David EdmondsCritiques

Philosophy Bites was one of the few podcasts I used to follow, when they were new, when I'd go on walks with earphones plugged into an iPod.

Warburton and Edmonds have great skill in finding people who are excited about what they study and who can answer well-stated questions clearly and succinctly.

Now there are three, maybe more, books based on these fine discussions, books that I can read carefully and at leisure. There is Philosophy Bites Back, and Philosophy Bites Again.

I enjoyed, as far as I can recall, every session I listened to, and have enjoyed even more, two of the three books, with every intention of reading the third - at least once.

Dotty is endearing as she figures out how to live as a “human” and makes fun mistakes about gift-giving, truth-telling, and learns about friendship and relationships. The contest to become the world’s best robot—undetectable by humans—is a wonderful frame for thinking about what it means to be human, what the difference between moral and polite choices is, and why being unique and one-of-a-kind is so precious to people, to us. The scientists have thought of everything in Dotty’s design—even body fluids—fortunately the “gassy release function” won’t be installed until her “2.3X update, due in October.” She has special programs that are triggered by various situations, a little like most of us. (Rage program, Emergency Tact, Emergency Save Life Code). Kids will be able to relate to Dotty’s confusion about the inconsistency of adults’ rules for kids. Wouldn’t we all like to delete the “parts of the program that simulate Depression, Anxiety, Jealousy” and “turn on Bliss, and keep it running permanently.” Can she pass a lie detector test? (After installing the still-under-development “Love Patch”?) Funny and philosophical!

This is an entertaining account of the differences between Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, centering around a brief incident during a seminar at Cambridge in 1946, but extending beyond that into the social, political and philosophical contexts around these two men. It's a slender topic padded out with extraneous information (most absurdly, what everyone could have been doing for fun instead of philosophy on the night in question) and considerable repetition. And it lacks a thorough account of their philosophical differences in favour of a kind of reality TV detectives' investigation into who said what to whom, where they were on the night of 25 October at 8:42pm, and who was lying. I'm surprised the authors didn't provide a map of the room with which suspects were in which seats. If nothing else, it's clear by the end that Professor Plum did it with a hot poker in room H on staircase 3.

A thorough biography of someone most of us have never heard of. I certainly didn't, but it said he was one of the most influential philosophers of the past century so it seemed to be a good look see read.

It wasn't a bad book but it will not keep you on the edge of chair with anticipation either. Philosophers are not really the most dynamic people to read about. Yet they certainly do pose the most profound questions about the whys and wherefores of life issues. No short change here on Parfit's part as he was no doubt a deep and profound thinker. You will discover his main thrust of work had to do with what is the right thing to do in this life, particularly concerning our fellow journey travelers. Along with a healthy dose of ethics issues and, voila, there you have the bio.

Much dealt with is Parfit's meandering through the various positions, particularly in the English system, of philosophy scholars. His was somewhat different in that he followed his own drumbeat and sometimes this did not square with the intellectual powers. This particularly come to focus in his limited publishing.

We also learn of the peculiarities of this genius and how he interacted with everyday life and the subject of many of his profound thoughts, people. In this regard Parfit comes across as a very singular type of character that acts very differently then most and in an almost amusing way.

A good book, not maybe on most peoples list but certainly of value to those who do some degree of thinking in their own right.

as mythologizing, punishingly dull, and trivial as it is to hear a middle-schooler talk about world war 2 history

More a history book than a philosophy one, still interesting. I will remember it mostly for introducing me to Neurath.

Come for the intimation of true crime, but stay for an examination of the collective life and times of a group of academicians and philosophers who wanted to make the practice of philosophy an exercise in formal logic, and purge it of metaphysical claptrap, thus making philosophy a fit support for modern science. Unfortunately, there are people who like their metaphysical claptrap, most notably fascists and hard-line nationalists, and this had a great deal to do with the demise of the Vienna Circle, sometime before the unfortunate demise of Moritz Schlick. I actually liked this book a great deal, and found it quite readable.

Would You Kill the Fat Man?
By David Edmonds
I don't know where I was in college but I had never heard of the Trolley problem. When I read this title and was intrigued. When I was reading it I found the book more than philosophy, it has history and science in it too! The debate on this problem and others are discussed and many different philosophers' points or opinions on each problem is discussed. Each varies in how they solve the problem. As the book goes through history, similar problems occur in real life. The different philosopher's views would be weighed on each situation. An interesting walk through time.
Then the scientists who can change a persons view on just about everything from sex, acceptance of others, and more. How hormones, chemicals, and medicines effect our brain. Injuries or disease too!
I found this book very interesting and intriguing. Some of the questions or situations are very strange but makes people think!
No, I would not kill the Fat man. Sorry.

