Branches of Philosophy Podcast

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences" By Michel Foucault 1966

When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Thi...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Phenomenological Mind" By Shaun Gallagher & Dan Zahavi 2008

The Phenomenological Mind, Third Edition introduces fundamental questions about the mind from the perspective of phenomenology. One of the outstanding books in the field, now translated into eight languages, this highly regarded exploration of phenomenology from a topic-driven standpoint examine...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity" By Scott L. Marratto 2012

Challenging a prevalent Western idea of the self as a discrete, interior consciousness, Scott L. Marratto argues instead that subjectivity is a characteristic of the living, expressive movement establishing a dynamic intertwining between a sentient body and its environment. He draw...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Mind: Your Consciousness is What and Where?" By Ted Honderich 2017

What is mind? Still harder, what is consciousness? In this radical new book, eminent philosopher Ted Honderich tackles this great mystery in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience—and the rest of life. He proposes to replace all competing theories of consciousness with actualism that rests on data ...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain" By Michael Gazzaniga 2011

The prevailing orthodoxy in brain science is that since physical laws govern our physical brains, physical laws therefore govern our behaviour and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a 'determined' world.

Not so, argues the r...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People" By Emily Herring 2024

The first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth century thought.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinke...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism" By Dennis Schulting 2020

"In Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting's ...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of :The Great Guide:What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well"By Julian Baggini 202

1Invaluable wisdom on living a good life from one of the Enlightenment's greatest philosophers

David Hume (1711–1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practi...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "John McDowell on Worldly Subjectivity: Oxford Kantianism Meets Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences" By Tony Cheng 2022

John McDowell’s philosophical ideas are both influential and comprehensive, encompassing philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and the history of philosophy. This book is a much-needed systematic overview...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics" By Martin Heidegger 1929/1997

Since its original publication in 1929, Martin Heidegger's provocative book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has attracted much attention both as an important contribution to twentieth-century Kant scholarship and as a pivotal work in Heidegger's own development after Being and Time....

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology" By Edmund Husserl 1931/2012

Widely regarded as the principal founder of phenomenology, one of the most important movements in twentieth century philosophy, Edmund Husserl’s Ideas is one of his most important works and a classic of twentieth century thought. This Routledge Classics edition of the original transla...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness" By Philip Goff 2019

From a leading philosopher of mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness—panpsychism.
Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue ...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Disclosing the World: On the Phenomenology of Language" By Andrew Inkpin 2016

A phenomenological conception of language, drawing on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein, with implications for both the philosophy of language and current cognitive science.

In this book, Andrew Inkpin considers the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or discl...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems" By James J. Gibson 1966

Dr. Gibson does not treat of the different senses as mere producers of visual, auditory, tactual, or other sensations. Rather, he regards them as active seeking mechanisms for looking, listening, touching, and the like. This means that the emphasis is on explanations of how we are able to have ...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Mind and World" By John McDowell 1994

Modern philosophy finds it difficult to give a satisfactory picture of the place of minds in the world. In Mind and World, based on the 1991 John Locke Lectures, one of the most distinguished philosophers writing today offers his diagnosis of this difficulty and points to a cure. In doing so, he delivers the most complete an...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era" By James Barrat 2023

Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the “smart” in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportatio...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason" By Manuel DeLanda 2011

In this groundbreaking book, Manuel DeLanda analyzes different genres of simulation, from cellular automata and generic algorithms to neural nets and multi-agent systems, as a means to conceptualize the space of possibilities associated with casual and other capacities.This rema...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Human Motives:Hedonism, Altruism, and the Science of Affect" By Peter Carruthers 2024

Motivational hedonism (often called "psychological hedonism") claims that everything we do is done in pursuit of pleasure (in the widest sense) and to avoid pain and displeasure (again, in the widest sense). Although perennially attractive, many philosophers and exper...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The World of Perception" By Maurice Merleau-Ponty 2004

In 1948, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote and delivered on French radio a series of seven lectures on the theme of perception. Translated here into English for the first time, they offer a lucid and concise insight into one of the great philosophical minds of the twentieth-century.

These lectures explore themes central not ...