What I've Been Reading 6/21

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson.

This book is excellent, if not for its content for its clarity. It's a model of how good writing in software organizations.

Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning by Timothy Williamson

Essentially a popularization of Williamson's Philosophy of Philosophy. Highlights are his view of philosophy as model building, the distinction between appearance and judgement, and his tempered defense of competition in philosophy.

On competition in philosophy:

To say that a philosophical culture of interpersonal argumentation encourages competition instead of cooperation is like saying that a chess club encourages competition instead of cooperation. There’s some truth in it, but it’s a facile contrast.

His view of philosophy:

Philosophy is a science in its own right, interconnected with the others and as autonomous as they are. It is also under constant pressure to be something else: lifestyle advice or political polemic, moralizing sermon or grammar lesson, godless religion or unreadable literature, pop physics or pop biology, pop psychology or pop neuroscience, calculation or opinion poll.

Stoicism and Emotion by Margaret Graver

I'm mentioned this last week. This is one of the best takes on the Stoic view of emotion. Graver usefully distinguishes from emotion:

The distinction between emotions and feelings therefore serves to open up an interpretive space around a central dictum of Stoic ethics. If the psychic sensations we experience ence in emotion are not simply identical with the pathe, then the norm of apatheia does not have to be cashed out as an injunction against every human feeling. One might be impassive in the Stoic sense and still remain subject to other categories of affective experience.

This is an important distinction that deserves more airtime.