Branches of Philosophy Podcast

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The World of Perception" By Maurice Merleau-Ponty 2004

In 1948, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote and delivered on French radio a series of seven lectures on the theme of perception. Translated here into English for the first time, they offer a lucid and concise insight into one of the great philosophical minds of the twentieth-century.

These lectures explore themes central not ...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" By Thomas Nagel 2024

A 50th anniversary edition of one of the most widely influential articles of 20th Century philosophy

“Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.” So begins Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 essay “What is it Like to be a Bat?” Nagel's essay initiated the now widespread attention to co...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology" By Dan Zahavi 2025

What does it take to constitute a we with others and how does feeling, thinking, and acting as part of a we, transform one's sense of self, one's relation to others, and the way one experiences the world? Is individual subjectivity something that necessarily requires a commun...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Character of Consciousness" By David J. Chalmers 2010

What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Parallax View" By Slavoj Zizek 2009

In Žižek's long-awaited magnum opus, he theorizes the "parallax gap" in the ontological, the scientific, and the political—and rehabilitates dialectical materialism.

The Parallax View is Slavoj Žižek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Žižek himself describes it as his magnum opus....

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "The World as Will and Presentation: Volume I" By Arthur Schopenhauer, Daniel Kolak (Editor), Richard Aquila (Translator) c.1818/2019

Taking the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant as his starting point, Schopenhauer argues that the world humans experience around them—the world of objects in space and time and related in causal ways—exists solely as "re...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Structure Phenomenology: Preconscious Formation in the Epistemic Disclosure of Reality" By Herbert Witzenmann 1983/2022

This is the first English translation of Herbert Witzenmann's seminal work, Strukturphänomenologie, which departs from the traditional phenomenological methods of Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to introduce a fresh approach to the nexus...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Kant's Construction of Nature: A Reading of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science" By Michael Friedman 2013

Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is one of the most difficult but also most important of Kant's works. Published in 1786 between the first (1781) and second (1787) editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Metaphy...

Ai generated & human edited. Introduction and summary of "Self-Knowledge and Self Identity" By Sydney Shoemaker 1963

Sydney Shoemaker's 1963 book, Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity, investigates the philosophical concepts of how we know ourselves and what constitutes our individual identity. The text critically examines various historical and contemporary theories regarding the self, including those positing a subst...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation" By Dan Zahavi 1999

Winner of the 2000 The Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology

In the rigorous and highly original Self-Awareness and Alterity, Dan Zahavi provides a sustained argument that phenomenology, especially in its Husserlian version, can contribute something decisive to the analysis of se...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique" By Kim Sterelny 2012

A new theory of the evolution of human cognition and human social life that emphasizes the role of information sharing across generations.Over the last three million years or so, our lineage has diverged sharply from those of our great ape relatives. Change has been rapid (in evolutionary ...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of 'Descartes's Method: The Formation of the Subject of Science" By Tarek R. Dika 2023

Descartes's Method develops an ontological interpretation of Descartes's method as a dynamic and, within limits, differentiable problem-solving cognitive disposition or habitus, which can be actualized or applied to different problems in various ways, depending on the nature...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Self-Consciousness" By Sebastian Rödl 2007

The topic of this book is self-consciousness, which is a kind of knowledge, namely knowledge of oneself as oneself, or self-knowledge. Sebastian R dl's thesis is that self-knowledge is not empirical; it does not spring from sensory affection. Rather, self-knowledge is knowledge from spontaneity; its object and its source...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Varieties of Reference" By Gareth Evans 1982

Evans' book The Varieties of Reference (1982) was unfinished at the time of his death. The introduction and first two chapters being rewritten by him in the last months of his life.[8] It was edited for publication, and supplemented with appendices drawn from his notes, by McDowell. It has subsequently been influen...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Hume on Causation" By Helen Beebee 2006

Causation is one of the most important and enduring topics in philosophy, going as far back as Aristotle. In this lucid and enthralling account, Helen Beebee covers all the major debates and issues in the philosophy of causation, making it the ideal starting point for those approaching the subject for the first time.Beginning w...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Origins of Objectivity" By Tyler Burge 2010

Tyler Burge presents a substantial, original study of what it is for individuals to represent the physical world with the most primitive sort of objectivity. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physica...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "The Given: Experience and Its Content" By Michelle Montague 2016

What is given to us in conscious experience? The Given is an attempt to answer this question and in this way contribute to a general theory of mental content. The content of conscious experience is understood to be absolutely everything that is given to one, experientially, in the having of an experienc...

Ai generated. Human edited. "Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-pragmatic Critique" By Dan Zahavi 2001

Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity analyzes the transcendental relevance of intersubjectivity and argues that an intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy can already be found in phenomenology, especially in Husserl. Husserl eventually came to believe tha...

Ai generated. Human edited. Introduction and summary of "Memory, Consciousness and Temporality" By Gianfranco Dalla Barba 2002

Memory, Consciousness, and Temporality presents the argument that current memory theories are undermined by two false assumptions: the `memory trace paradox' and `the fallacy of the homunculus'. In these pages Gianfranco Dalla Barba introduces a hypothesis - the Memory, Consciousness, and T...