7 Philosophy Books For Beginners (2)

Western Philosophy is a group of thinkers, problems and attitudes: it divides into three main groups: the pre-Christian, Christian, and post-Christian. There are other traditions, of which an extensive literature has been generated by the Indian, Muslim, Chinese, and Japanese cultures. We're not talking about those book lists.

With that in mind, here's my suggestion.

John Locke's Essay Concerning The Human Understanding. In the same way that modern science starts with Galileo and Newton, modern philosophy starts with Locke and Descartes. The French start with Descartes, the British with Locke.

K R Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. Irascible, insightful, full of himself and full of ideas and learning, Popper was (allegedly) a tyrant in the lecture theatre and a champion of dissent and criticism in his books. This volume covers a wide range of subjects and points to even more.

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. The first encyclopaedic and systematic philosopher, and the inventor of formal logic, Aristotle used to be called The Philosopher by the medieval theologians. His thoughts on personal conduct and the organisation of the State remain relevant. He wrote for aristocrats, but they seemed to need the same lessons the rest of us do. In a modern translation, it is highly readable.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith was a philosopher who thought about economics. As a result, a lot of what he has to say is still insightful now. You will learn a fair amount about the economic conditions of the time as well, which is no bad thing.

Machiavelli, The Prince. Often thought of as the ultimate Bad Boy of Philosophy, Machiavelli has long since been out-Badded by Saul Alinsky, Rules For Radicals. But reading that made me feel ill.

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws. Influenced by Locke's Two Treatises on Government, modern European political constitutions descend from Montesquieu.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Utterly different from anything that came before or since, this is a record of a philosopher working through his thoughts on language, meaning and many other things. I can't think of another book that shows the messy process of almost arriving at conclusions so well.

As accompaniments, add...

...a history of philosophy. The classic is Frederick Copleston's eleven volume(!) set. A more recent one is Anthony Kenny's four-volume A New History of Western Philosophy. I'd suggest ordering one volume of each through your local library and deciding which style you prefer.

...a textbook on Logic. Try Siu-Fan Lee's Logic: A Complete Introduction

...a book or so on the arts of argument and detection of fallacies. Try How to Win Every Argument: The Subtle Art of Controversy by Arthur Schopenhauer, and How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic by Madsen Pirie

...a book about the use and abuse of statistics.

Some random remarks:

Plato. Yes he was the first to go into print. Yes a lot of his arguments are set-ups. Try it, and if you like it, by all means read more.

The Stoics. Seneca was the Roman equivalent of Jeff Bezos. You're going to take life advice from Jeff Bezos?

Kant. More people read about Kant's ideas, than read Kant's ideas. He's a tough read. One for later.

Hegel and the German Idealists. These guys could not write clearly, and that's being polite. After you have dealt with the idiosyncratic vocabulary, you have to deal with the idiosyncratic ideas. Ones for later.

Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Jaspers, and the other phenomenologists. Read these guys after you have read the empiricists. Then you will understand the problems they are trying to solve.

Zizek and the cultural theory guys. This isn't strictly philosophy, but if you're in the mood, it can be fun.

Any pop-culture book. No. Just no. These are the equivalent of McDonalds or Mars Bars. Quick hit, no lasting effect. Your brain cells will rot.

Books in series from Routledge (publishers) and others. These can be useful introductions, but tend to present the subject as a neatly-wrapped package of ideas and arguments. What we don't get is the sense of someone thinking about the underlying concepts and problems at first-hand, and that's what we are after.

7 Philosophy Books For Beginners (1)

Okay. The title is silly. But I took it from a YT video. So there's that. It's by an American PhD who has since left the academic world. He regards philosophy as a body of arguments, ideas and texts with which a student must become familiar so that they can join the Philosophers Union Local 305. and take their place as a socialised member of the profession. That's a fairly recent conception of philosophy, which fits in with the bureaucratisation of the academic world.

By contrast, the Big Names thought of themselves as trying to answer a bunch of questions, both constructively by creating new theories, and critically by examining previous theories. Those questions are (roughly):

What Can We Know? (Epistemology) 

How Should We Live? (Moral Philosophy and Wisdom Thinkers) 

How Should the State be Governed? (Political Philosophy, Legal Philosophy) 

What is Beauty and Art? (Aesthetics / Philosophy of Art) 

What is the World Made Of? (Metaphysics) 

How do we argue correctly (Logic) and how do we spot bad and deceptive arguments (Rhetoric) 

Free Will 

The Existence of God(s) 

Minds and Bodies Freedom, Rights and Obligations

All of those are still open questions. There may never be "final answers". The point is the development and criticism of (preferably ever-improving) theories about those things. Physicists resort to epistemology and metaphysics when the going gets tough. Lawyers debate the justification for laws, and what kind of things can or should be subject to law. Standards of beauty have changed throughout history, and today are politicised, or perhaps, marketing-ised.

