A beautiful thing. Humorous, careful, with plenty of depth just under the surface.
It gives only the classical view, only the point estimate bit, only A beautiful thing. Humorous, careful, with plenty of depth just under the surface.
It gives only the classical view, only the point estimate bit, only normal utility theory. If you are comfortable with formalism it is too slow. But it connects logic and probability and decision in the appropriately deep way. I didn't get any decision theory in philosophy class. Even in my economics classes Rational Choice was presented as a done deal, not argued for on the bedrock of expected value and Bayes. And it was a theoretical curio, not really for personal consumption.
This part of philosophy still gives me hope and awe - the hacker's end of formal/information-theoretic/Bayesian epistemologyand 'science. The common thread is paying such close attention to maths and science that they begin to fade into it. Weisberg goes as far as some open questions, like probabilistic abduction and Bertrand's paradox. (It is important to show newbies more than just the finished part of the building.)
I was looking for a better absolute introduction than Tomassi or Hacking, and found it. Insofar as understanding probability is critical to patching the most common human errors, and insofar as stats is one of the few general thinking tools that really does reliably transfer out of the classroom, this is a vital thing for anyone who wants to think. Insofar as you presently think only in words this is the best object I know.
Minus a half for no solution book for the end-of-chapter exercises. (I know why, but still.)
Incredibly clear. I disagree with plenty of it (e.g. his attitude towards work - that it is always an evil, regardless of the subjective value for theIncredibly clear. I disagree with plenty of it (e.g. his attitude towards work - that it is always an evil, regardless of the subjective value for the worker or beneficiary), but he's never unreasonable....more
Maybe the first philosophy (nominal philosophy? thing by a philosopher?) I read. Can't quite remember if it was amazing, but I ended up doing philosopMaybe the first philosophy (nominal philosophy? thing by a philosopher?) I read. Can't quite remember if it was amazing, but I ended up doing philosophy so it can't have been bad....more
Funny, unfair, rabid dismissal of most philosophy ever. Uses ad hominemBulwerism openly - despite that going against his own ideal of reason - becausFunny, unfair, rabid dismissal of most philosophy ever. Uses ad hominemBulwerism openly - despite that going against his own ideal of reason - because he views a great range of people as being too mad to engage with.
His other move is to use the positivist's wood-chipper principle a lot: 'your position is literally meaningless; you're too stupid to see this', occasionally correctly. Attacks idealists mostly, including whole chapters making fun of Goodman, Nozick, and Popper(!) - but does not spare Mill ("here doing his usual service of making mistakes very clearly") and Russell, who you'd think were his kind of men.
The last chapter is scary and hilarious and suggests the man's basic pain, underneath his roaring pessimism. Read it at least.
A leftist defence of marriage and a postmodern attempt at making love a big deal, ontologically speaking; beyond this initial frisson of meta-contrariA leftist defence of marriage and a postmodern attempt at making love a big deal, ontologically speaking; beyond this initial frisson of meta-contrarian goodness, though: meh. Book's a bite-sized transcription of a formal literary talk - a genre which may well have no good instance. Here's the solitary pair of beautiful moments in an otherwise lukewarm bath of the history of philosophy of love and lazy sub-systematic Lacanian guesswork*:
While desire focuses on the other, always in a somewhat fetishist[ic] manner, on particular objects, like breasts, buttocks and cock, love focuses on the very being of the other, on the other as it has erupted, fully armed with its being, into my life that is consequently disrupted and re-fashioned.
Love is an existential project: to construct a decentred world, from a point of view other than that of my mere impulse to survive and re-affirm my own identity... When I lean on the shoulder of the woman I love, and can see, let’s say, the peace of a twilight over a mountain landscape, gold-green fields, the shadows of trees, black-nosed sheep motionless behind hedges and sun about to disappear behind craggy peaks, and know — not from the expression on her face, but from within the world as it is — that she is seeing the same world, and that this convergence is part of the world; that love constitutes precisely, at that very moment, the paradox of an identical difference, then love exists, and promises to continue existing. The fact is she and I are now incorporated into this unique subject, the subject of love that views the panorama of the world through the prism of our difference, so this world can be conceived, be born, and not simply represent what fills my own individual gaze. Love is always the possibility of being present at the birth of the world.
Clearer prose than you'd expect, though, isn't it?
* e.g. laziness: his claim about there being four "conditions" of philosophy, none of which are in fact necessary conditions, and one of which is good old dyadic love:
Anyone who doesn't take love as their starting-point will never discover what philosophy is about.
(Never mind, Cavendish; oh well Newton, sorry Schopenhauer; you tried real hard.)
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