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Bin ich oder bin ich nicht?: Neue philosophische Anworten auf ewige Fragen
The work of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Russell and Wittgenstein is well known. Philosophy: The State of the Art is the first book to relate, for the general reader, the thoughts of the world's most eminent living philosophers, along with the greatest among the very recently deceased. In the search for higher meaning, Nicholas Fearn has travelled the globe to interview over three dozen of the most eminent intellectuals in the field, from Derek Parfit, David Wiggins and Bernard Williams to Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty and Bernard Henri-Levi. In asking them the three key questions - 'who are we?' 'what do we know?' and 'how should we live?' - Fearn reveals the lastest thinking on what it is to be human; what our limitations and capabilities are; and what our purpose should be. Philosophy: The State of the Art is a brilliant and highly original guide to the latest answers to the oldest questions.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
280 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 20, 2012
This is a fantastic intro-philosophy book covering a broad range of topics and philosophers. Fearn included a ton of high level, academic information and made it interesting and relevant.
You do have to be paying full attention while reading this, and I found myself rereading certain passages to understand them completely. However, on the whole I found it very readable though not dumbed down.
This works as a leisure read if you are interested in philosophy and willing to do some thinking. It would also be a good reference for someone who is looking to read more philosophy and wants to sample a variety of philosophers, past and present, to decide what o study in more depth.
You do have to be paying full attention while reading this, and I found myself rereading certain passages to understand them completely. However, on the whole I found it very readable though not dumbed down.
This works as a leisure read if you are interested in philosophy and willing to do some thinking. It would also be a good reference for someone who is looking to read more philosophy and wants to sample a variety of philosophers, past and present, to decide what o study in more depth.
July 11, 2014
For a book with such an ambitious title, I was disappointed to read such ambiguous chapters of thoughts spoken by great philosophers in the past. The book seemed like something an undergraduate student would submit as a report to his professor for philosophy class. The book was all over the place and yet offered no direct answers to the oldest questions, as promised on the cover page. Either way, it was easy to read. 3/5 stars solid.
August 14, 2008
The book's subtitle reads: The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions.
Fearn interviews the best of the living philosphers--John Searle, Richard Rorty, Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, David Chalmers, Jerry Fodor, Daniel Dennett and more--in a series of expositions about free will, the mind-body problem, postmodernism, pragamatism, the language of thought, etc.
The result is a sometimes useful but mostly pointless rendering of these philosophical problems. The "interviews" are too poorly presented (embedded in the text, amidst Fearn's observations and interjections) to be of much use. This method serves neither as a useful introduction to a thinker's ideas or a worthwhile reexamination if you are already familiar with the ideas.
Fearn interviews the best of the living philosphers--John Searle, Richard Rorty, Peter Singer, Noam Chomsky, David Chalmers, Jerry Fodor, Daniel Dennett and more--in a series of expositions about free will, the mind-body problem, postmodernism, pragamatism, the language of thought, etc.
The result is a sometimes useful but mostly pointless rendering of these philosophical problems. The "interviews" are too poorly presented (embedded in the text, amidst Fearn's observations and interjections) to be of much use. This method serves neither as a useful introduction to a thinker's ideas or a worthwhile reexamination if you are already familiar with the ideas.
July 14, 2011
A great little book introducing important philosophical questions and some of the contemporary "answers" offered by modern philosophers. Claims to be a conversation with these philosophers but never really feels like it. Nonetheless, worth reading for those who want a short introduction without wanting the whole history of philosophy.
August 4, 2017
Not a lot of competition, but this is one of the most straightforward and enjoyable works of popular philosophy.
July 25, 2019
Interesting and readable but a bit shallow in parts.
The book is in three parts: "Who Am I?", "What Do I Know?" and "What Should I Do?" These parts correspond to philosophical conundrums about consciousness, epistemology and morality, respectively. Fearn's method is to interview contemporary philosophers on these subjects and to compare and contrast their views while referring to the views of philosophers of the past.
