Online free philosophy resources and an idea for future contests
Hey Steemians!
I wanted to get a post out detailing some of my favourite free philosophy resources that I've found around the web over the years (with a bonus rant about philosophy).
What I'm thinking of doing is tweaking a current writing contest idea to have a philosophical focus next time around and make that an ongoing thing (if I can afford it). If I can make that work, it would be helpful to have something to refer to if people want to know where to find more information, or read more philosophy.
If you are looking forward to my next competition, and aren't a philosopher or philosophy student - don't stress. Philosophy - thinking carefully and rigorously about fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, values, existence, and how all these things interrelate - is something anyone can do. I've had a lots of students over the years - must be in the thousands. But many of the best were people who came from backgrounds of profound educational disadvantage. Philosophy is for everyone.
What is philosophy? It's more than a belief or set of ideas. It's an activity - a quest for knowledge, wisdom and understanding. It's a process of critique, reflection, synthesis and creation. Sometimes it's speculative, going where science fears to tread. Sometimes we wield logic like a razor, (and Ockham's Razor like a chainsaw), cutting away lies, dogma, superstition and any other 'ism' that lacks a solid justification. Always, we chase after truth - even if that sometimes means questioning the nature of truth itself.
Philosophy is something that, as my fellow Aussie Pat Stokes says, 'dissolves obviousness'. When someone says that something is obviously true (or not), or obviously right (or wrong), the philosopher is the person who asks: "Is it?", when everyone else keeps their mouth shut.
Anyway, now that I've gotten that out of my system, here's just a few of the best free philosophy resources that I've used over the years in my studies and teaching (in no particular order):
Project Gutenberg has 56,558 free ebooks to download! This link points to their philosophy collection, which includes many (if not all) of the great classic philosophy texts. Read books by Plato, David Hume, Laozi, John Stuart Mill, William James, Nietzsche, Confucius, Voltaire, Wittgenstein and many, many more!
Russell Texts Online Hosted by the Russell Society, this is an online collection of loads of books and articles by Bertrand Russell. From his early work on mathematics, to his later social commentary criticising both capitalism and communism, this is just a tiny fraction of his prodigious output.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Want some serious specialist angle on a philosophical problem? If you've got your head around the basics, and want to go deeper, this site can provide exceptionally well-researched explanations and explorations on a broad range of philosophical topics and controversies. If you read something there and you feel like you don't get it, don't feel bad - the authors of these pages are world-leading specialists in their respective fields.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy More accessible than the Stanford Encyclopedia, the IEP is still comprehensive and peer-reviewed, meaning that if you use it in an essay for college/university, you'll probably be OK (so long as you cite your sources properly).
42 Fallacies Free ebook of 42 ways arguments can go wrong, either by mistake or design. Logic is a powerful tool, but only if you know how to spot it's misapplication. If more people read this, we'd probably all have better governments (or different forms of government altogether).
Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies Like 42 Fallacies, but less comprehensive and with slightly less accurate descriptions. On the up-side, it's easy to read, available in multiple languages, and has little pictures to go with each fallacy.
Existential Comics Dangerously funny, occasionally poignant, and often educational, this must be one of the best philosophy web-comics in the world today. I'm ashamed to admit that watching the author use Marxism as a shitposting strategy on social media holds a certain sick fascination for me.
Peter Sjöstedt-H is: "an Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher of mind and a metaphysician who specialises in the thought of Whitehead, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, with special regard to panpsychism and altered states of sentience." If all of the above sources don't sate your appetite for philosophy with a psychedelic edge, his writing, much of which can be found via his website, might be what you are looking for.
That's all I can think of for now. Feel free to share your own favourites in the comments (along with anything else you'd care to add) - as always your feedback and support is something I deeply appreciate.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
Cool post Sam
Do you think new age political correctness has stifled our ability to question things these days?
Yes and no.
On one hand, there's a definite tendency for some people to get caught up in certain subject being taboo. And there's certainly a growing sense in which some of my students feel their 'right' to discuss the ethics of some things is linked to their identities, e.g.: they can feel that only women have the right to discuss the rights or wrongs of certain issues (though I've usually gotten them out of that after a few weeks). Both of these issues are worth a post (at least) by themselves, and I'll tackle them both in the future. Spoilers: a lot of this would be better if people thought about why they were so keen to take contrary lines on certain issues, and stopped trying to use these discussions to advance their political views.
On the other hand, your question is about whether or not it's worse now than it used to be. I'm going to take a pretty unpopular line and say 'probably not'. Every generation has it's own taboos. There's discussions we have now that could have landed you in jail in most countries only 50 years ago. The further back you go, the worse it gets. Even great Enlightenment thinkers like Diderot had to work to keep on the right side of censorship and out of jail.
Good question though.
I think things definitely got better in the latter parts of last century and we could discuss almost anything without repercussions but I think some taboo subjects are harder to discuss now.
Even though I don't like milos yianopolus I see him getting shut down wherever he goes. Universities in the US sometimes close for the day when he's due to speak and teachers threaten the students that if they attend his talk they will fail and other similar repercussions.
Universities should be the cutting edge of critical thinking but seeing them close off unpopular lines of thought & discussion just seems wrong to me. I say let people put their theories and beliefs on the public record and then try to fault their logic rather than shut them before they can speak.
Wow, that's quite a lot of information, all in one post.
I'll be checking out some of these resources, since I'll have plenty of time to read starting next week.
Thanks for sharing!
Don't tackle it all at once - many of those site are a more than a life-time's reading.
It occurs to me that it might be hard to know where to start, which gives me an idea for another series of posts. (Thanks!)
Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning to. :0)
I’m not so much of a book-philosopher, although your posts got me interested. I actually prefer to pay attention to how life works it ways, and question the things I or my fellow humans experience...
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That looks like a nice collection of resources, thank you.
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I <3 existential comics.
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STOPHey Samuel, I get the feeling I'm going to find something to geek about on all of your posts. Don't feel obliged to humor my rants haha :)
Peter Sjostedt-H!!! I just started following his work, I think I found him maybe 2 months or so ago. I am loving his ideas. He is one of these rare philosophers who is taking the time and care to communicate to the public in an accessible fashion (his Twitter is absolute fire). I've been downloading all his stuff from academia.edu it's been so helpful.
Recently I'm trying to get better acquainted with contemporary panpsychism. My thinking has been converging on a view I'd have to describe as being some variant which led me to Whitehead which led me to Peter.
My intuition is that there is a trove of insights in the philosophy of organism/process philosophy or whatever you want to call the Whiteheadian-panpsychist ontology. I think I've found a topic for the next contest you host!
Geek away man!
Yeah, contemporary panpsychism can be a bit tricky in places, but I think it has real potential as a theory. I first got into it when reading the latter chapters of The Conscious Mind, as Chalmers goes on a bit of a speculative tangent - that he's since developed a bit further. (Side note - Chalmers and Sjostedt-H - now there's two philosophers I'd like to put in a room together to see what happens!) I've been thinking I need to go back to some of the earlier things I read about it, before coming back to Noumenautics.
Hmmmm, what is it like to be a blockchain?