The Big Questions: Philosophy by Simon Blackburn (PDF)

Description

The Big Questions series is designed to let renowned experts confront the 20 most fundamental and frequently asked questions of a major branch of science or philosophy. Each 3000-word essay simply and concisely examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, and provides answers from history’s great thinkers. This ambitious project is a unique distillation of humanity’s best ideas. In Big Questions: Philosophy, bestselling author Simon Blackburn addresses 20 essential questions.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐There are other titles in this set, one each for astronomy, math and physics that are also worth purchasing. I don’t consider myself an expert on any of these subjects. As a casual reader of the topics I found the writing in each book to be fairly easy to comprehend. There are other books that are more in depth, but I like the question answer format that these volumes present. They can serve as a starting point for anyone interested in exploring the topics further or nice compact reference for the basic questions covered.

⭐I’m on the second page of the second chapter and I think it’s time to get rid of this book. The author relentlessly links selfishness to aggression without providing any concrete bridge connecting the two. He then roundly condemns selfishness while pushing the idea of altruism as if it’s some sort of moral high ground. Selfishness built this society. Selfishness gave people the ability to break away and be altruistic while still living at a higher standard than most other people across the globe.Because of my own selfishness, I am nice to others in my day to day life. I am nice to people at work as it is in my own selfish interest to be nice in order to advance my career. I am nice to my family as it selfishly benefits my life to give thanks for all which my family has done for me in my younger years and to do them favors. I go to work for 75 hours a week because out of pure self interest, I’d like to make sure my wife and baby can stay home together all day and not worry about working and day-care. It also selfishly makes me happy to see my friends and happy. Our whole civilization is built on this philosophy of selfishness as selfishness is truly a virtue, and the author blatantly ignores this.As far as I’m concerned, this book is just another piece of ill-thought-out collectivist propaganda. Collectivism is slavery, individualism is freedom. Wide scale collectivism can only be established through violent coercion. Collectivism has no place in a truly civilized and free society. The author should read some Mises, Rothbard, Molyneux, Rand, Hoppe, Sowell, Friedman, Hayek, Peikoff, Locke, Montesquieu, Paine, Bastiat, Spooner, Mill, the list goes on and on. There are a plethora of other authors who far surpass this man’s ability to reason.

⭐As adults we trend to forget just how curious we were when were children. We had so much to learn. We were born into the world with all the hardware, ears, nose, eyes, etc., and yet we have no memories that go back that far. One of my earliest memories goes back to an age of about 30 months old, or perhaps 36. I recognise the incident as one of my earliest memories, I was certainly pre-school, and yet I can only estimate my age at the time. In all likelihood I hadn’t then learned to count, and my perception of time would not be what it is today, why and how could I be certain about my age that counts as my earliest first memory?I wrote the above because while we are born into the world with our senses, we are not born with a fully fledged perception to interpret the signals these senses may send to the brain. The brain is there in the physical sense, but it is blank canvas in the cognitive and perceptive sense. The level of perception and understanding we take for granted today simply wasn’t there when we entered the world. Neuroscience cannot explain how the brain works, or how the brain of a child differs from the brain of an adult, not with specificity of detail, it can only do it most general terms. The brain is ‘hardware’, and the hardware is comprised of great many cells called ‘neurons’, and babies have the hardware, but there is not much in the way of software installed.Now that we are adults everything that we know, and what we think we know, a bank of memories, motor control, balance, and a great many emotional responses, equate to a suite of applications installed upon a smart-phone, or tablet, or pc. We spend a lifetime building our suite of applications, and according to a leading neuroscientist (Sally Greenfield) these ‘applications’ are scripted to the trillion-trillion ways in which one neuron can connect with other neurons that make up the brain. It’s worth thinking about, because your neurons had to make so many connections for you just to be able to read this, and mine had to make a few more to write it. For all that is known about human physiology and neuroscience there is so much going on that cannot be properly explained.If science is about asking questions, verifying observations, and providing explanations, then the advance of science has tended to side-line philosophy, perhaps. Scientific understanding has advanced exponentially in the last 100 years. Despite this there remains a lot that is not yet properly understood, much that has never been considered as a topic for study, and a huge bundle of stuff around us that we take for granted. And the business of growing into adulthood, and the influences we are subjected to as adults, has us trade of what we know, and what we allow ourselves to think we know, and has us lose the level of curiosity we possessed as a child. Adults have a bundle of answers, and simply do not ask so many questions.The asking of questions for which definitive answers are not yet available is now the lifeblood of modern philosophy. It always was, its just that science has returned some of the answers philosophy used to address and discuss. Philosophy makes a concession; even if the answer lies beyond our reach the asking of the question and discussion of the various directions in which the answer might lie remains a constructive thing to do. Philosophy ventures to discussion of topics and questions that have yet to be fully mapped by science. So philosophy is about exploring uncharted cognitive territory and it has to survey the landscape as best it can. Theology equates to the drawing of a map without ever having conducted a survey. Then dogma insists the map is right, and we should trust it, despite the landscape has never been surveyed.I never perceived that philosophy could be so down to Earth and so humble a subject. Philosophy isn’t about providing answers for its readers, and the best philosophy isn’t about providing its readers with questions either. The gold standard in philosophy and its writing is about four things; demonstrating the worth of asking questions, provoking thought, making the exploration of uncharted territory a pleasure, and promoting the benefits of retaining an open mind. Hence if judged against these four gold standard and simple criteria then this book by Simon Blackburn is an example of gold standard philosophical writing.The great beauty of this book is that the chapters are short and amount to bite-sized essays. They are written in simple and plain English, and any use of less familiar terms is kept to a minimum.We are each, largely, a ghost in a machine, by the way. We are far less than half as rational as we could be, we hold a great many opinions that we think hold true but don’t really, and most of our thoughts and behavioural responses are done on autopilot. We have a complex physiology beneath the skin that takes care of much routine business so our consciousness doesn’t have to. It escapes our attention just how much is done for us. Species in the animal kingdom carry on like pink robots. Much about their behaviour is scripted and not determined by reasoned choice. Humans are just the same but with greater margin of intelligence who think they deploy intelligence more frequently than they actually do. Plants have responses too, in the least they detect the time of year and behave accordingly, but in the main they are rooted to the spot and need not navigate their environment to find food, a mate, or enlightenment. Plants are green robots with limited responses. Animals are pink robots that can navigate, humans are pink robots that can map as well as navigate, and humans can navigate a cognitive world as well as a physical one, but simply do not explore so often as they could.Purchase this book and enjoy. Surveying matters we can barely understand is a pleasurable thing to do. You might think the book a bit vague or lightweight in content. That’s the point, really, the starting point, the launchpad, and the rest is up to the reader.

⭐I bought this book to give me an overview of a subject of which I knew very little. It served that purpose as a comprehensive run through of the key topics. But I found the reading a bit hard going. To me the text felt more like the transcript of University lectures or tutorials than a book directed towards someone seeking a user-friendly overview of the subject. I found that I lost interest in parts. But I did persevere to the end and feel that I now know much more than before.

⭐This book is a bit like the matrix it throws everything you think you know away and asks you to question the everyday, something that makes it such an interesting read. Looking at the philosophical notions of time and existence I really liked how it didnt really answer anything but rather just made more questions to answer. Definatley recommend this to anyone interested in the ‘other ideas’ of our existence.

⭐Recommend by the leader of our Philosophy group . Well written and makes you think ! Loads to discuss

⭐Enjoyable read, some interesting things to consider. A book to make you think but that’s the point of it! Easy to get to grips with.

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