In the first part Fearn tackles the problem of the self, free will, artificial intelligence, and the dualism of body and soul. The modern consensus, as I understand it, is that the self (as the Buddha taught) is a delusion in flux that the evolutionary mechanism has found useful for instilling in creatures such as ourselves; that free will is an illusion we can't help but believe; that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence (but that may take longer than previously thought); and that the soul is pure information. For the most part Fearn's presentation of views and his comments are more or less in line with my understanding.
"Does the idea never thought exist?" would be my variant on Bishop Berkeley's old query about the tree in the forest. My answer goes to the heart of the next part of Fearn's book which concerns what we know, how we know it, and how much confidence in that knowledge we can have. I lie awake nights wondering where the idea never thought is. It's not on the ether wind and not in God's mind. WHERE is it? I refuse to believe that it doesn't exist.
Or is all of human knowledge merely a gigantic social construction (as the postmodernists would have it) forever distant from true knowledge? Clearly Fearn is not a postmodernist since he mostly diminishes this idea. Most philosophers and other thinkers that I have read, believe that human knowledge is an ever-widening sphere going out into a larger unknown. We learn more and more about ourselves and the universe we live in, but we have no way of knowing how distant or close to Absolute Truth we might be, or could possibly be. Furthermore, we cannot know with certainty that we know anything at all. Descartes might have thought he found something true in "Ego cognito sum," but actually he assumed the "I am" in the "I think" and proved nothing. And nobody, if I am reading Fearn rightly, has gotten any further than that.
In the final part there are some bits about "moral luck," e.g., Johnny got drunk, drove like an idiot but hit only an old tree stump and walked away with only a scratch, while Frankie, also under the influence, hit a child and killed it. Morally speaking Frankie is feeling kind of low while Johnny hasn't a clue. This is moral luck.
All in all this is a most interesting book, but to be honest, I think Fearn is a little short of a mature understanding of some of the questions. In particular I don't think he realizes that the subjectivity of the experience of color or taste or any sort of feeling is absolute. I can never know exactly how you experience the color red or the taste of black walnuts. I assume--and we all do--that your experience is closely similar to mine. So no problem. But when we get to the larger experience of consciousness in its bedeviling complexity, our assumptions may lead us astray. Almost certainly the consciousness of a dolphin or a whale is difference from ours in some very important respects and in ways we cannot know. But the philosophic problem of consciousness is really like the problem of "seeing" things smaller than photons: it's something that we can never do. Subjectivity is forever subjective. Or to use another example, we can never measure something so accurately that we can be sure that it is exactly one meter long. In fact, the every idea of exactly becomes muddled as we approach the limits of our senses and descend toward the Planck limit.
Fearn also seems a little askew when it comes to the "Swampman" thought experiment. Swampman is an exact replica of philosopher Donald Davidson. Davidson opines that Swampman, despite having exactly all the same molecules in exactly the same arrangements as himself, is different from himself because Swampman "can't recognize my friends; it can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in the first place." (p. 103)
Fearn goes along with this, not realizing that the play on words (recognize and cognize) has no meaning here. Fearn calls the memories that Swampman has "pseudo-memories" (p. 104). But where are the "real" memories that Swampman and Davidson have of the past? They are in, and only in, the brains of Swampman and Davidson, and they are identical!
This is a wonderful thought experiment that has been done many times in slightly different ways. What I think we can learn from such an experiment is that--hold on to the steering wheel--we don't really exist as we think we do! If Davidson is dissolved and Swampman comes home for dinner, clearly Davidson is not going to get anything to eat, but no one including Davidson will ever know the difference. Well, Swampman if he had been told he was a duplicate or had seen Davidson might know, but guess what? Swampman would remain convinced that he is Davidson.
Fearn includes this wonderful quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death." (p. 208) Unfortunately Fearn goes on to miss Wittgenstein's meaning when he remarks that he can see beyond our experience of death and so it matters. But Wittgenstein's point (and that of Eastern religions) is psychological and very powerful; however it requires us to simultaneously understand that (1) we do not exist in a way different than Swampman; and (2) death is not an experience we ever have except in the anticipation.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
The book is in three parts: "Who Am I?", "What Do I Know?" and "What Should I Do?" These parts correspond to philosophical conundrums about consciousness, epistemology and morality, respectively. Fearn's method is to interview contemporary philosophers on these subjects and to compare and contrast their views while referring to the views of philosophers of the past.
