD" and worse things. Eventually the whole stage collapses into the street in a big wind storm.

It was recommended in a NYT editorial a few days ago. It is weirdly relevant.