Branches of Philosophy Podcast

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All" By Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares 2025In 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next. For decades, two signatories of that letter—Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us—and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn’t even be close. How could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Why would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares walk through the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario, and explain what it would take for humanity to survive. The world is racing to build something truly new under the sun. And if anyone builds it, everyone dies.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Self-knowledge for Humans" By Quassim Cassam 2014Human beings are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be careless and uncritical, and our beliefs, desires, and other attitudes aren't always as they ought rationally to be. Our beliefs can be eccentric, our desires irrational and our hopes hopelessly unrealistic. Our attitudes are influenced by a wide range of non-epistemic or non-rational factors, including our character, our emotions and powerful unconscious biases. Yet we are rarely conscious of such influences. Self-ignorance is not something to which human beings are immune.In this book Quassim Cassam develops an account of self-knowledge which tries to do justice to these and other respects in which humans aren't model epistemic citizens. He rejects rationalist and other mainstream philosophical accounts of self-knowledge on the grounds that, in more than one sense, they aren't accounts of self-knowledge for humans. Instead he defends the view that inferences from behavioural and psychological evidence are a basic source of human self-knowledge. On this account, self-knowledge is a genuine cognitive achievement and self-ignorance is almost always on the cards.As well as explaining knowledge of our own states of mind, Cassam also accounts for what he calls 'substantial' self-knowledge, including knowledge of our values, emotions, and character. He criticizes philosophical accounts of self-knowledge for neglecting substantial self-knowledge, and concludes with a discussion of the value of self-knowledge.This book tries to do for philosophy what behavioural economics tries to do for economics. Just as behavioural economics is the economics of homo sapiens, as distinct from the economics of an ideally rational and self homo economics, so Cassam argues that philosophy should focus on the human predicament rather on the reasoning and self-knowledge of an idealized homo philosophicus.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding"By Sarah Blaffer Hrdy 2009Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution.Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.From its opening vision of “apes on a plane”; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children—and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality" By Angela A. Mendelovici 2018Intentionality is the mind's ability to be "of," "about," or "directed" at things, or to "say" something. For example, a thought might "say" that grass is green or that Santa Claus is jolly, and a visual experience might be "of" a blue cup. While the existence of the phenomenon of intentionality is manifestly obvious, how exactly the mind gets to be "directed" at things, which may not even exist, is deeply mysterious and controversial.It has been long assumed that the best way to explain intentionality is in terms of tracking relations, information, functional roles, and similar notions. This book breaks from this tradition, arguing that the only empirically adequate and in principle viable theory of intentionality is one in terms of phenomenal consciousness, the felt, subjective, or qualitative feature of mental life. According to the theory advanced by Mendelovici, the phenomenal intentionality theory, there is a central kind of intentionality, phenomenal intentionality, that arises from phenomenal consciousness alone, and any other kind of intentionality derives from it.The phenomenal intentionality theory faces important challenges in accounting for the rich and sophisticated contents of thoughts, broad and object-involving contents, and nonconscious states. Mendelovici proposes a novel and particularly strong version of the theory that can meet these challenges. The end result is a radically internalistic picture of the mind, on which all phenomenally represented contents are literally in our heads, and any non-phenomenal contents we in some sense represent are expressly singled out by us.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Materialist Phenomenology: A Philosophy of Perception" By Manuel DeLanda 2021Bringing together phenomenology and materialism, two perspectives seemingly at odds with each other, leading international theorist, Manuel DeLanda, has created an entirely new theory of visual perception. Engaging the scientific (biology, ecological psychology, neuroscience and robotics), the philosophical (idea of 'the embodied mind') and the mathematical (dynamic systems theory) to form a synthesis of how to see in the 21st century. An interdisciplinary and rigorous analysis of how vision shapes what matters.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "A Theory of Sentience" By Austen Clark 2000'A Theory of Sentience is as valuable for the questions it opens up as for the positive theory it puts forward. Austen Clark has brought to our attention a way of thinking about the details of sensory experience which opens up possibilities for fruitful interaction between philosophy, pscychophysics and the neurosciences. It is refreshing to read an exploration of sensory experience which fixes the terrain of investigation firmly within the actual world and which works hard to define tractable problems based around the basic, but often neglected, truth that sensory experience is sensory experience of a three-dimensional environment.' -Mind'There is much of interest to cognitive scientists working on the intentionality of sensation.' -Barbara Montero, Times Literary SupplementAusten Clark presents a ground-breaking philosophical theory of sentience, drawing on and illuminating an abundance of scientific work on this subject. Sensation is one of the fundamental elements of consciousness, but has generally been assigned a lowly place in the mental hierarchy; Clark's rich, lucid, and original study restores it to its due prominence. A Theory of Sentience will be compelling reading for all who work on the interaction of mind and world.