Nonfiction Reading Suggestions

What is a mind? What is cognition? What does it mean to think? I'm sure you already have views on all of this, it's almost impossible not to. Some of those views are probably clear in your head, things you've considered explicitely, maybe even gone back and forth on. But other aspects of your approach are invisible to you. There are assumptions you haven't unearthed. (If you think this isn't true for you, then it's especially true for you.) These assumptions are the ultimate target of PGS's Other Minds.

Octopuses (and their relatives like cuttlefish) are the only intelligent creatures in the known universe that have evolved intelligence and cognition independently from our lineage. In a sense, intelligence evolved twice: in human's predecessors and in octopuses' predecessors. This makes octopuses quite possibly the closest thing we can get to alien intelligence. As such, they provide a beautiful case study for investigating what we think intelligence, consiousness, identity, etc. really are. 

Mercier and Sperber start with a double-enigma: First, if the capacity to reason is so useful, then why haven't other animals evolved to do it? Second, why are humans, with all of their cognitive biases, so seemingly bad at reasoning? These questions lead the authors into an investigation of what reason is, what intuition is, what a self is, and more. Ultimately, they dispense with the idea of a "stage" which thoughts come across and develop an account in which reasons are originally and still primarily social.

P(H|E)=P(E|H)*P(H)/P(E), also known as Bayes' Theorem, holds a special place in many people's heart. They are known as Bayesians. To those people, the theorem simultaneously solves some of the deepest mysteries of philosophy, dissolves paradoxes in the foundations of science, and describes how a thinking mind ought to deal with evidence. And while not everyone agrees on these philosophical points, no one denies the practical impact of Bayes' Theorem on virtually every discipline that concerns statistics. However Bayes' Theorem had trouble ever coming to light. McGrayne explores the real history behind it, and how it had to prove its mettle in the most real world scenario possible: World War II.

Mathematics was in an existential crisis. At the turn of the 20th century, mathematicians were panicking that their entire enterprise, the very field of mathematics, might crumble as a result of its own devises. Logicomix is a fun-to-read, semi-biographical graphic novel that traces the efforts of Bertrand Russell to build foundations of mathematics in logic while guarding against paradoxes. The results of his and others' efforts is not only a firm foundation of mathematics, but the building blocks for modern computers.

This book does two things: First, it explains the concept of many model thinking in which a thinker utilizes a library of models (never just one) to understand real world dynamics and events. Second, it provides a library of models to do so. After reading, the book serves as a toolbelt of models that can be used to analyze countless situations across essentially any domain. 

Writing is hard. Even in a philosophy class, we don't have much (or any, really) time to go over writing techniques. There simply too much material to get to. Even still, writing is not arbitraty. Learning how to be a better writer enables you to be a better thinker, because writing is simply a different form of thinking. Further, it can make you a better reader. You'll be able to notice various structures and devices of authors that allow you a better window into their intent.