[DaggerDagger]

Wow, this is great. So he took philosophy out of the normative, positivist, Hegelian world it was stuck in, pointlessly proving useless esoteric questions of logic, and applied it phenomenologically to the broad experience of human experience and reality. Anybody know anything I should read besides Nozick along this vein?

[igravious]

Your take on the article is all wrong. And buzzwordy to boot.

Analytic philosophy, though a broad church, is a number of things -- (1) a constrained style, one that tends to mimic the papers in logic or mathematics, certainly not one that is stylistically liberal (2) a reluctance to address certain topics, so philosophy of science (championed by Quine as mentioned in the article) to name but one out of a restricted set of topics is favoured (3) this one is important, analytic philosophy is very Anglo-American, and this shows.

> Anybody know anything I should read besides Nozick along this vein?

They mention two in the article: Hofstadter's nerd-famous G.E.B which I could not in good conscience recommend, and Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_ which is a landmark text. One reason to recommend Rorty over Hofstadter to a person interested in philosophy is that PatMoN is a proper philosophical text and G.E.B is most certainly not.

[mercer]

Could you elaborate on your opinion of G.E.B?

[keeler]

> So he took philosophy out of the normative, positivist, Hegelian world

Former philosophy person here.

In analytic philosophy, those three are generally understood to be all at odds with each other. "Normative" has to do with values, typically moral ones such as "good" or "ought". Positivism in analytic philosophy generally refers to an early 20th century school of thought (see, for example, the Vienna Circle) that roughly held that the only meaningful statements were those that were empirically testable, or that were a priori; all other statements, including normative ones, were simply meaningless. Positivism exerted an enormous influence on analytic philosophy that is still felt today, though few if any philosophers identify themselves strictly as such anymore. As for Hegalianism, that was/is a major influence in Continental philosophy, but has had very little influence in the analytic tradition.

I haven't read much Nozick, but considering the article discusses his reaction against the analytic tradition, the closest thing he was reacting to of your three was positivism, mixed with the intense influence of philosophy of language that evolved out of the work of Frege and Russell.

[hyperpape]

Mid 20th century Anglo-American philosophy was about as anti-Hegelian as can be, so it's more than a little unclear what you're asking for.

[paganel]

> Anybody know anything I should read besides Nozick along this vein?

I'm now reading a selection of essays on the general theory of politics by Norberto Bobbio (it's in Italian: http://www.einaudi.it/libri/libro/norberto-bobbio/teoria-gen...) which I find quite interesting, in the same vein as the later Nozick described by the article.

Bobbio never seems to choose a dogmatic view on the philosophy of politics, even though he discusses at length about controversial political ideas like freedom vs equality, politics vs morals and the like. His short description of "liberal socialism" is quite convincing, even though the construct might at first seem like an oxymoron (he uses the word "liberal" in the continental way, borrowed from Benjamin Constant). Too lazy to search for but I'm pretty sure there must be plenty of English translations of Bobbio's works.

[ue_]

>"liberal socialism" is quite convincing, even though the construct might at first seem like an oxymoron

I don't understand why this is even considered an oxymoron, aside from the arguably distorted views people have about the theory of Socialism. There are plenty of liberal Socialists, Oscar Wilde being a popular one.

[paganel]

You could say that people like Oscar Wilde were the exception, rather than the rule. As is the British NHS experiment, in the great scheme of things. The tendency in the last 200 years was either to have as many privately-held entities running things around (the "liberal" side of things), or to have as much State-control as possible ("socialist"). For the moment the pendulum seems to be pointing to us going more "liberal" (I had a cultural shock when I read that parents are supposed to pay for their kids' elementary education in "communist" China).

[ue_]

It sort of depends what we mean by liberal. Very few Socialists would be arguing to have the population woken up by the commissar in the morning to commence their 9 hour working day, in return receiving labour vouchers which guarantee a position in a lottery for the confiscated possessions of the bourgeoisie.

An extreme example maybe, but nevertheless I doubt you'll find many Socialists, today at least, talking about forced labour. It would be extremely hypocritical of them, considering the fact of forced labour within capitalism.

