Philosophy 101:
For Further Reading
 
 

Here are some interesting and fun-to-read books related to a few of the topics discussed in class. None of these is required or expected for the course, but if you are curious about a topic and would like to explore it some more, these are some fun places to start.

General:

Peg Tittle, What If... Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy, (New York, NY: Pearson, 2005).

Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

Earl Conee and Theodore Sider, Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007). - has chapters on personal identity, the existence of God, free will, etc.

Philosophy of Religion:

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, (1888). - a very anti-theistic point of view!

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, (New York, NY: Oxford Unviersity Press, 2004). - a pro-theistic philosopher defends theism.

Joe Nickell, Looking for a Miracle, (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 1999). - a skeptical view of miracle reports.

Descartes:

William Irwin, ed., The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real, (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 2002). - Discusses philosophical issues related to The Matrix, which is an updated account of Descartes' evil genius thought experiment.

Bryan Magee, The Great Philosophers, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001). - a readable discussion of Descartes and numerous other philosophers.

Christopher Biffle, A Guided Tour of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2000). - a paragraph-by-paragraph guide to the Meditations.

Georges Dicker, Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993). - a more advanced work that discusses Descartes views in a clear but sophisticated way.

Philosophy of Mind:

Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).