Spring 2012 Reading List

1. The Body Politic -- Jonathan D. Moreno
2. Bioethics -- edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller Jr., Jeffrey Paul* 
3. Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia -- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guitattari
4. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia -- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guitattari
5. Security, Territory, and Population -- Michel Foucault*
6. The Birth of Biopolitics -- Michael Foucault* 
7. Anarchy, State, and Utopia -- Robert Nozick* 
8. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere -- Jurgen Habermas* 
9. The Structure of Scientific Revolution -- Thomas Kuhn* 
10. Power (an anthology) -- Michel Foucault* 
11. Being and Time -- Martin Heidegger* 
12. Being and Nothingness -- Jean-Paul Sartre * 
13. Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President -- Ron Suskind* 
14. My Life -- Bill Clinton* 
15. ? 

* - Carried over from the Winter

Nothing ever changes: In the past, Western society was ridden with religious wars between different sects of Christianity; now, Western Universities are ridden with religious wars between academic departments--primarily divided between science and the humanities.

A digital post-it note

If the project of neurophilosophy is to bridge neuroscience with philosophy of mind, then I would like to propose that the project of neuroethics be to bridge behavioral psychology with moral philosophy.

I need to do some research to see the extent to which any work has been done on any translational reductive projects that show how what we conceptualize as "moral rules" are just discrete habitual behaviors.



"Ethics is a tool created, not given or discovered."

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/02/14/3430459.htm

All the world is a stage and I've grown tired of playing the villain--not to mention such a minor villain at that!

Winter Reading List

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- Robert Pirsig
2. The Master and Margarita -- Mikhail Bulgakov (re-read) 
3. Exile and the Kingdom -- Albert Camus 
4. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World -- Haruki Murakami 
5. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature -- Richard Rorty (re-read)
6. Civilization and its Discontents -- Sigmund Freud (re-read) 
7. Morality and Our Complicated Form of Life -- Peg O'Connor 
8. American Nietzsche -- Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen 
9. On What Matters -- Derek Parfit 
10. Reasons and Persons -- Derek Parfit 
11. Bioethics -- edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller Jr., Jeffrey Paul 
12. Godel, Escher, Bach -- Douglas Hofstadter* 
13. The Age of Spiritual Machines -- Ray Kurzweil* 
14. Sister Citizen -- Melissa Harris Perry* 
15. Anarchy, State, and Utopia -- Robert Nozick* 
16. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere -- Jurgen Habermas* 
17. The Structure of Scientific Revolution -- Thomas Kuhn* 
18. Security, Territory, and Population -- Michel Foucault
19. The Birth of Biopolitics -- Michael Foucault* 
20. Power (an anthology) -- Michel Foucault* 
21. Being and Time -- Martin Heidegger* 
22. Being and Nothingness -- Jean-Paul Sartre * 
23. Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President -- Ron Suskind* 
24. My Life -- Bill Clinton* 
25. ? 

* - Carried over from the Fall

The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography

What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Fall Reading List

1. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism -- Paul Boghossian
2. The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office -- David Blumenthal & James Morone
3. What Philosophers Know -- Gary Gutting
4. Godel, Escher, Bach -- Douglas Hofstadter
5. Godel's Proof -- Ernst Nagel & James Newman
6. Neurophilosophy -- Patricia Churchland
7. The Age of Spiritual Machines -- Ray Kurzweil
8. Sister Citizen -- Melissa Harris Perry
9. Darwin's Dangerous Idea -- Daniel C. Dennett*
10. Anarchy, State, and Utopia -- Robert Nozick*
11. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere -- Jurgen Habermas*
12. The Structure of Scientific Revolution -- Thomas Kuhn*
13. The Birth of Biopolitics -- Michael Foucault*
14. Power (an anthology) -- Michel Foucault*
15. Being and Time -- Martin Heidegger
16. Being and Nothingness -- Jean-Paul Sartre 
17. Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President -- Ron Suskind
18. My Life -- Bill Clinton
19. ?

* - Carried over from the Summer