A disappointing book for me. It's mostly about the rigid personalities of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. I expected a more in depth discussion of their ideas, not just their personal spat with each other. The ideas of these two important philosophers were given only superficial treatment.

Avete presente, quando, nei film, l'eroe deve decidere se disattivare una bomba che ucciderebbe migliaia di persone o salvare la sua ragazza/il suo migliore amico?

Noi siamo davanti allo schermo e ci mangiamo le unghie sapendo che, razionalmente, dovrebbe scegliere di salvare le persone minacciate dalla bomba, perché sono tante, ma è anche vero che se il regista sa quello che fa, queste persone sono comparse (salvo strategiche inquadrature di bambini), mentre ragazza/migliore amico sono lì dall'inizio del film e un po' ci siamo affezionati.

Ecco, sappiate che è un dilemma su cui i filosofi dibattono da anni. "Cosa farebbe una persona se dovesse sacrificare un persona per salvarne 5? E' lecito che uno statista diriga le bombe nemiche in aree meno strategiche rispetto ad altre, sacrificando certe persone (es. quartieri poveri) invece che altre?"

A volte, c'è da dirlo, i filosofi si sono forse fatti troppe pare mentali: i meccanismi che ho visto tra le pagine di questo libro nemmeno a cinque anni con i lego mi sarebbero venuti in mente, e sapete bene che con i lego se ti scappavo la mano venivano fuori cose assurde che Escher spostati.

Però ci sono i risultati di diversi studi su come a volte la mente umana funzioni in modo strani: per esempio, su come la nostra percezione della responsabilità vari se dobbiamo spingere una persona piuttosto che tirare una leva, anche se il risultato lo stesso.

Non difficile, sicuramente molto didattico e forse, ad occhio, non adatto a chi la filosofia e questo dibattito li ha già studiati.

Il Club del Libro
Libro del mese di Ottobre 2020

As good an event as any upon which to affix the term Linguistic Turn, and one I don't recall coming across in my graduate studies. I suspect that's a good deal to do with my unorthodox curriculum, centered in American Political Science rather than Philosophy or English Language & Literature.

Part of why the encounter is worth knowing about relates to the dispute regarding relevance of language to philosophical questions, and how this manifests specifically in this historical event. Wittgenstein asserts that language is at the root of philosophical problems (largely responsible for any problem as understood by philosophers), while Popper understands language as but a confounding factor, if at times a serious one. Another reason: the encounter, as discussed here, provides ample grounds for better understanding Wittgenstein's shift (Wittgenstein I and Wittgenstein II), as well as for understanding Popper as more than a "simple" adherent of the Viennese Circle (which he in fact wasn't).

Key elements of the encounter are ambiguous due to conflicting recollection from those attending. Was LW angry when he left? Did KP voice the jest about not threatening visiting lecturers with a poker before or after LW left the room? Was the poker brandished threateningly or used as a prop, and was it hot from the fire or cool?

An entertaining read, but it doesn't commit to a conclusion, preferring instead to present many conflicting perspectives on the subject. Might be an easy in for an outsider to the subject matter, but I can't say as I don't have any knowledge of it outside of this book.

I thoroughly enjoy the podcast and the book is a continuation of that informal and conversational approach.

Especially interesting for an insight into Spassky and how impossibly difficult things were for him. Having seen him grow in something to say the last uninspiring...I was amazed to discover that he was, leading up to the match with Fischer just incredibly brave. No wonder he ran out of steam later.

Really fun, two sittings.

This was holiday gift from a girl back in 2001. I read it in an evening and then let the girl read it. We soon broke up and I haven't seen it since. Oh, the story is interesting despite the paucity of actual events or substance within the celerbated conversation.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War (2004) is fairly boring. Bobby Fischer is an unsympathetic main character and the chess match wasn't hugely exciting. The amount of detail is over the top, most of dealing with Bobby's strange requests and the chaos it creates to the point of being funny. Ultimately the raw material the author had to work with didn't really interest. It did remind me of playing chess long ago, when it was fashionable, before computers ruined everything.