In addition, there are "philosophies of": attempts to describe and understand the assumptions, practices, knowledge-claims, and justifications of a number of subjects: for instance, Art, Science, Mathematics, Law, Politics, and Language.

If you don't see why these are problems, or if these don't sound interesting, then feel free to leave philosophy alone. I'm not interested in chemical reactions, so I didn't do a Chemistry degree.

There are four types of answers to these questions

Classical Greek and Roman: Aristotle, Plato, St Augustine... Theological / Medieval Philosophy: St Anslem, St Thomas Aquinas, Abelard... Worldly: Descartes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Karl Popper, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Bachelard, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty... Political: Foucault, Derrida, Judith Butler, Karl Marx, Lenin, Avatal Ronell, Slavoj Zizek...

None of these are definitive. All contain assumptions we can produce reasons for disagreeing with, or arguments that don't quite compel the conclusion. Examining the assumptions and arguments, and developing one's own answers, is what creative philosophy is about.

The philosopher’s tools are propositional and predicate logic; statistical inference; rhetoric; and the myriad frauds, deceptions and fallacies used to befuddle and confuse us.

A philosopher can never have too much knowledge of the societies and economies of the world and their history. St Thomas Aquinas' thesis of the just war needs to be read in its historical context: there were no atomic bombs, drones, and sniper rifles that could kill at two miles available then. But war was still bloody, and killed at about the same daily rate as a modern conventional war. Philosophers who don't brief themselves on the historical circumstances of a writer are doomed to make some silly comments.

Lockdown: The Third Anniversary

On this day in 2020, the British Government made it illegal for people to leave their houses without excuse, shut schools, closed hospitals for regular operations and consultation, shut down small businesses, kept families from visiting their elderly relatives, and spent billions of future taxpayers' money on the failed Track-and-Trace project, sub-standard PPE, and furlough payments and business loans that were often fraudulent.

To enforce this it filled the media and news with fear-mongering propaganda, confused the public and the Police with ever-changing conflicting and vague instructions, and provided incomplete and misleading statistics based on implausible definitions. At one point, it reached the absurdity of outlawing sex between people who were not living together. Not one of its policies was based on facts. Even more absurd was that just under half the UK workforce was still leaving the house five days a week to go to work, even in the Spring 2020 lockdown.

And then in February 2022, it vanished into thin air.

Leaving behind troubled children, spoiled educations, ruined businesses, a backlog of medical treatment that will beggar the NHS for years, creaking public services, massive debts, and double-figure inflation.

The Daily Telegraph has been doing a good job of bringing all the issues to the front pages. The WhatsApp messages it obtained prove that the Government and civil servants were making up rules in an absence of facts, to promote a policy that was only made possible by improvements in the internet infrastructure since the mid-2010's. Working from home would have been impossible in 2010 at the FTSE 100 company I worked for.

I was not scared of the virus. Even by the end of March 2020 we knew that almost everyone who got it survived, and the few who died were very old, obese or had a number of other conditions. Some people would go on to have long-term effects. That happens with any viral infection.

I was scared of getting quarantined. I would have starved, for one thing. I don't have two week's supply of food in the house, and the supermarket delivery services weren't taking on new customers. So I took all the actions and inactions necessary to decrease those chances.

I was scared of a Government and State that had clearly lost its grip, if not its mind; of the powers devolved to unaccountable local councils and other bureaucrats, who could (and did) make up rules from thin air; and of the license it gave to every snitch, crazy person, control freak and busybody. It was a crisis that many, many people could and did exploit, from swindling the Government to re-igniting family feuds.

I did not want to find out that anyone I respected actually believed any of it, because they would be lost to me. Falling for the Lockdown propaganda was a litmus test: if you did... well, there's that.

My deepest fear was that I had fallen for the hype, and was just putting a defiant face on it. After all, look at how I behaved. Did I go along with the Lockdown? What choice did I have? There was nowhere to go, except for a thirty-minute walk round the local park. The job kept me indoors, or in the garden, since the weather was fine. Outwardly I was behaving like a True Believer. Inwardly, and after June 2021 outwardly, when I finally revolted (!) and declared myself mask-exempt, none of it ever made sense. As we get further from it, Lockdown will enter into history as another Extraordinary Popular Delusion and a Madness of the Crowd.

To this day, I'm not sure about why everyone rolled over for it at the start. At the time, I suggested that life in 2019 had become ridiculous for many people: too crowded, too expensive, too hectic. They saw the chance to take a break: after all, it was only three weeks to flatten the curve. What they did not know what that the Minister of Health and the Civil Service had other plans. Those three weeks turned out to be a bait-and-switch.

