Daniel C. Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the mind. Do we have free will? What is consciousness and how did it come about? What distinguishes human minds from the minds of animals? Dennett's answers have profoundly shaped our age of philosophical thought. In I've Been Thinking, he reflects on his amazing career and lifelong scientific fascinations....

Professor Calhoone explores modern and contemporary western philosophy of reality (metaphysics) and knowledge (epistemology), from the 17th to the 20th century, spanning movements such as empircism, rationalism, idealism, philosophy of language, logical positivism, existentialism, pragmatism, phenomenology, and postmodernism.

"Western philosophy is now two and a half millennia old, but much of it came in just two staccato bursts, each lasting only about 150 years. In his landmark survey of Western philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, The Dream of Reason, Anthony Gottlieb documented the first burst, which came in the Athens of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Now, in his sequel, The Dream of Enlightenment, Gottlieb expertly navigates a second great explosion of...

"Have you ever wondered about why some people are jerks? Asked whether your driverless car should kill you so that others may live? Found a robot adorable? Considered the ethics of professional ethicists? Reflected on the philosophy of hair? In this engaging, entertaining, and enlightening book, Eric Schwitzgebel turns a philosopher's eye on these and other burning questions. In a series of quirky and accessible short pieces that cover a mind-boggling...

A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness... One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three...

Dr. Lloyd Kramer, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, delivers lectures on the major themes and authors behind nineteenth-century European thought in philosophy, sociology, political theory, and literature.