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Becoming Human: From Pointing Gestures to Syntax" By Teresa Bejarano 2011What do the pointing gesture, the imitation of new complex motor patterns, the evocation of absent objects and the grasping of others’ false beliefs all have in common? Apart from being (one way or other) involved in the language, they all would share a demanding requirement – a second mental centre within the subject. This redefinition of the simulationism is extended in the present book in two directions. Firstly, mirror-neurons and, likewise, animal abilities connected with the visual field of their fellows, although they certainly constitute important landmarks, would not require this second mental centre. Secondly, others’ beliefs would have given rise not only to predicative communicative function but also to pre-grammatical syntax. The inquiry about the evolutionary-historic origin of language focuses on the cognitive requirements on it as a faculty (but not to the indirect causes such as environmental changes or greater co-operation), pays attention to children, and covers other human peculiarities as well, e.g., symbolic play, protodeclaratives, self-conscious emotions, and interactional or four-hand tasks.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding" By Dan Sperber & Hugo Mercier 2017Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. But, if reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If it is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense?In their ground-breaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma, taking us on a journey from desert ants to modern scientists, and from Aristotle to Daniel Kahneman. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that they address to us.In other words, reason has evolved to help humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This illuminating interpretation of reason makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists - why reason is biased in favour of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones. Ambitious, provocative, and entertaining, The Enigma of Reason will spark debate among psychologists and philosophers, and make many reasonable people rethink their own thinking.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Phenomenal Consciousness: A Naturalistic Theory" By Peter Carruthers 2000How can phenomenal consciousness exist as an integral part of a physical universe? How can the technicolour phenomenology of our inner lives be created out of the complex neural activities of our brains? Many have despaired of finding answers to these questions; and many have claimed that human consciousness is inherently mysterious. Peter Carruthers argues, on the contrary, that the subjective feel of our experience is fully explicable in naturalistic (scientifically acceptable) terms. Drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary resources, he develops and defends a novel account in terms of higher-order thought. He shows that this can explain away some of the more extravagant claims made about phenomenal consciousness, while substantively explaining the key subjectivity of our experience. Written with characteristic clarity and directness, and surveying a wide range of extant theories, this book is essential reading for all those within philosophy and psychology interested in the problem of consciousness.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Wittgenstein's Poker" By David Edmonds & John Eidinow 2001On 25 October 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The encounter lasted only ten minutes, and did not go well. Almost immediately, rumours started to spread around the world that the two philosophers had come to blows, armed with red-hot pokers...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences" By Michel Foucault 1966When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as an intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls "exotic charm". Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Phenomenological Mind" By Shaun Gallagher & Dan Zahavi 2008The Phenomenological Mind, Third Edition introduces fundamental questions about the mind from the perspective of phenomenology. One of the outstanding books in the field, now translated into eight languages, this highly regarded exploration of phenomenology from a topic-driven standpoint examines the following key questions and issues:What is phenomenology? phenomenology and the cognitive sciences consciousness and self-consciousness time and consciousness intentionality and perception the embodied mind action knowledge of other minds situated and extended minds phenomenology and personal identity.This third edition has been revised and updated throughout. The chapter on phenomenological methodologies has been significantly expanded to cover qualitative research, and there are new sections discussing important, recent research on topics such as critical phenomenology, imagination, social cognition, race and gender, collective intentionality, and selfhood.Also included are helpful features, such as chapter summaries, guides to further reading, and boxed explanations of specialized topics, making The Phenomenological Mind, Third Edition an ideal introduction to key concepts in phenomenology, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind.0:00 Introduction0:54 Historical Intellectual Landscape2:30 Phenomenology's Distinct Approach3:54 Challenges in Studying Consciousness6:04 Integrating Phenomenology & Science10:23 Intentionality11:54 Consciousness & Self-Consciousness14:04 Temporal Consciousness16:07 Perception18:05 Embodiment & Action21:05 Social Cognition23:10 The Self

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity" By Scott L. Marratto 2012Challenging a prevalent Western idea of the self as a discrete, interior consciousness, Scott L. Marratto argues instead that subjectivity is a characteristic of the living, expressive movement establishing a dynamic intertwining between a sentient body and its environment. He draws on the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, contemporary European philosophy, and research in cognitive science and development to offer a compelling investigation into what it means to be a self.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Mind: Your Consciousness is What and Where?" By Ted Honderich 2017What is mind? Still harder, what is consciousness? In this radical new book, eminent philosopher Ted Honderich tackles this great mystery in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience—and the rest of life. He proposes to replace all competing theories of consciousness with actualism that rests on data you share yourself.Unlike other theories, actualism differentiates among the three sides of consciousness—consciousness that is seeing, consciousness that is thinking, and consciousness that is wanting. Consciousness in seeing is not an image or picture in your head, but the existence out there of a real but subjective thing, dependent on both the objective physical world out there and on you as a person. In its attention to the concrete, actualism is becoming increasingly popular among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists who had previously declared an urgent need for a new theory.Honderich’s readable, understandable, and unpretentious writing lays out these bold concepts and complex thoughts with clarity and verve. He reinvents our understanding of ourselves, our consciousness, and our mind.