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mattnewport comments on Open Thread: May 2009 - Less Wrong
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Having recently received a couple of Amazon gift certificates, I'm looking for recommendations of 'rationalist' books to buy. (It's a little difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.)
I'm looking mainly for non-fiction that would be helpful on the road to rationality. Anything from general introductory type texts to more technical or math oriented stuff. I found this OB thread which has some recommendations, but I thought that:
So, if you have a book to recommend, please leave a comment. If you have more than one to recommend, make them separate comments so that each can be voted up/down individually.
Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett.
I wasn't that taken with this book, and I'm usually a big Dennett fan. What did you like about it?
It helped clarify some thoughts I'd already had about free will - that the standard paradox of free will as incompatible with determinism was not a true paradox. I think the concept of free will used by many people is horribly confused and this book is the best attempt I've seen to come up with a coherent conception of what free will can mean in a purely material universe.
Same and same. Recently, Dennett has been good on memes, but elsewhere he does tend to waffle a bit. In Freedom Evolves, Dennet redefines the terms he is discussing, berates everyone else for not using his definitions, and then bangs on about them for hundreds of pages. That's philosophy for you.