OYENTE

Jun

  • 17
  • opiniones
  • 5
  • votos útiles
  • 212
  • calificaciones

Review

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-14-25

The philosophical discussions are ok, but most of the discussions center on the choice of people in general having children to the benefit to humanity as a whole, and less on to the individuals, and there're not enough perspectives on whether being born is a good thing for the children, except near the end. And, that is also where the author commits the fallacy of slippery slope, and makes some claims about "affirming life" without explaining what it means and as if it is a good thing without need for justifications. In total, it is not satisfactory or convincing. The best part of the book is a beautiful personal account of being a mother in the last chapter, which elevates the reader's experience of logical thinking to a nuanced immersion of contradictions and ambiguities. It makes me wonder whether the complex feelings of having children and being a mother is hard to capture in logic and words, yet it is somehow conveyed poetically.

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Review

Total
1 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
1 out of 5 stars
Historia
1 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-25-24

All judgments and assertions. No proper supportive evidences and arguments. I can't believe the author went to law school. Either he is being disingenuous, or he just wants to put out his feelings on those topics (which is fine by me but it's not for me). In any case, I can't learn anything decent on the conservative philosophy from this book. I think the conservative side can offer better philosophical arguments than this.

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Review

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-22-24

It is easy for a layperson to misunderstand history as a series of geopolitical, military, and revolutionary events. However, the societal developments in metaphysics, political philosophy, religious ideologies, arts including music and literature, psychology, technologies, economic relationships, as well as other aspects of cultural values, are not only critical in understanding those world events and connecting them in a series of strands or a web of progressions, but also important in themselves as aspects of human history. Professor Robert Bucholz did a fantastic job in bringing all of those together and tell an engaging and comprehensive history of the modern Western civilization. It is through his lectures I start to understand the importance of knowing the history, I start to appreciate the relevance of history centuries ago, and I start to feel excited about the subject of history as a field of study. I enjoyed all the details and ideas in the history lessons, and while learning, I could also see that history rhymes in contemporary world events.

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Review

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-07-24

There is a good amount of brain biology and some associated philosophy in Dr. Patricia Churchland's book. Overall, I think she does well in connecting science to philosophy, pointing out misconceptions and gets ideas across clearly, and I think many of the topics she touched on in the book really takes someone well-versed in both neuroscience and philosophy to do well. Mainly, she argues against dualism, pointing out there is no "I" separated from "my brain," and discusses the implications of this, for self-identity, choices, free will, morality, etc. In terms of philosophy, she doesn't spend too much effort in covering all possible philosophical stances, so I wouldn't say her arguments are foolproof, but I get and like her ideas.

One set of interesting topics she mentions is about the illusions created by our brains that question the boundary between the self and the world. These include somatoparaphrenia (the denial of ownership of a body part), out-of-body experiences, self-tickling by a delay mechanism, and the sensation of motion induced by efference copy. Another topic I like is factors contributing to behaviors such as sociality and aggression: in addition to biological factors, she emphasizes that environmental factors, including both ecological and cultural factors, cannot be ignored.

Some contentious topics she tackles on are the biological factors behind religion, morality, and war. She pays various degrees of attention to them, and in the end many questions come down to the existence of free will and its moral and legal implications. She points out that the term "free will" can be used in two ways: the contracausal account of free will that some philosophers use to mean the thoughts that occur with no causes, as opposed to the regular sense of free will ordinary people use:
<blockquote>If you are intending your action, knowing what you are doing, and are of sound mind, and if the decision is not coerced (no gun is pointed at your head), then you are exhibiting free will.</blockquote>
The former seems not too interesting to her and she dismisses it somewhat quickly (she does give three counterarguments already), but to be fair, you can't convince idealists using evidences from physical sciences, and this is not a book on metaphysics. The latter, as she noted, is fuzzy and not well-defined, and I sense usually not well thought-out in terms of its metaphysical implications. With this fuzziness, she argues free will in the regular sense is compatible with our behaviors being completely caused by factors known to physical laws, and would like to replace it by a less confusing term: "self-control." If you're the same as your brain, a brain exerting self-control (through prefrontal cortex) is nothing miraculous or supernatural, is completely within the bounds of science, while, as she claims, also sounding agreeable to most ordinary people feeling we have "free will." The implication of this is that for moral and legal purposes, self-control, a subject of study determinable by science in principle, is the factor to be considered to determine guilt. She then goes on to discuss some nuances in the legal, social, and medical practicalities of considering self-control in crime and punishment.