A collection of interviews with philosophers. Unfortunately the interviews are both short and extremely introductory in content. I didn't feel like I got anything out of the collection that I hadn't already had during undergrad -- though I do have a relatively strong background in the humanities. I'd picked this up to read something from Don Cupitt, a priest who believes that the Christian God as currently discussed does not exist but for whom religion is still meaningful. Since I'm equally disappointed in the depth that his interview went into (this is a limitation of the written conversational form, I expect), I'll have to look elsewhere.

3.5 Stars.
Ostensibly about a 10 minute argument between philosophers Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1946, but much wider in scope than that. The book delves extensively into the background of each. Both being Viennese Jews we get many pages on the treatment of Jews before and after the Anschluss. Their place of origin being pretty much all they had in common apart from their formidable force of personality bordering on a kind of bullying when it came to arguing their philosophies. Wittgenstein adamant that philosophy was nothing but puzzles emerging from the misuse or limitations of language. Popper firmly ensconsed in the old traditions of philosophy trying to make sense of real problems such as the nature of science, meaning of infinity, probability etc.

The book does a good job in setting the scene for the argument by detailing the differences between the two. Along the way we get a between the wars European history lesson, a skim through the main areas of western philosophy at the time, a flavour of life at Cambridge University and a glimpse into the minds of a couple of geniuses.

Audiobook: A fascinating analysis of both the players and the chess culture and its history in both the United States and Soviet Union leading up to the famous duel between Fischer and Spassky in 1972 when chess, for a short period of time, captured the attention of the world.

Bobby Fischer had never grown up and was uniquely focused on chess. Outside of the game he could be obnoxious, eccentric, bratty, rude, and incomprehensible. At the chess table he was unfailingly polite, obsessed with the rules and the game. The beginning of the book is a bit disjointed with quick summaries of his appearances or lack thereof at national and international tournaments. His paranoia and need for control was already quite apparent as was his chess brilliance (he had little brilliance in most other areas of his life.)

The author is stronger when discussing Spassky and chess in Russia. Chess players were expected to play in service to the state where the aftereffects of the "Great Patriotic War" was a sort of Russian exceptionalism that celebrated state nationalism. Everything was in service of the state and chess was no exception.

Their match became a symbolic battle for leadership in the Cold War. Here you had the Soviets who had dominated chess for decades on the one hand, and the lone, individualist Fischer on the other. Spassky was complicated. A Russian patriot, he was no Soviet one. He loved the game and admired Fischer who hated everyone and was the archetypal loner with no admirable qualities.

The authors could not get an interview with Fischer who was notoriously devoted to his privacy so the reader might sometimes feel as if the book is mostly about Spassky and the Russian perspective since they were quite willing to be interviewed. That's OK. Fischer’s erratic and paranoid behavior make him less prone to analysis.

Whatever else you say about Fischer, he was a tormented soul one cannot help but feel sorry for. He was often derided and celebrated. In the end he must have been extremely lonely and he died alone and embittered, a prisoner to his genius. I remember the extraordinary attention surrounding the match which probably did more to elevate the popularity of chess than anything before.

Political science junkies and chess fanatics will love this book. Nicely read by Sam Tsoutsouvas.

While it purports to be about an emphatic argument between Wittgenstein and Popper, the book actually uses that incident as a way into exploring the cultural background of both authors, especially the way they were both shaped by Vienna and the rise o the Nazis. There is some philosophy there, but it's treated very lightly and simply. I probably would have gotten more out of the book if it wasn't retreading so much of what I already sorta knew, but it remains a breezy & easy-to-read exploration of the issue. The one unfortunate part was near the end where having covered all the ground and context, the author tries to lamely circle back to the original encounter and reenact it novelistically; it feels both poorly-written and hollow, since most of the vigor at that point has gone to the comparatively more interesting backgrounds of our two antagonists.

As far as literary relatives go, pre-anschluss Vienna is described extensively and exquisitely in Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, itself a series of essays and recollections on important figures of the last century. Errol Morris, in his essays for the NY Times, also will circle topics in the same sort of fashion—albeit with more gumshoe detective work and exploration into the ideological issues underlying the ambiguity. Both authors, James and Morris, are highly recommended above this book. But don't let that scare you off; it's a super-fast, surprisingly short read.

EDIT: Upped it to four stars retrospectively because I was leafing through the book and enjoying the hilarious Wittgenstein epigraphs. Really, the reason I (and most others) are so entranced with him is because he is hilarious to read about despite being an asshole in real life. He just said the funniest shit!

