/lit/ - Literature

I feel many people on this board and elsewhere ask where to start with histories of philosophy because they want a quick summary and don't have the right disposition to ever read the primary texts. I don't think that's good. Try your best to read the sources yourself, and if you don't think you will, maybe just skip philosophy altogether. It's fine to use histories as temporary ways to fix gaps in your knowledge, but don't use them as permanent crutches. Remember you've got decades of life ahead of you to learn so much, so don't worry about time.

>>18797394
He's good up til around the 1920s. Once he went political and popular he really tanked. It's because he wasn't actually architectonic in those matters, he wasn't being theoretical or structural, he was just a very fired up advocate of views he accepted but they weren't particularly new or argued for in new interesting ways. Whereas his epistemology and metaphysics and logic were very innovative at the time and are still compelling to some people to this day. Wittgenstein is right, read his red works but throw out the blue works. Anyway the pre-20s Russell had an interesting evolution. He began as a British Idealist. By the time of the Principles of Mathematics (not to be confused with the Principia Mathematica) he was a Meinongian. He then developed descriptivism (and abandoned the Meinongianism) and knowledge by acquaintance by the time of "On Denoting" and other papers of the time. During this period he was a dualist, believing in Cartesian souls separate from all else. But he read William James and eventually endorsed the Jamesian neutral monism. In the first stage of this he was a phenomenalist (in the same style as the early logical positivists) who constructed everything, both mind and matter, from sense data. This is his view in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. But after this, during the 20s, he developed what's called "Russellian monism," which is the view that the entities of physics have intrinsic qualitative natures distinct from their structural (and physical-causal) natures. Those intrinsic natures he allows might be mental/sensible. All these stages are interesting. But if you read his politics or ethics or history or other popular works he's very subpar. Follow Wittgenstein's advice.

How can he be reddit if he BTFO reddit?
>For all these reasons, what modern physics has to say is somewhat confused. Nevertheless, we are bound to believe it on pain of death. If there were any community which rejected the doctrines of modern physics, physicists employed by a hostile government would have no difficulty in exterminating it. The modern physicist, therefore, enjoys powers far exceeding those of the Inquisition in its palmiest days, and it certainly behoves us to treat his pronouncements with due awe.

>>18700853
The typical analytic propaedeutic is Frege's "Sense and Reference," Russell's "On Denoting," Kripke's Naming and Necessity, and maybe Putnam's "The Meaning of Meaning," as well as Quine's "On What There Is" and maybe "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (and just for context, Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology"). These are the papers (plus one short book) that every analytic seems to know well, and you end up reading them a bunch of times in different classes because they matter a lot. While you're working through these papers + book, you should also pick up a logic textbook at the minimum. Then you can dive deeper into the history of analytic philosophy. Some of the best works are difficult tomes but they're also the most rewarding.

One of these days I'll put together a proper general with more resources, but for the time, gather here. Continentals welcome if they behave, inquirers are welcome to ask and learn.
>Introduction to Carnap
>>/lit/thread/S16115885
Today's theme: Essential analytic reading list. I don't have the charts saved so whoever has the ones going around, feel free to share. What do you recommend people start with?

>Russell often characterised his moral and political writings as lying outside the scope of philosophy, but Russell's admirers and detractors are often more acquainted with his pronouncements on social and political matters, or what some (e.g., biographer Ray Monk) have called his "journalism," than they are with his technical, philosophical work. There is a marked tendency to conflate these matters, and to judge Russell the philosopher on what he himself would definitely consider to be his non-philosophical opinions. Russell often cautioned people to make this distinction.
What are some essential Russell works that aren't social/political/moral 'journalism'? Stuff like his logical atomism, Russellian monism, descriptivism, logicism, type theory, theory of acquaintance, that sort of thing.

>Bertrand Russell died age 97
>Willard Van Orman Quine died age 92
>Nelson Goodman died age 92
>Karl Popper died age 92
Does analytic philosophy make you live longer?

Have you read "On Denoting" yet anon?
Have you read "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description" yet?
Have you read The Principles of Mathematics (not to be confused with Principia Mathematica) yet?
Have you read The Philosophy of Logical Atomism yet?
Don't tell me you get your conception of me from The History of Western Philosophy, The Problems of Philosophy, and my political, ethical, and religious opinions? I only did that because I did everything else by 1920 and still had fifty years of life to spare.

>>14141918
Are you sure anon? Surely you know that Russell did more than just pop phil survey of philosophy or polemics?