| Well, but we are all philosophers -- lovers of wisdom -- or at least all who begin to ask about it are. Sure, it would be idiotic to say that such a book is the end of philosophy, but actually such a book as the beginning of philosophy seems pretty valuable. You need a comprehensive starting point to tell you give you some Wikipedia (or SEP) rabbit holes to go down. Here is one very specific recommendation for a place to start: Richard Rorty, and in particular, his book "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature." I've suffered through the tension between the Continental and Anglican worlds, and I think that Rorty is extremely valuable as a bridge between the two, and potentially an entry point to the one you're not familiar with (or both if you're familiar with neither). Given the original question (about "mental models"), the Philosophy of the Mind is one of the more universal topics, that tends to be less controversial across the different schools of Philosophy. That Rorty book is a decent entry point to it, which will lead to things like... A debate between Rorty and John Searle about consciousness (Searle is a mind-is-not-the-brain person): https://muse.jhu.edu/article/425883 Correspondence between Searle and Dan Dennet about the mind (Dennet is a brain-is-a-computer person): https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/12/21/the-mystery-of-c... |