I received this book free through Goodreads. As a parent of two young adults I enjoyed this book. We discussed the dilemma, the choices, repercussions and more. I thoroughly enjoyed this book

Sometimes gets bogged down in details...½

I've read two books on the same subject, The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge by Dave Cathcart and David Edmonds's Would You Kill the Fat Man/, so I thought that I would compare them.

The original version, by British philosopher Phillipa Foot, involved a tram, of course. In her original, the question involved the driver of a runaway tram, but the more familiar version involves a bystander. Suppose a runaway trolley/tram is headed toward five people who cannot get off the track. You are standing near a switch, and can divert the trolley/tram onto another track where only one person will be struck. Should you do it? This version is called the Spur. The unfortunately named “Fat Man” variation, created by Judith Jarvis Thomson, assumes that a light-weight, but apparently extremely strong, bystander is on a bridge overlooking a runaway trolley, again menacing five people. Also on the bridge is a fat man so heavy that his body would stop the trolley and save the five people. Would you throw him off and stop the trolley? (I am sorry if it offends anyone, I'm obese myself, but that's what the case is called.) Should you throw him off, since this also trades one life for five? Or, should you kill a healthy patient if his organs could be donated to save fine other patients.

These two versions have inspired surveys of both philosophers and laypeople, as well as neurological studies of how the brain reacts. The surveys show that by overwhelming margins, both philosophers and laypeople would throw the switch, but not the Fat Man. The latter problem affects the emotional centers of the brain, apparently the thought of laying violent hands on the man would stop most people.

Something which disappoints me about both books is that the original case was supposed to have to do with abortion, which neither author explains; the connection is not obvious to me. Apparently, the connection is the Doctrine of Double Effects, explained in both books, but a tram does not seem like an apt example. I am also disappointed that neither mentions Michael F. Patton Jr.'s "Tissues in the Profession: Can Bad Men Make Good Brains do Bad Things," surely the Trolley Problem to end all Trolley Problems. Cathcart does have a reference to it buried in the notes.

There are many additional variants, developed by by various writers, including Frances Kamm. Edmonds covers these much better than Cathcart, including ten all together, gathered handily into an appendix for easy reference. The problem is that implications of many of these are not well developed. Edmonds tells us what Kamm, for example thinks is acceptable or not, but doesn't explain her thinking. The other problem, which is not a criticism of Edmonds, is that many of them become so intricate and implausible that I think they add little to the subject. It appears that these have not been studied like the two primary cases. Of the eight additional cases, it appears to me that only the Loop and the Trap Door and the Lazy Susan, all variations of the Fat Man scenario tease out any meaningful nuances by eliminating some of the objections to pushing the unfortunate sacrificial victim. (Lazy Susan also has an element of the Spur.) Most of the others strike me as so ridiculous that I cannot think seriously about them, and I reach again for my copy of Patton's parody.

Cathcart's is the simpler and lighter of the two books, and rather more fun to read. His scenario is that one Daphne Jones is to be tried in the Court of Public Opinion for diverting the trolley in the first example. Statements from defense and prosecution lawyers, amicus curiae, newspapers articles, talks in the faculty lounge and so forth spell out the problems, relevant issues, and similar cases. He includes sidebars on various philosophers whose ideas have a bearing on how we might judge the case. I actually prefer the sidebars to working the same information into his narratives, but curiously he has little to say about Phillipa Foot.

Edmonds, on the other hand, includes a narrative about Foot and her associates, such as Iris Murdoch and G.E.M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe. These don't particularly explain her ideas, however, rather it sets the scene of her life, sharing an apartment, shoes, and lovers with Murdock; her friendship and eventual estrangement from Anscombe. We actually learn more about Anscombe's ideas than Foot's. Edmonds also talks about other more real life situations that might seem to apply such as cannibalism among shipwreck survivors. These may strike the reader as interesting in themselves, or as excessively tangential. The chief importance of Anscombe, in my opinion, is that she is referenced in Patton's parody.

I read both books twice, so I recommend them both. Neither is terribly long and both are interesting.

A history of the in(famous) poker incident between Wittgenstein and Popper, in which the meeting in question is scrutinized intensely to see if some sort of undisputed version can be arrived at. The authors use the meeting as a focal point through which to offer up biographies of the two combatants and their schools of philosophical thought, and it does the trick nicely. Readable and very interesting.