There are many people who assume that the 2020-22 Lockdown has proved itself so awful in its consequences that it will never happen again. On past form it will, and sooner than 2041. Every year potentially deadly viruses appear, mostly in animals, and every year there is a brief fluster about what might happen if this one crosses over to people. Any of these could be promoted to Lockdown status using the same techniques used in 2020. All that's missing is the money to pay for it, and the wrong people in the wrong jobs making the wrong decisions.

Not sure? 1914-18 was supposed to be the "War to end all Wars". Which is why they had another one twenty-one years later in 1939-45.

Cars: Repair or Replace?

(This follows on from the previous post)

All this got me thinking about the economics of new vs major repair.

(Context: this discussion is not for people who buy new and trade in after three years, or who do a lot of longer-distance driving and so need a comfortable car with a bit of power under the bonnet. This discussion is about second-hand cars and owners who don't drive tens of thousands of miles a year.)

The purchase price of a car is the first of many payments we are signing up for. We are also taking on a stream of future servicing and maintenance payments, including a stream of "average" repairs over the life of the vehicle, caused by "average stuff happening". Those future payments are what we should be expecting because we are using a piece of heavy equipment some of whose parts run at 5,000 rpm and more, and are jolted by that pot-hole we just drove over, as well as left out in the cold, wet, heat and dry.

So when the car comes up for that timing belt replacement (around 7 years or 70,000km), it's not time to wonder if you should trade it in. It's part of the cost of the car that, well, nobody was over-keen to mention. The odd shock-absorber and front suspension bracket should also be taken in one's stride.

However, if in addition to the usual niggles, the dealer starts quoting thousands to repair gearboxes or other core components, that is the time to consider replacing it. Cars having mid-life crises can be expensive.

At this point I need to make clear that the “cost of repairs” is not what the Main Dealer Service Report says, but what The Guys In Your Local Garage That You Trust say. Which is usually about half what the Main Dealer says. So we get that clear. Main Dealers have, um, conflicting incentives.

Okay. Now for the theory.

The numbers we need to make the decision concern the costs of the repairs that will be needed in the future, for both the current vehicle, and our replacement of choice. That is the great unknown. Sure, a mechanic can look it over and warn you about visible rust on the body panels, and chassis, and the condition of the suspension and exhaust. They can't look into the gearbox, engine case and other such places where the real nasty surprises can be.

That doesn't mean we can't invent other criteria based on numbers we do know, and many people have done, but it does mean those criteria don't address the essential issue: the (unknown) future costs of both vehicles.

However, there is a way round this, which is to use averages to deal with all those might-be's and could-happen's that so many people rightly mention in the car forums when discussing this question.

Let's assume the car has been used "normally". Any other vehicle of the same same age, model and mileage also used "normally" will be in roughly the same condition, with roughly the same expected future expenses. Anything you are trying to dodge spending money on, any one else will surely have dodged as well. There no savings in buying a like-for-like replacement, unless it costs less than the repairs. Which is unlikely.

We have two decisions (note: not cars) available now: repair the current vehicle, or buy a replacement. Our "average" replacement will be running well after our "average current car" has reached the end of its life. So if we decide to repair, we will need to buy another car when the current one finally expires. Assume it is a comparable model to the one we would have bought if we had replaced it, the cost of replacing it later will be greater than or equal to the cost of replacing it now - because inflation.

Now repeat that with the replacement car when it gets its first painful repair bill. The same argument means we replace it, short of its possible full life-span. If it was bought new-ish second-hand (as opposed to middle-aged second hand), we may get ten years out of it. So over the course of our driving lives (say fifty years) we will be buying five cars on average.

If we repair-and-replace, we are effectively adding the cost of the repair onto the purchase price of the current vehicle, and buying a replacement after a longer period of time. Let's say the repair(s) cost £R and the purchase price is £P, and ignore inflation for the moment. Let's say that with repairs, we get an extra five years out the car. Then we will buy four cars over the fifty years (and still have some time left over) at a cost of £4*(P+R).

That compares with 5*P for the "replace" option. The two are equal if 4*(P+R) = 5P, or 4R = P. So if the average "exceptional" repairs cost less than a quarter of the purchase price of the replacement, it's better to repair-and-replace, rather than simply-replace. This proportion will vary with the life we get out of the cars, but isn't too far from what happens now. I'll leave writing the general formula and including inflation to the reader.

The more expensive the purchase price of the car, the more expensive the repairs need to be before replacing it. This does make sense: the repairs are deferring the high cost of a replacement of the same standard.

The shorter the life of the car, the more cars we are buying, and the lower the acceptable repair costs become.