In the first part Fearn tackles the problem of the self, free will, artificial intelligence, and the dualism of body and soul. The modern consensus, as I understand it, is that the self (as the Buddha taught) is a delusion in flux that the evolutionary mechanism has found useful for instilling in creatures such as ourselves; that free will is an illusion we can't help but believe; that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence (but that may take longer than previously thought); and that the soul is pure information. For the most part Fearn's presentation of views and his comments are more or less in line with my understanding.
"Does the idea never thought exist?" would be my variant on Bishop Berkeley's old query about the tree in the forest. My answer goes to the heart of the next part of Fearn's book which concerns what we know, how we know it, and how much confidence in that knowledge we can have. I lie awake nights wondering where the idea never thought is. It's not on the ether wind and not in God's mind. WHERE is it? I refuse to believe that it doesn't exist.
Or is all of human knowledge merely a gigantic social construction (as the postmodernists would have it) forever distant from true knowledge? Clearly Fearn is not a postmodernist since he mostly diminishes this idea. Most philosophers and other thinkers that I have read, believe that human knowledge is an ever-widening sphere going out into a larger unknown. We learn more and more about ourselves and the universe we live in, but we have no way of knowing how distant or close to Absolute Truth we might be, or could possibly be. Furthermore, we cannot know with certainty that we know anything at all. Descartes might have thought he found something true in "Ego cognito sum," but actually he assumed the "I am" in the "I think" and proved nothing. And nobody, if I am reading Fearn rightly, has gotten any further than that.
In the final part there are some bits about "moral luck," e.g., Johnny got drunk, drove like an idiot but hit only an old tree stump and walked away with only a scratch, while Frankie, also under the influence, hit a child and killed it. Morally speaking Frankie is feeling kind of low while Johnny hasn't a clue. This is moral luck.
All in all this is a most interesting book, but to be honest, I think Fearn is a little short of a mature understanding of some of the questions. In particular I don't think he realizes that the subjectivity of the experience of color or taste or any sort of feeling is absolute. I can never know exactly how you experience the color red or the taste of black walnuts. I assume--and we all do--that your experience is closely similar to mine. So no problem. But when we get to the larger experience of consciousness in its bedeviling complexity, our assumptions may lead us astray. Almost certainly the consciousness of a dolphin or a whale is difference from ours in some very important respects and in ways we cannot know. But the philosophic problem of consciousness is really like the problem of "seeing" things smaller than photons: it's something that we can never do. Subjectivity is forever subjective. Or to use another example, we can never measure something so accurately that we can be sure that it is exactly one meter long. In fact, the every idea of exactly becomes muddled as we approach the limits of our senses and descend toward the Planck limit.
Fearn also seems a little askew when it comes to the "Swampman" thought experiment. Swampman is an exact replica of philosopher Donald Davidson. Davidson opines that Swampman, despite having exactly all the same molecules in exactly the same arrangements as himself, is different from himself because Swampman "can't recognize my friends; it can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in the first place." (p. 103)
Fearn goes along with this, not realizing that the play on words (recognize and cognize) has no meaning here. Fearn calls the memories that Swampman has "pseudo-memories" (p. 104). But where are the "real" memories that Swampman and Davidson have of the past? They are in, and only in, the brains of Swampman and Davidson, and they are identical!
This is a wonderful thought experiment that has been done many times in slightly different ways. What I think we can learn from such an experiment is that--hold on to the steering wheel--we don't really exist as we think we do! If Davidson is dissolved and Swampman comes home for dinner, clearly Davidson is not going to get anything to eat, but no one including Davidson will ever know the difference. Well, Swampman if he had been told he was a duplicate or had seen Davidson might know, but guess what? Swampman would remain convinced that he is Davidson.
