Analytic Philosophy Reading List for the Self Taught*
*does not include ethics, politics, social philosophy
Time required: 4 to 6 hours a week
General instructions: Do not advance until you finish all the reading materials in the current level (4A and 4B, can be read together, same with 5A and 5B). Books inside a level can be read in any order unless specified. Take into account that logic and methodology books usually require more time if you don’t have a mathematical background. Most of the material can be found online.
About: I am a professor of Logic and Epistemology in Mexico (@MetaEpistemic), some of my students with different backgrounds have asked me for a short reading list on analytic philosophy. Well, it got out of hand, (though feel free to stop whenever your curiosity is fulfilled). I hope this may be useful for some folks interested in learning a bit more of this fascinating tradition.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read 100% of the material. Some of the books are recommendations from colleagues, thanks especially to Moisés Macías (@logicalanalysis), María Martínez, and Carlos Romero (@ckronosz) . All suggestions are welcome.
Objective: Read fun stuff to get started (not necessarily philosophy). Start getting familiar with some of the basic problems of philosophy. You may want to skip some of these books depending on your background.
Also, watch the Crash Course in Philosophy playlist if you’ve got little or zero background in philosophy.
- Barrow - The infinite book
- Blackmore - Conversations on Consciousness
- Smullyan - What is the name of this book?
- Russell - Problems of Philosophy
- Baggini - The pig that wants to be eaten
- Clark - Natural born cyborgs
- Bruce & Barbone - Just the arguments
- Williamson - Tetralogue
- Lakoff - Don’t Think of an Elephant.
- Cornman & Lehrer - Philosophical Problems and Arguments
- Dennett - Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (part I)
- Janik & Toulmin - Wittgenstein’s Vienna.
- Gowers - Mathematics a Very Short Introduction
- Warburton - A Little History of Philosophy
Level 1: Introductory textbooks (mostly)
Objetive: Get a general idea of the most important problems in different areas of analytic philosophy with books that don’t require previous knowledge. Get a basic knowledge of first order philosophy.
Epistemology: Pritchard - What is this thing called knowledge?, Nagel - Knowledge a Very Short Introduction
Language: Lycan - Philosophy of Language, Austin - How to do things with words
Logic: Varzi - Outline of Logic (or any primer in first order logic), Priest - Logic a Very Short Introduction (in that order).
Math: Linnebo - Philosophy of Mathematics, ch. 1-7, Shapiro - Thinking about Mathematics ch. 1-7.
Metaphysics: Sider & Conee - Riddles of Existence, Garret - What is this Thing Called Metaphysics?
Mind: Fesser - Philosophy of Mind
Science: Dewitt - Worldviews, Losee - Philosophy of Science a Historical Introduction.
Philosophical Methodology: Baggini - The Philosopher’s Toolkit
History of Philosophy: Dicker - Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics
Level 2: Filling the gaps
Objective: Fill some gaps necessary to get to more advanced topics by reading a couple of books.
Epistemology: Sosa - Epistemology.
Language: Birner - Introduction to Pragmatics.
Logic: Gamut - Logic, Language and Meaning v. 1.
Math: Russell - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, George & Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics.
Metaphysics: Brock & Mares - Realism and Anti-Realism, Koons - Metaphysics: The Fundamentals
Mind: Ravenscroft - Philosophy of Mind, Crane - The Mechanical Mind
Science: Hempel - Philosophy of Natural Science, Hacking - Representing and Intervening.
Philosophical Methodology: Hacking - An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic.
History of Philosophy: Dicker - Kant’s Theory of Knowledge
Articles from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (iep.utm.edu): Frege’s Philosophy of Language, A Priori and a Posteriori, Chinese Room Argument, The Hard Problem of Consciousness, “The Brain in a Vat” Argument, Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology, Internalism and Externalism in the Philosophy of Mind and Language, Theories of Explanation, The Infinite, Russell’s Paradox, Truth, Scientific Change, Modal Metaphysics.
Level 3: Intermediate textbooks
Objective: To get a grip of many of the same topics of level 1, but with a more detailed presentation. Learn the basics of the meta-mathematics of first order logic. Optional: the student may want to check some of the sources cited in these textbooks when they seem interesting.
Epistemology: Pollock - Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, Skyrms - Choice and Chance.
Language: McGinn - Philosophy of Language.
Logic: Hunter - Metalogic, Gamut - Logic, Language and Meaning v. 2.