This one-quarter rule is for all the future exceptional repairs to the car, not just the first one. There is no way of avoiding a prediction about the future behaviour of the car. While we may know the cost of the exceptional repairs now we do not know if there will be any more next year. Neither does the mechanic, unless the rust is staring both of you in the face. Those are our dice to roll.

Finally, we have been using averages. With averages come standard deviations, which will mean the costs may vary noticeably between two people running the same cars on this plan.

Servicing / Repairing The Car

I took the Fiat for a service recently. I used to go to a local dealership in Hounslow, which this time seemed reluctant to answer the phone, so I drove by and found it deserted (the Internet was quite sure it was still open). I found out later that Fiat pulled the franchise. So off to an enormous place on an industrial estate off the Great West Road I went. When it was over, they muttered something about oil leaks and a rusty exhaust bracket. There was a list of work that needed doing, one of which was the timing belt, and some of the others were "stuff happens" fixes. Then there was £350 under "oil leak". That was for the investigation, not the repair. The repair would probably cost a lot, said the counter staff, not worth doing, assuming that I appreciated as well as they did the age (10 y/o) and near-zero trade-in value of the car.

I went looking for a second opinion at the local garage that does my MoT. The local mechanic found the leak within two minutes of putting the car on the lift, and his indicative price had way less overhead in it.(*)

For the kind of supermini / hatchback I drive, a low-ish mileage four year-old costs around £10,000, and should have ten years in it. I'm not one for driving massive mileages. My decision amount using the one-quarter rule (**) is £2,500 for the remaining life of my current car. That's for exceptional repairs, not stuff on the service schedule or consumables like brake pads and tyres.

I went through the list of things on the service sheet, picked the important ones, and asked the local garage to do them. The bill is going to be around £1,000, which is way cheaper than a replacement, and leaves some over for the next few years.

I got this car cheap (and it turned out to be cheap for a reason) and have put about £1,000 into it for exceptional repairs so far. The total is still way less than a "good" one would have been, so if these repairs simply carry on the programme of bringing it back up to standard(!), I'm fine.



(*) Main dealers charge more partly because they have way more overheads than your local garage. Those overheads include the nice people at Service Reception, and reassuring paperwork. Not everyone feels confident talking to mechanics first-hand while standing in a workshop. So they pay for the comfort of dealing with Service Reception staff.

(**) See next post

Diary

I've just finished another batch of egregious backdating.

I've been distracted by my shoulder and right arm.

If I sit at a table and eat, let alone try to write, pins and needles shoot along my arm down to the thumb and forefinger.

If I put my head too far forward / backward / to the right, also pins and needles, and discomfort.

If I play the guitar, the elbow end of my right tricep feels really... odd.

Sitting down on a chair leads to discomfort. I fidgeted a lot during a couple of concerts recently. Trains and tubes can lead to more discomfort.

If I lie on my left side to sleep, pins and needles shoot along my arm, and for a while.

If I lie on my right side, that's uncomfortable, with tingles.

I've been sleeping on my back for the last six weeks.

Which means when I wake up, that's it. I'm stiff and ache-y. Pulling the duvet up and curling up for an extra hour is not possible.

I've been having walks at 06:00. In this weather.

I have been taking action.

I've had three sessions with my osteo, and a massage from someone who knows how. Each one has lead to an improvement.

There are two problems.

One is a probable trapped or inflamed nerve in my neck. That was from trying to flip a heavy mattress, something, I've done many times before without a problem.

The other is muscular tightness from adapting to the electric guitar.

Neither was helped by having a back that has been described as "like a turtle".

For a while I could not sort out which symptoms were coming from which cause.

I can now.

A wrist brace above my elbow helps with the guitar playing. I suspect I will adapt to that.

The most I can do is have massages to keep my back from tightening up. My osteo likes the idea of pulley-rows and face-pulls as well. I can do that.

I'm now waiting for the nerve in my neck to sort itself out.

Everyone says that it will remit, but it will take time.

Madison

Another one from the Qobuz suggestions, from a songwriter with the unlikely title of Drugdealer. I love its 70's vibe (through 2020's production), clean tones and all-round songiness.

Let's Sing, Let's Dance

I think I started subscribing to Qibuz in 2021. I would look at its featured new releases and try one or two. I'm not usually one for Korean girl rap DJ's, but Park Hye-jin's first album tickled my funny bone. This is the first track.



Stream it on your preferred service.

Views From Maryon Park

 Well, the same view, but cropped.

The top one is like one of those Victorian landscapes with a title such as "View from a hill in south London". The middle one is "my zoom lens wasn't long enough to get those darn trees out of the frame". The bottom one is "How much would it really cost the Council to trim a few trees once a year so everyone could enjoy a panoramic view of London"?