A general overview: Contemporary Philosophy
"The term ‘contemporary philosophy’ refers to the current era of philosophy, generally dealing with philosophers from the late nineteenth century through to the twenty-first."
"Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. His most influential contributions include his championing of logicism (the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic), his refining of Gottlob Frege’s predicate calculus (which still forms the basis of most contemporary systems of logic), his defense of neutral monism (the view that the world consists of just one type of substance which is neither exclusively mental nor exclusively physical), and his theories of definite descriptions, logical atomism and logical types."
"David Skrbina (sker-BEE-na), PhD, was a senior lecturer at the University of Michigan, Dearborn from 2003 to 2018. His areas of interest include philosophy of mind, eco-philosophy, philosophy of technology, and environmental ethics."
The Mind/Brain Identity Theory
"Some philosophers hold that though experiences are brain processes they nevertheless have fundamentally non-physical, psychical, properties, sometimes called ‘qualia’. Here I shall take the identity theory as denying the existence of such irreducible non-physical properties. Some identity theorists give a behaviouristic analysis of mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but others, sometimes called ‘central state materialists’, say that mental states are actual brain states. Identity theorists often describe themselves as ‘materialists’ but ‘physicalists’ may be a better word. That is, one might be a materialist about mind but nevertheless hold that there are entities referred to in physics that are not happily described as ‘material’."
"The philosophy of mind is specifically concerned with quite general questions about the nature of mental phenomena: what, for example, is the nature of thought, feeling, perception, consciousness, and sensory experience?"
"His critique of traditional metaphysics and his opposition to positivism and technological world domination have been embraced by leading theorists of postmodernity (Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard). On the other hand, his involvement in the Nazi movement has invoked a stormy debate. Although he never claimed that his philosophy was concerned with politics, political considerations have come to overshadow his philosophical work."
The copy is the original by Byung-Chul Han
"The Tractatus is based on the idea that philosophical problems arise from misunderstandings of the logic of language, and it tries to show what this logic is."
"Home page for Willard Van Orman Quine, mathematician and philosopher who held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956-2000. Over the last half century his literary output was prodigious in such areas as mathematical logic, set theory, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of logic. His best known works include 'The Ways of Paradox', 'Mathematical Logic', 'Set Theory and Its Logic', 'Quiddities', and his most influential 'Word and Object'."