Fearn includes this wonderful quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein: "Death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death." (p. 208) Unfortunately Fearn goes on to miss Wittgenstein's meaning when he remarks that he can see beyond our experience of death and so it matters. But Wittgenstein's point (and that of Eastern religions) is psychological and very powerful; however it requires us to simultaneously understand that (1) we do not exist in a way different than Swampman; and (2) death is not an experience we ever have except in the anticipation.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
June 21, 2016
Αν παρακάμψει κάποιος τον πομπώδη υπότιτλο "Οι πιο πρόσφατες απαντήσεις στα αρχαιότερα ερωτήματα", τότε μπορεί να περάσει μερικές ευχάριστες ώρες διαβάζοντας αυτό το βιβλίο, που δεν απαντά στα αρχαιότερα ερωτήματα αλλά περιέχει αρκετά καλά στοιχεία.
Αυτό που το κάνει ενδιαφέρον είναι ότι ο συγγραφέας απευθύνθηκε σε ορισμένους γνωστούς εν ζωή "επαγγελματίες" φιλόσοφους (κυρίως δηλαδή καθηγητές φιλοσοφίας), από τους οποίους κάποιοι είναι όντως σημαντικοί, όχι όμως όλοι. Ο συγγραφέας επιχειρεί να συνυφάνει τις προσωπικές τους ιδέες με αυτές που του προσέφεραν οι φιλόσοφοι που προσέγγισε και το αποτέλεσμα είναι αλλού πολύ καλό, αλλού απλώς ενδιαφέρον και αλλού όχι και τόσο καλό. Υπάρχουν μερικά πραγματικά δυνατά σημεία στο κείμενο, δυστυχώς όχι πολλά, αλλά και αρκετά όπου ο συγγραφέας μάλλον συγχέει κάποιες έννοιες, χάνει σημαντικά στοιχεία και η ανάπτυξη που κάνει είναι λιποβαρής.
Ενώ αμφιταλαντευόμουν ανάμεσα στα τρία και στα τέσσερα αστεράκια για το βιβλίο αυτό, τελικά λέω να του δώσω τέσσερα λόγω των καλών στοιχείων που ανέφερα παραπάνω και επειδή το εγχείρημα είναι εξαρχής δύσκολο, οπότε νομίζω ότι δικαιούται λίγη επιείκια. Σίγουρα είναι ένα βιβλίο που θα προσφέρει ευχαρίστηση σε όσους έχουν κάποιο ενδιαφέρον για τη φιλοσοφία, χωρίς να ανταποκρίνεται στις υψηλές απαιτήσεις εκείνων που ασχολούνται επισταμένως με τα θέματα που πραγματεύεται.
Αυτό που το κάνει ενδιαφέρον είναι ότι ο συγγραφέας απευθύνθηκε σε ορισμένους γνωστούς εν ζωή "επαγγελματίες" φιλόσοφους (κυρίως δηλαδή καθηγητές φιλοσοφίας), από τους οποίους κάποιοι είναι όντως σημαντικοί, όχι όμως όλοι. Ο συγγραφέας επιχειρεί να συνυφάνει τις προσωπικές τους ιδέες με αυτές που του προσέφεραν οι φιλόσοφοι που προσέγγισε και το αποτέλεσμα είναι αλλού πολύ καλό, αλλού απλώς ενδιαφέρον και αλλού όχι και τόσο καλό. Υπάρχουν μερικά πραγματικά δυνατά σημεία στο κείμενο, δυστυχώς όχι πολλά, αλλά και αρκετά όπου ο συγγραφέας μάλλον συγχέει κάποιες έννοιες, χάνει σημαντικά στοιχεία και η ανάπτυξη που κάνει είναι λιποβαρής.
Ενώ αμφιταλαντευόμουν ανάμεσα στα τρία και στα τέσσερα αστεράκια για το βιβλίο αυτό, τελικά λέω να του δώσω τέσσερα λόγω των καλών στοιχείων που ανέφερα παραπάνω και επειδή το εγχείρημα είναι εξαρχής δύσκολο, οπότε νομίζω ότι δικαιούται λίγη επιείκια. Σίγουρα είναι ένα βιβλίο που θα προσφέρει ευχαρίστηση σε όσους έχουν κάποιο ενδιαφέρον για τη φιλοσοφία, χωρίς να ανταποκρίνεται στις υψηλές απαιτήσεις εκείνων που ασχολούνται επισταμένως με τα θέματα που πραγματεύεται.