All forms of Socialism rest upon the communal ownership of the means of production, and the gradual removal of power from the state, in the direction of Communism (though let's be sure as Marx said in German Ideology, Communism is not a state of affairs to be established). This relies upon some kind of confiscation of private property.

What divides the 'liberal' Socialism from regular old Marx and Engels's Socialism, I'm not sure. Though if I must I shall paint myself as a a liberal Socialist. That doesn't mean I want capitalism with health care.

[AnimalMuppet]

> ... considering the fact of forced labour within capitalism.

I would like to see what you think is the factual basis for that statement...

[ue_]

Perhaps I shouldn't have said it so strongly. I will elaborate on my meaning.

Within capitalism, the labour of a working-class man is dictated usually by the capitalist; the hours he works, what he works with, when he works, and what quality of product is expected of him. However the labourer working under the capitalist is forced to sell the only thing he can provide - that is, his labour power (capacity to perform labour), and in return, the labourer receives a wage, which is equal to the exact amount required to sustain the worker and keep him within the labour force and introduce new labourers.

Thus in order to survive the labourer is required to sell his labour-time to someone else, and have the products of his labour appropriated at the end.

As is mentioned in Classical Econophysics (Paul W. Cockshott et al.):

>Marx asked, where does profit come from, if all goods are exchanged at their value? The answer, Marx said, lies in the special commodity labour-power. The worker sells to the capitalist labour-power which embodies (let’s say) 5 hours; that is, the value of the worker’s means of subsistence amounts to 5 hours per day. But once he gets through the factory gates or the or the door, he finds that the working day is 8 hours. The worker therefore performs 3 hours of ‘surplus labour’ per day and this is manifest in 3 hours’ worth of surplus value accruing to the capitalist. Marx calls the labour time workers spend in reproducing the value of their wages the ‘necessary labour time’, and he calls the ratio of surplus labour time to necessary labour time at therate of surplus value. In the example just given the rate of surplus value is 3/5 = 0.6.

So here we have one element of force: the forceful appropriation of one's products of labour at the end of the production process. The next element of force is that the labourer is required to work under the direction of someone else, usually the highest bidder for the worker's labur-power commodity (if he can find such a bidder), rather than voluntarily decide with others how much or how to work. And finally the third element of force, that the worker is required to work more in return for less, despite no social need to do so as a result of increased automation, which could be used to alleviate workload rather than increase short-term profits.

What are the exceptions? When a labourer is able to amass sufficient capital so as to sustain himself from it, or become a property owner himself. This not an option for most people, as it involves too much risk and time, especially for those with families.

[RodericDay]

Yeah, Karl Marx.

The Communist Manifesto and Capital are both good, but I personally think Marx's Inferno by William Clare Roberts is great.

[ue_]

I don't know if it's just me, but I consider Capital more of an economic text than a philosophical one. That's Marx in political economist mode. And from what (albeit little) I've read of Nozick I much prefer Marx and continental philosophy as a whole (though I'm just beginning).

The Manifesto draws varying opinions even within Communist circles; arguably Engels' "The Principles of Communism" is a more gentle text.

[bobwaycott]

This is definitely a common thought, and has long been considered the proper way to read Marx. You should check out Marx's Inferno for an interesting—and, I've long thought, more accurate—take otherwise.

[ue_]

I've heard about it before, though I haven't checked it out. I'll take a look, thanks.

[bobwaycott]

Marx's Inferno +1

It's absolutely worth reading, and properly positions Capital as a work of intentional political theory.

[deepnet]

Daniel Dennet is grounded in reality, though he is concerned with how minds came about and the possibility of AI - his latest from Bacteria to Bach combines Darwin and Turing to imagine how biological machines came to be minds and cites Clark and Hinton.

His recent Life Scientific outlines his thesis. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kv3y4

[kolbe]

Don't all the great fiction writers just skip that first misguided step?

[samirillian]

Neitzsche! Genealogy of Morals is such a classic.

[ue_]

Proudhon and Kropotkin?