The Oxford companion to philosophy

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1. mcriderFeb 2012
   The 'Oxford Companion to the Mind'

   http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Companion-Mind-Richard-Gregory/...

   And also the Oxford Companion to Philosophy are my go to reference points on the subject. Just really great encyclopedias on the two areas.

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2. mdp2021Jan 2022
   > Hobbes gets a bad rap because it sounds pretty horrible sitting in the peace and comfort of the 21st century

   Hobbes was viewed as an enemy of humanity by many of his contemporaries.

   > [H]is writings are very bold. He published views that he knew would be strongly disliked by both parties to the English Civil War. He supported the king over Parliament, which earned him the enmity of those supporting Parliament, but he not only denied the divine right of the king, he said that democracy was an equally legitimate form of government, which earned him the enmity of many royalists, though not of the king. He also put forward views concerning God and religion that he knew would cause those who held traditional religious views to regard him as dangerous. The Roman Catholic Church put his books on the Index, and _Oxford University dismissed faculty for being Hobbists. Some people recommended burning not only his books but Hobbes himself_ (From "Hobbes", in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy)

   > Unused to having their own ideas taken seriously, philosophers today may be surprised to learn that the Parliament of the time regarded the doctrines of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) as a probable cause of the Great Fire of 1666. Safely dead, Hobbes is the greatest of British philosophers; alive and kicking, he was dangerous to know, and those in charge of the universities were not distracted by the notion of academic freedom from persecuting anyone who sympathized with his ‘lewd, scandalous and immoral doctrine’. In 1668 Daniel Scargill was deprived of a fellowship at Corpus Christi College and expelled from Cambridge for being ‘an Hobbist and an Atheist’. Scargill was promised in 1669 that he could return if he delivered a public recantation: two drafts of this were rejected; in the third, the unfortunate Scargill confessed to having been an agent of the Devil, but he was never restored to his fellowship and was obliged to live in extreme poverty. // The hostility of more orthodox thinkers was aroused above all by the intellectual ruthlessness with which Hobbes insisted that all divine authority must reflect earthly power. Nothing is more binding than the word of God: this Hobbes would be the first to allow. But, he argued, the word of God, like all words, may be interpreted in rival ways. What counts as an authoritative interpretation must therefore depend on the power of those capable of enforcing it (From "Persecution of Philosophers", in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy)

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3. DizzyDooMay 2012
   It's an interesting question, are we in a Matrix, or computer simulation, or the slightly older theory from 1641 where Rene Descartes imagined an omnipotent demon lying to him. Maybe I'm simplifying the question, but I reckon it boils down to how do we know what we know? Am I sat in front of a computer screen now, or do I just believe I am?

   I'm not really a philosopher, at all, but the Oxford Companion to Philosophy says:

   "Do you know that you are looking at a... book right now rather than, say, having your brain intricately stimulated by a mad scientist? The sceptic carefully describes this alternative so that no experiment can refute it. The conclusion that you really are looking at a book, however, explains the aggregate of your experiences better than the mad scientist hypothesis or any other competing views."

   which I think makes sense to me. I've met one or two people who say they believe that they live in a Matrix/Alien computer simulation, but observing, they live as if they don't.

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