October 30, 2015
Δεν είναι και τίποτα σπουδαίο. Για την κατηγορία του εννοώ. Δηλ. ένα βιβλίο aggregator φιλοσοφικών απόψεων. Έχω διαβάσει και καλύτερα όπως η "Πύλη των Φιλοσόφων" του Zimmerman.
Στα θετικά του, οι συνεντεύξεις του συγγραφέα από σύγχρονους φιλοσόφους (ή καθηγητές φιλοσοφίας) όπως οι Searle, Singer, Chomsky, McGill κα. οι οποίοι καλούνται να απαντήσουν στα βασικά ερωτήματα της φιλοσοφίας διαχρονικά. Ομιλούν βέβαια οι φιλόσοφοι αλλά.... για τις δικές τους μικρο-προσεγγίσεις σε συγκεκριμένα ζητήματα. Δεν απαντούν στα μεγάλα ερωτήματα. Δεν απαντά και το βιβλίο.
Στα θετικά του, οι συνεντεύξεις του συγγραφέα από σύγχρονους φιλοσόφους (ή καθηγητές φιλοσοφίας) όπως οι Searle, Singer, Chomsky, McGill κα. οι οποίοι καλούνται να απαντήσουν στα βασικά ερωτήματα της φιλοσοφίας διαχρονικά. Ομιλούν βέβαια οι φιλόσοφοι αλλά.... για τις δικές τους μικρο-προσεγγίσεις σε συγκεκριμένα ζητήματα. Δεν απαντούν στα μεγάλα ερωτήματα. Δεν απαντά και το βιβλίο.
April 14, 2020
Και όλο τριγυρίζει στο μυαλό σου, και όλο δεν ξέρεις από που να ξεκινήσεις, τι να πρωτορωτήσεις... Να λοιπόν που υπάρχουν και αυτά τα βιβλία, για ανθρώπους που ψάχνουν μια αφετηρία. Απλογραμμένο και κατανοητό εισάγει τον αναγνώστη στον κόσμο της φιλοσοφίας χωρίς να χρειάζονται προϋπάρχουσες γνώσεις, παρά μόνο όρεξη για τη φιλοσοφία, χρόνος και προσοχή για να γίνουν κατανοητές οι πληροφορίες που δίνει ο συγγραφέας. Είναι το τόσο-όσο, για αναγνώστες σαν εμένα που ναι μεν δεν τρελαίνομαι κιόλας, αλλά θέλω να έχω μια-κάποια γνώση για αυτή τη θεματική, αλλά να μην το παρακάνω κιόλας βρε αδερφέ!
December 24, 2010
A book that tries to bridge the, admittedly large, gap between academic philosophy and the layperson. The end result is something that errs on the side of the former rather than the latter. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the “frontiers” of the subject, but YOU HAVE TO BE INTERESTED IN PHILOSOPHY to enjoy it. If this sounds like your cup of tea, expect something that is satisfying at times and challenging throughout.
September 27, 2008
This is an interesting book because it isn't just a collection of previously printed ideas of dead thinkers. Most of the philosphers quoted in this book are still alive and were interviewed for the book about timeless questions. Those that weren't interviewed are mainly 20th century figures at least.
June 12, 2012
I was born a few 100 years too late, cause I can much more relate to the old philosophers theories rather than to jump into the never-ending battle between the recent "enlighted guys". Nevertheless....it gives you a few things to brood about.
August 6, 2007
Kind of like being a tourist in a classy foreign city, your mind gets to wander aimlessly and wherever it goes it sees something interesting, delightful, or worth taking a snapshot of.
February 11, 2016
The book gives the reader a deep insight into the self as well as the environment and the world at large of which he/she is a part.
It's a deeply intriguing and compelling read.
It's a deeply intriguing and compelling read.
May 5, 2011
Solid stuff. Good read.
September 17, 2011
This book is much better than the earlier 'Zeno and the Tortoise', engaging ideas expressed with depth and clarity.
January 17, 2009
A nice introduction into perennial (and personally relevant) philosophical problems.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews