“20 years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift”
What I’ve read to get up to speed for “Truth Units”
In “A Confession” (published Dec 2021) I talked about what drives me with my writing project “Truth Units — a new theory of truth for our “post-truth” world” (published June 2023) mentioning I’ve been reading philosophy for 20+ years. Early on, my late mother met a philosophy teacher at a local college and told him about my project. As a way of assessing my work, he asked her “what has he read?”
Since then, I’ve documented my reading in bibliography form — not just philosophy, also mind (the gamut of neuroscience, consciousness, psychology), science (quantum mechanics and other frontiers), biology (mainly evolution) and the humanities (mainly niche histories and social studies). I include this non-philosophy because it grounds my understanding of human relationships with the self, each other, the world, existence and reality.
Here’s a list of my reading
The list is broken up into categories flowing from 20th philosophy of truth, to 20th century philosophy generally, to mind, to sciences, to humanities.
(* indicates read in part)
Overviews of Truth
Blackburn, Simon, 2005, Truth: A Guide, Oxford University Press
Blackburn, Simon and Simmons, Keith, eds., 1999, Truth, Oxford University Press
Kirkham, Richard L., 1992, Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction, MIT Press
Lynch, Michael P., ed., 2001, The Nature of Truth: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, MIT Press
Analytic Philosophy
Ayer, A. J., 1946, Language, Truth and Logic, Dover Publications (1952)
Coffa, J. Alberto, 1991, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap to the Vienna Station, Cambridge University Press
Davidson, Donald, 2001, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford University Press
Dummett, Michael, 1993, Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd ed., Harvard University Press*
Dummett, Michael, 1993, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, Harvard University Press
Dummett, Michael, 1993, Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Harvard University Press*
Dummett, Michael, 1993, The Seas of Language, Oxford University Press
Dummett, Michael, 2010, The Nature and Future of Philosophy, Columbia University Press
Horwich, Paul, 2004, From a Deflationary Point of View, Oxford University Press
Horwich, Paul, 2005, Reflections on Meaning, Oxford University Press*
Horwich, Paul, 1998, Truth, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press
Kripke, Saul A., 1972, Naming and Necessity, Harvard University Press
Kripke, Saul A., 1982, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Harvard University Press
Quine, Willard Van Orman, 1953, From a Logical Point of View, 2nd edition, Harvard University Press (1980)*
Quine, Willard Van Orman, 1969, Ontological Relativity & Other Essays, Columbia University Press*
Rorty, Richard, 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press
Searle, John R., 1998, Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World, Basic Books
Sellars, Wilfrid, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Harvard University Press (1997)
Stroud, Barry, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Oxford University Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1921, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge (1974)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edition, transl. G.E.M. Anscombe, Prentice-Hall
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1969, On Certainty, Harper & Row
About Analytic Philosophy
Burgess, John P., 2013, Saul Kripke: Puzzles and Mysteries, Polity Press
Hallett, Garth L., 2008, Linguistic Philosophy: The Central Story, State University of New York Press
Hylton, Peter, 2007, Quine, Routledge
Soames, Scott, 2003, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Princeton University Press (Vol. 1, The Dawn of Analysis, Vol. 2, The Age of Meaning)
Weiner, Joan, 2004, Frege Explained: From Arithmetic to Analytic Philosophy, Open Court
About Wittgenstein
Ayer, A. J., 1985, Wittgenstein, University of Chicago Press
Finch, H.L., 1995, Wittgenstein, Element (Spirit of Philosophy)
Grayling, A.C., 1988, Wittgenstein, Oxford University Press
Hartnack, Justus, 1962, Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy. Second edition 1986 Notre Dame Press, transl., Wittgenstein Og Den Moderne Filosofi, Gyldenal, Denmark
Stern, David G., 1995, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language, Oxford University Press
Stroll, Avrum, Wittgenstein, Oneworld
Continental & Existentialist Philosophy
Heidegger, Martin, 1959, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Yale University Press
Heidegger, Martin, 1968, What Is Called Thinking?, transl., Was Heisst Denken?, J. Glenn Gray, Harper & Row
Kant, Immanuel, 1785, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, transl/edit Mary Gregor, Cambridge University Press (1997)*
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1937, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, Hill & Wang (1960)
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1957, Existentialism and Human Emotions, Carol Publishing Group*
About Continental & Existentialist Philosophy
Barrett, William, 1958, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, Doubleday*
Cox, Gary, 2006, Sartre: a Guide for the Perplexed, Continuum
Cumming, Robert Denoon, ed., 1965, The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, Random House*
Gelven, Michael, 1989, A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Northern Illinois University Press
Goldstein, Rebecca, 2006, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, Schocken
Prado, C. G., ed., 2003, A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy, Prometheus
Rockmore, Tom, 1993, Before and After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel’s Thought, University of California Press, transl., Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Avant/Apres, Edition Criterions, Paris
Smith, David Woodruff, Husserl, Routledge*
Steiner, George, 1978, Martin Heidegger, University of Chicago Press
Welton, Donn, ed., 2003, The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, Indiana University Press*
Other Philosophy
Anderson, James N., 2019, David Hume, R&R Publishing
Baggini, Julian, and Fosl, Peter S., 2010, The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods, 2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell
Cavell, Stanley, 1969, Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge University Press*
Cornford, F. M., 1912, From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation, E. Arnold (2004 Dover republication of 1957 Harper Torchbook edition)
Eco, Umberto; Santambrogio, Marco; and Violi, Patrizia; eds., 1988, Meaning and Mental Representations, Indiana University Press*
Frank, Adam; Gleiser, Marcelo; and Thompson, Evan; 2024, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience, MIT Press
Garfield, Jay L., and Kiteley, Murray, Meaning and Truth: Essential Readings in Modern Semantics, Paragon House
Magill, Frank N., ed., 1990, Masterpieces of World Philosophy, HarperCollins*
McIntyre, Lee C., 2018, Post-Truth, MIT
Nagel, Thomas, 2012, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Oxford University Press
Papineau, David, 2012, Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Sets, Oxford University Press
Pollock, John. L., and Cruz, Joseph, 1999, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Rowman & Littlefield*
Prado, C. G., ed., 2003, A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy, Prometheus
Pyle, Andrew, ed., 1999, Key Philosophers in Conversation: The Cogito Interviews, Routledge
Russell, Bertrand, 1927, An Outline of Philosophy, Routledge (1993)*
Russell, Bertrand, 1945, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon & Schuster
Turbayne, Colin Murray, 1965, George Berkeley: Principles, Dialogues and Philosophical Correspondence, Bobbs-Merrill*
Consciousness, Neuroscience, Psychology, Biology
Chalmers, David J., 1996, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press
Churchland, Patricia S., 2019, Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition, Norton
Churchland, Paul M., 2012, Plato’s Camera: How the Physical Brain Captures a Landscape of Abstract Universals, MIT Press
Damasio, Antonio, 1999, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Harcourt
Damasio, Antonio, 2010, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, Vintage
Damasio, Antonio, 2021, Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, Vintage
Dehaene, Stanislas, 2014, Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts, Penguin
Dennett, Daniel C., 1991, Consciousness Explained, Little Brown
deWaal, Frans, 2005, Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are, Penguin
Everett, Daniel, 2017, How Language Began: The Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention, Profile Books
Kahneman, Daniel, 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Kahneman, Daniel; Sibony, Olivier; Sunstein, Cass R.; 2021, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, Hachette
Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark, 1999, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books
LeDoux, Joseph, 2019, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains, Penguin
McGilchrist, Iain, 2009, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Yale University Press
McGinn, Colin, 1999, The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World, Basic Books
Nettle, Daniel, 2006, Happiness: the Science Behind Your Smile, Oxford University Press
Nettle, Daniel, 2009, Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are, Oxford University Press
Pinker, Steven, 2007, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Penguin
Searle, John R., 1997, The Mystery of Consciousness, New York Review of Books
Shear, Jonathan, ed., 1999, Explaining Consciousness — The “Hard Problem,” MIT Press
Solms, Mark, 2021, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, Norton
Thomas, Lewis, 1974, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, Viking
Trivers, Robert, 2011, The Folly of Fools: the Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life, Basic Books
Wilson, Edward O., 2014, The Meaning of Human Existence, Norton*
Wilson, Edward O., 2012, The Social Conquest of Earth, Norton
Physics & Mathematics
Becker, Adam, 2018, What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, Basic Books
Goldstein, Rebecca, 2005, Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel, Norton
Greene, Brian, 2000, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, Norton
Hawking, Stephen, 1988, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam
Kosso, Peter, 1998, Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics, Oxford University Press
Laughlin, Robert B., 2005, A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics, Basic Books*
Nagel, Ernest, and Newman, James, and Hofstadter, Douglas R., ed., 2001, Godel’s Proof, revised edition, NYU Press
Rovelli, Carlo, 2017, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Riverhead (Penguin Random House)
Rovelli, Carlo, 2020, HelgoLand: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution, Riverhead (Penguin Random House)
Humanities and Other Sciences
Armstrong, Karen, 2009, The Case for God, Alfred A. Knopf
Bakewell, Sarah, 2010, How to Live; or, a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Other Press
Bloom, Allan, and Bellow, Saul, 1987, The Closing of the American Mind, Simon & Schuster
Boyle, Rebecca, 2024, Our Moon, Random House
Cahill, Thomas, 1999, Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus, Doubleday
Cahill, Thomas, 1998, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, Doubleday
Cahill, Thomas, 1996, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, Anchor
Cantor, Norman F., 1994, Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages, HarperCollins
Diamond, Jared, 2005, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Norton
Edmonds, David, and Eidinow, Mark, 2001, Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers, HarperCollins
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 2005, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edition, Cambridge
Fortnow, Lance, 2013, The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible, Princeton University Press
Frankopan, Peter, 2015, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Vintage
Graeber, David, and Wengrow, David, 2021, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Picador
Kaiser, Walter, Selected Essays of Montaigne, in the Translation of John Florio, Houghton Mifflin
Kennedy, Paul, 1987, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Random House
Lewis, Michael, 2017, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, Norton
Madden, Thomas F., 2008, Empires of Trust: How Rome Built — and America is Building — a New World, Dutton
Ostler, Nicholas, 2005, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, HarperCollins
Reinhart, Carmen M., and Rogoff, Kenneth S., This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press
Stone, I.F., 1988, The Trial of Socrates, Little Brown
Thompson, Derek, 2017, Hit Makers: the Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction, Penguin
Weatherford, Jack, 1997, The History of Money, Random House
Webb, Amy, 2016, The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, Perseus
Zakaria, Fareed, 2024, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, Norton
