Luke has mentioned much of the research that aspiring philosophers ought to read here.

In fact, he delineated a basis upon which good philosophy can be build, a worldview brought by science and experimentation that relates to, and informs, the kinds of facts which philosophers need to understand to increase their probabilities of asking, and giving good answers to, relevant questions.

Some argued that his list is biased, let us assume for the time being it isn't.

Some argued that the main problem with the list is that it requires either unmanageable amount of time to go through, or improbable levels of intelligence/motivation to do so. This argument does make sense if the purpose of the list was "Let us create a good Philosophy Course".

But this is not the purpose of it. The purpose of it, as most of what Luke publicly does is to save the World. And if doing so requires making people go through an enormous amount of pages of content besides their formal education, well, then so be it. If it has to be a six year course, then it has to.

At the end of his post he says:

You might also let them read 20th century analytic philosophy at that point [after going through his Mega-Course] — hopefully their training will have inoculated them from picking up bad thinking habits.

Now 20th century Analytic Philosophy, and some philosophy that isn't strictly analytic, should definitely be at a philosophy course. I urge other LessWronger philosophers to guide people through that.

Here is a list I have published here before, for Philosophy of Mind and Language (sometimes considered subsets or children of Analytic Philosophy). It covers only the minimal reading necessary to grasp the place of computationalism, and so-called computational theories of mind within the larger debate of philosophy. 

But the last century has seen a lot of good philosophy that by luck didn't conflict with neither the science of the day, nor the science that was developed until 2012. Sometimes authors were very careful when writing their philosophy, and well versed in science, like Dennett, Hofstadter, Putnam, Ned Block, and Chalmers. Finally, frequently the topics at hand are sufficiently orthogonal with scientific development that it simply didn't matter that the author didn't know in 1970 what we (after the Mega-Course) know today. 

So I ask Luke, Pragmatist, Carl Shulman and others to help build the layer that will sit on top of the science layer in the "Philosophy Given Science" Mega-Course for aspiring philosophers. The course will have four layers. Below the science layer, will be its prerequisites (admittedly large), and atop the one I'm suggesting here, we hope to start building a really good philosophy that is compatible with our scientific understanding, tackles mostly Big Questions which are highly likely to be meaningful, and frequently also useful for the major issues we still have time to solve.

This is the pyramidal  structure I suggest we create, 1,2 and 3 being the content of the Mega-Course, and 4 being the likely outcome we expect it to facilitate, made by those who undertake it:

4) Philosophy given 1,2 and 3. Tackling the Big Questions, and making it portable to areas such as AGI, Biotech, etc...

3) Philosophy, up to 2012, that is well informed about or orthogonal to Science so far. Or lucky.

2) Science that is relevant to philosophy. This.

1) Prerequisites for 2.

In this post we begin layer three, I'll start by copying the Mind and Language I had sent. After I'll include some of Bostrom's recommendations within philosophy to me as an undergrad, and my selection of Dennett's, and Dennett's selection of science:

Language and Mind:

• 37 Ways words can be Wrong - Yudkowsky
• Darwin Dangerous Idea Chapters 3,5, 11, 12 and 14 - Daniel Dennett
• On Denoting - Bertrand Russell
• On What There Is - Quine
• Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Quine
• Namind and Necessity - Kripke OR Two Dimensional Semantics - David Chalmers
• “Is Personal Identity What Matters?” - Derek Parfit
• Breakdown of Will - Part Two (don’t read part 3) George Ainslie
• Concepts of Consciousness 2003 - Ned Block
• Attitudes de dicto and de se - David Lewis- Phil Papers 1
• General Semantics - David Lewis - Phil Papers 1
• The Stuff of Thought, Chapter 3 “Fifty Thousand Innate Concepts” - Steve Pinker
• Beyond Belief - Daniel Dennett in Intentional Stance
• The Content and Epistemology of Phenomenal Belief - David Chalmers
• Quining Qualia OR I Am a Strange Loop OR Consciousness Explained - Dan & Doug
• Intentionality - Pierre Jacob - Stanford Encyclopedia Phil

From Bostrom's suggestions:

• Philosophical Papers - David Lewis
• Parfit
• Frank Arntzenius
• Timothy Williamson
• Brian Skyrms

By Dennett:

• Real Patterns
• True Believers
• Kinds of Minds
• Intentional Systems In Cognitive Ethology
• Those mentioned above in the Mind and Language list.

Not previously cited, but in Luke's favorites list:

• Noam Chomsky
• Stephen Stich
• Hilary Kronblith
• Eric schwitzgebel
• Michael Bishop

Dennett's suggestions on interdisciplinary science (layer 2):

• The Company of Strangers - Paul Seabright
• Not by Genes Alone - Boyd and Richerson
• I Am a Strange Loop. - Hofstadter

By Bostrom

• Probably easier to list what should not be read...

This may initially appear overwhelming, but it is probably one order of magnitude less content than Luke's original post about layer 2. Once again I ask philosophers to specify more things within areas that are not well addressed here, such as ethics. Also books by scientists dealing with philosophical topics (such as Sam Harris: The Moral Landscape) can be added here. 