The next contentious topic, and one related to everything, is consciousness, and importantly, the unconscious, nonconscious, and subconscious. The existence of the unconscious itself and how it interacts with consciousness are fascinating and productive grounds to establish many arguments against a lot of traditional armchair philosophy on consciousness. It's another place where Dr. Churchland's neurophilosophy shine.

These are not all separate topics. I constantly refer back to previous pages when I read about later chapters, and the ideas mentioned in earlier chapters pop back in later pages when they're related and help make a point. Although I already agree with most of where she stands, I still find myself learned a lot from her on the science as well as the philosophy.

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Review

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-07-24

There is a good amount of introduction to nanotechnology and I do like the science the author talks about. However, there are just a lot of vague statements and unsubstantiated claims, and overall the book reads like a collection of disconnected parts.

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Review

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-04-23

I like how the lectures cover a lot of grounds. It's comprehensive not only in terms of different psychological symptoms and states, but also alternative treatment methods in addition to CBT. There're a lot of resources on diagnosis and specific action points, very helpful for self-education and self-help.

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Review

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-06-22

A therapist who just broke up with her boyfriend and is seeing her own therapist. A self-centered man who is always angry and believes everyone around him are idiots. A woman building her bucket list after getting cancer. If you don’t fit remotely in any of the above descriptions, you might wonder how any of their stories could have anything to do with yourself. At least this is what I thought at the beginning of the book. But as I read on, I found many of the themes occurring in this memoir touching me here and there. It might be your relationship with love, with death, with fear, with anxiety, with avoidance, with the unknowns, with uncertainties, … (looking at this list would already make one cringe) or any other noun you don’t really want to see here. Basically, it’s a story that you’ll connect with your life, with your existence, and, with your humanity. Really, maybe we all should talk to someone, but if you don’t want to, at least start with read this book.

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Review

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 11-09-22

The main message of this book revolves around two modes of being: to have and to be. It explains a lot of how people think and behave, and much of the book is relatively easy to understand in this framework. There are also some interesting philosophical discussions towards the end, such as those about property rights, and differentiating between functional property (property for use) and non-functional property (property for posession) instead of between private property and public property. I like most of what Eric Fromm wrote, except his androcentrism and inconsistency when writing about "men": sometimes he meant both men and women, while other times he meant only men not women, and not all of his examples and conclusions apply equally to women.

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Review

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-17-22

"If there is no God, anything is permitted." Through Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky challenged the atheists' grounding of ethics. This challenge has been haunting the modern era, and I view this lecture series as an attempt of responding to this central question of the modern human. Divided into three parts, the first part of this course traces intellectual roots of the Western civilization to the Axial Period to describe how the sunderings of modernity -- of scientific explanation from purpose, of fact from value, and of theoretical from practical inquiry -- create modern moral confusion by introducing pluralism and uncertainty. The main responses to such moral confusion, i.e. subjectivism (mainly positivism and existentialism) and relativism, are also introduced. The second part describes the project of modernity to address the problem of relativism -- sentimentalist, rationalist, utilitarian, contractarian alternatives in modern ethics -- as well as their criticisms. The third part preaches a pluralism different from postmodernism: the aspiration, or the search, of objective truth as well as of objective value or worth (love and glory), by considering all points of view. Using the framework of moral sphere developed by himself, Professor Kane claimed that this openness to all would not lead to indifference, but rather to determining which is more worthy and to achieving a mosaic of value. In detailing this aspiration and its challenges, a series of moral and social issues are discussed, from traditional commandments, pacifism, the demarcation of public morality and private morality by Liberty-Limiting Principles (including Harm Principle, Offense Principle, Legal Moralism Principle, and Paternalism Principle), to Plato's political and social criticisms of democracy in and their contemporary responses, as well as plurality and secularization as challenges to religion. Most of the lectures themselves are clear and interesting and great learning experiences, but part three is not very well logically structured and it is sometimes not clear what I'm learning this for.

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Review

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 10-14-22

In Greek philosophy, you'll see the eternal debate between Being and Becoming, between Truth (alêtheia) and appearance (doxa), between the rational and the empirical, between logos and muthos, between philosophy and poetry, between reason and passion, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian ... (all of these are along the same vein); you'll see how the Sophists are similar to today's postmodernists, or the relativists (although I don't completely agree that they're the same as Professor Roochnik claims, as the postmodernists do rely on some underlying truth for their critique to make sense); you'll also see how Aristotle is the first phenomologist ... All of these are presented clear-and-distinctly in these lectures. It is intriguing how a lot of modern schools of thoughts and debates can trace back to the Greeks. I guess in philosophy, there is really nothing new under the sun.

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