philosophy

Book Reviews

Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature*
A Necessary Unity
Gregory Chaitin: Meta Maths: The Quest for Omega
- complexity and the limits of mathematics
Paul M. Churchland: The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul
A Philosophical Journey into the Brain
David Coady: What to Believe Now
Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues
Paul Davies: The Mind of God
- can physics answer everything?
Daniel C. Dennett: Brainchildren
Essays on Designing Minds
Daniel C. Dennett: Consciousness Explained*
- assorted bogeymen are summarily dispatched
Daniel C. Dennett: Darwin's Dangerous Idea*
Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Daniel C. Dennett: Elbow Room*
The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
Daniel C. Dennett: Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- meaning, evolution, consciousness, and free will
Antony Easthope, Kate McGowan: A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader
- my take on postmodernism and cultural studies
Ivar Ekeland: The Broken Dice
And Other Mathematical Tales of Chance
Michael T. Ghiselin: Metaphysics and the Origin of Species*
- species are logical individuals rather than classes; implications
Ian Hacking: Why Is There Philosophy of Mathematics At All?
- an informal tour by an experienced guide
Joel David Hamkins: Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics**
- from numbers and rigor to incompleteness and set theory
David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin: The Dialectical Biologist
- essays on evolution, genetics, and the politics of biology
Larry May, et al.: Mind and Morals
Essays on Ethics and Cognitive Science
Dennis Merrit: Reflection
- the interconnectedness of all things?
Jacques Monod: Chance and Necessity
An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
Ernest Nagel, James R. Newman: Gödel's Proof*
- a readable popular explanation of the Incompleteness Theorem
Derek Partridge, Yorick Wilks: The Foundations of Artificial Intelligence
A Sourcebook
W.V. Quine: Quiddities
An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary
Steven Rose: From Brains to Consciousness
Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind
Don Ross, et al.: Dennett's Philosophy
A Comprehensive Assessment
Raymond M. Smullyan: The Tao is Silent*
Elliott Sober: The Nature of Selection
Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus
Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont: Intellectual Impostures
Postmodern Philosophers' Abuse of Science
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan*
The Impact of the Highly Improbable
J. Marshall Unger: Ideogram
Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning
David Weinberger: Small Pieces Loosely Joined
{a unified theory of the web}