The "Philosophy Given Science" MegaCourse may never actually take place, but it will be a very valuable guideline for institutions to influence actual Philosophy courses, for Philosophy teachers to get cohesive and preselected content to teach, and most importantly for diligent aspiring philosophers willing to get to the Big and relevant problems, instead of being the ball in the chaotic Pinball game that academic philosophy has become, despite all good things it brought. When the path is too long, a shortcut is not a shortcut anymore, it is the only way to get there before it is too late.

Yep, I'm saying that without hard data.  But I was there.  So let me say it again, in response to numerous comments I've seen complaining that no judgement should be passed until a quantitative analysis confirms it:

Mini-camp was awesome.  Note that mini-camp was far from the first time I've travelled to an event to surround myself with like-minded peers working toward common goals...  I find such events events extremely motivating and enjoyable, which is why I've been to many such workshops, inside and outside academia (~3 per year for the past 10 years).

Yet mini-camp is still topping my charts.  Specifically, the camp is tied for the title of the most life-altering workshop-like event of my life, and the tie is with the workshop that got me onto my PhD topic (graphical causal modelling), so that's saying something.

In particular, I've been visibly-to-myself-and-others more motivated and hard-working since the camp.  I've had more energy for learning and adaptation, and I find Luke to have been a highly inspiring input to that result.

(I'm talking about Luke because his position is the one being discussed right now, but I got a lot of really inspiring ideas and motivation from Anna before, during, and after the camp as well.)

Hard data will be great to have, but it's hard to get, especially certifiably causal data (though the prospect is not hopeless, with enough conditional independence tests), especially since the camp was planned and executed on short notice.  

In the meantime, let's do a little Bayes.  First, assign priors to how well you expect a week-long sustained interaction between growth-oriented rationalists to go.  (If your prior is something like 80%[failure], I'd like to know where you're getting your growth-oriented rationalists).  Now which of the following theories, "failure" or "success", assigns a higher likelihood to the following observations?

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1. People wrote these: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AnoM_ZsIBBwEdGNicUMzRkNJNzRKLVpEb2RxZzU3V0E

In particular, 

“The week I spent in minicamp had by far the highest density of fun and learning I have ever experienced. It's like taking two years of college and condensing it to a week: you learn just as much and you have just as much fun. The skills I've learned will help me set and achieve my own life goal, and the friends I've made will help me get there.” --Alexei

“This was an intensely positive experience. This was easily the most powerful change self-modification I've ever made, in all of the social, intellectual, and emotional spheres. I'm now a more powerful person than I was a week ago -- and I can explain exactly how and why this is true.

At mini-camp, I've learned techniques for effective self-modification -- that is, I have a much deeper understanding of how to change my desires, gather my willpower, channel my time and cognitive resources, and model and handle previously confusing situations. What's more, I have a fairly clear map of how to build these skills henceforth, and how to inculcate them in others. And all this was presented in such a way that any sufficiently analytical folk -- anyone who has understood a few of the LW sequences, say -- can gain in extreme measures.” --Matt Elder / Fiddlemath

“I expected a week of interesting things and some useful tools to take away. What I got was 8 days of constant, deep learning, challenges to my limits that helped me grow. I finally grokked that I can and should optimize myself on every dimension I care about, that practice and reinforcement can make me a better thinker, and that I can change very quickly when I'm not constrained by artificial barriers or stress.

I would not recommend doing something like this right before another super-busy week, because I was learning at 100% of capacity and will need a lot of time to unpack all the things I learned and apply them to my life, but I came away with a clear plan for becoming better. It is now a normal and easy thing for me to try things out, test my beliefs, and self-improve. And I'm likely to be much more effective at making the world a better place as well, by prioritizing without fear.

The material was all soundly-researched and effectively taught, with extremely helpful supplemental exercises and activities. The instructors were very helpful in and out of session. The other participants were excited, engaged, challenging, and supportive.

I look forward to sharing what I've learned with my local Lesswrong meetup and others in the area. If that's even 1/4 as awesome as my time at the Mini-Camp, it will make our lives much better.” --Ben Hoffman / Benquo

“I really can't recommend this camp enough! This workshop broke down a complex and intertwined set of skills labelled in my brain as "common sense" and distinguished each part so that I could work on them separately. Sessions on motivation, cognition, and what habits to build to not fool yourself were particularly helpful. This camp was also the first example that I've seen of people taking current cognitive science and other research, decoding it, and showing people what's been documented to work so that they can use it too. It feels to me now as though the coolest parts of the sequences have been given specific exercises and habits to build off of. This camp, and the people in it, have changed my path for the better.” --David Jones / TheDave

2. I wrote this post.

3. Eliezer wants to keep Luke as a permanent hire.

4. Whatever other comments you've seen/heard about the camp from people who attended.

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Is this a biased sample?  Probably.  Is it hard data?  Easy to quantify?  Not so much.  Might this be a big conspiracy by Luke-originating ninja bloggers?  Perhaps.  But really... which theory assigns the higher likelihood here?  Success, or failure?

Lets allow the arguments that can be made about the minicamp be made, rather than ritualistically abstaining from decision-making until numbers show up.

That, and I really hope Luke stays with SingInst :)