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain" By Michael Gazzaniga 2011The prevailing orthodoxy in brain science is that since physical laws govern our physical brains, physical laws therefore govern our behaviour and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a 'determined' world.Not so, argues the renowned neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga as he explains how the mind, 'constrains' the brain just as cars are constrained by the traffic they create. Writing with what Steven Pinker has called 'his trademark wit and lack of pretension,' Gazzaniga ranges across neuroscience, psychology and ethics to show how incorrect it is to blame our brains for our behaviour. Even given the latest insights into the physical mechanisms of the mind, he explains, we are responsible agents who should be held accountable for our actions, because responsibility is found in how people interact, not in brains.An extraordinary book, combining a light touch with profound implications, Who's in Charge? is a lasting contribution from one of the leading thinkers of our time.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People" By Emily Herring 2024The first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth century thought.At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him "the most dangerous man in the world."In the first English-language biography of Bergson, Emily Herring traces how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Bergson captivated a society in flux like no other. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, joy and creativity continue to shape our perceptions to this day. Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism" By Dennis Schulting 2020"In Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting's argument is the claim that all of human experience is irreversibly self-referential and that this is part of a self-reflexivity, or what philosophers call transcendental apperception, a Kantian insight that was first apparent in the work of Christian Wolff and came to inform all of German Idealism. In a rigorous text suitable for students of German philosophy and upper-level students on metaphysics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics courses, the author establishes the historical roots of Kant's thought and traces it through to his immediate successors Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He specifically examines the cognitive role of self-consciousness and its relation to idealism and places it in a clear and coherent history of rationalist philosophy"--

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of :The Great Guide:What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well"By Julian Baggini 2021Invaluable wisdom on living a good life from one of the Enlightenment's greatest philosophersDavid Hume (1711–1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature—human nature in particular. The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life.In this enthralling book, Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life. He follows Hume on his life's journey, literally walking in the great philosopher's footsteps as Baggini takes readers to the places that inspired Hume the most, from his family estate near the Scottish border to Paris, where, as an older man, he was warmly embraced by French society. Baggini shows how Hume put his philosophy into practice in a life that blended reason and passion, study and leisure, and relaxation and enjoyment.The Great Guide includes 145 Humean maxims for living well, on topics ranging from the meaning of success and the value of travel to friendship, facing death, identity, and the importance of leisure. This book shows how life is far richer with Hume as your guide.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "John McDowell on Worldly Subjectivity: Oxford Kantianism Meets Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences" By Tony Cheng 2022John McDowell’s philosophical ideas are both influential and comprehensive, encompassing philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and the history of philosophy. This book is a much-needed systematic overview of McDowell’s thought that offers a clear and accessible route through the main elements of his philosophy. Arguing that the world and minded human subject are constitutively interdependent, the book examines and critically engages with McDowell’s views on naturalism of second nature, the inner space model, intentionality, personhood and practical wisdom. The book presents novel discussions on the debates between McDowell and other key philosophers, including Hubert Dreyfus, Robert Brandom, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Donald Davidson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Immanuel Kant, amongst others. Demonstrating a thorough understanding of McDowell’s work, Tony Cheng makes connections to both the phenomenological tradition and cognitive sciences to show the wider relevance of McDowell’s philosophy. In doing so, he sheds light on how influential McDowell’s thought is to the analytic tradition.

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics" By Martin Heidegger 1929/1997Since its original publication in 1929, Martin Heidegger's provocative book on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has attracted much attention both as an important contribution to twentieth-century Kant scholarship and as a pivotal work in Heidegger's own development after Being and Time. This fifth, enlarged edition includes marginal notations made by Heidegger in his personal copy of the book and four new appendices―Heidegger's postpublication notes on the book, his review of Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Heidegger's response to reviews by rudolf Odebrecht and Cassirer, and an essay "On the History of the Philosophical Chair since 1866." The work is significant not only for its illuminating assessment of Kant's thought but also for its elaboration of themes first broached in Being and Time, especially the problem of how Heidegger proposed to enact his destruction of the metaphysical tradition and the role that his reading of Kant would play therein.