Mathematics: Shapiro - Thinking about Mathematics ch. 8, 9, 10 , Linnebo - Philosophy of Mathematics, ch 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Pollard - Philosophical Introduction to Set Theory, Colyvan - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics.
Metaphysics: Divers - Possible Worlds, Berto - Ontology and Metaontology ,
Mind: Clark - Mindware, Cummins - Mental Representation, Fish - Philosophy of Perception
Science: Rosenberg - Philosophy of Science, Peter Godfrey Smith - Theory and Reality, Schrenk - Metaphysics of Science.
History of Philosophy: Sluga - Gottlob Frege, Malpass - The History of Philosophical and Formal Logic.
Philosophical Methodology: Papineau - Philosophical Devices, Mellor - Probability: A Philosophical Introduction.
**Try to read some of the most important papers mentioned in the textbooks (at least 2 per subject)**
Level 4A: Lectures (and more)
Duration: 3 to 6 months (can be read along with 4B)
Objective: Enjoy yourself by engaging in new ideas with a couple of lectures. Keep learning a little bit more of the math necessary to do philosophy.
Millikan - Varieties of Meaning
Fodor - The Elm and the Expert
Kripke - Naming and Necessity
Putnam - The Threefold Chord
Kornblith - Knowledge and its Place in Nature
Jackson - From Metaphysics to Ethics
Lewis - On the Plurality of Worlds
History of Philosophy: Coffa - The Semantic Tradition
Philosophical methodology: Steinhart - More Precisely, Daly - An Introduction to Philosophical Methods.
Level 4B: Articles from the SEP
Duration: 3 to 6 months (can be read along with 4A)
Objetive: Get bored. At the same time, get an idea of the positions in many important discussions by reading articles from he Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu). Articles should not be studied in detail (it’s not necessary to understand 100% of them), but should be read to get a general idea of several debates. Finish More Precisely.
-Metaphysics: Identity over time, Free Will, Mereology, Nominalism, Essentialism, Essential vs. Accidental Properties, Transworld Identity, The Metaphysics of Causation, Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Properties, Events, Types and Tokens, Supervenience, Possible Objects, Possible Worlds, Actualism, Impossible Worlds, States of Affaires, Modal Fictionalism, David Lewis’s Metaphysics, Location and Mereology, Truth, Temporal Parts, Personal Identity, The problem of the many.
-Epistemology: Naturalized Epistemology, Social Epistemology, Virtue Epistemology, Formal Epistemology, Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification, Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification, The Analysis of Knowledge, Reliabilism, The Ethics of Belief, Evidence, Epistemic Contextualism, Epistemic Paradoxes, Epistemic Basing Relation, Internalistic vs Externalistic Conceptions of Justification, Epistemic Closure Principle.
-Mind: Externalism about mental content, The Mind/Brain Identity Theory, Consciousness, Functionalism, Teleological Theories of Mental Content, Intentionality, Mental Causation, Causal Theories of Mental Content, Representational theories of Consciousness, Consciousness: Higher Order theories, Qualia, Qualia: The knowledge argument, Connectionism, The Language of Thought Hypothesis, Anomalous Monism. Zombies, Collective Intentionality, The Chinese Room Argument, Behaviorism, Dualism.
-Science: Scientific Realism, Abduction, Constructive Empiricism, Models in Science, Scientific Progress, Structural Realism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Induction, Historicist Theories of Scientific Rationality, The Incommensurability of Scientific Theories, Scientific Progress, Scientific Explanation, Underdetermination of Scientific Theory, Scientific Reduction.
-Language: Philosophy of Linguistics, Reference, Rigid Designators, Theories of Meaning, Meaning Holism, Pragmatics, Two-dimensional Semantics, Descriptions, Convention, Anaphora, Logical Form, Non-existent objects, Metaphor, Indexicals, Propositions, Tense and Aspect, Innateness and Language.
-Math: Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Abstract Objects, Ontological Commitment, Formalism, Explanation in Mathematics, Constructive Mathematics, Philosophy of Mathematics, Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics, Set Theory, Continuum Hypothesis, Indispensability arguments, Frege's Theorem and Foundations for Arithmetic, Principia Mathematica, Philosophy of Probability
-Logic: Classical Logic, Logical Consequence, Modal Logic, Free Logic, Relevance Logic, Intuitionistic Logic, Deontic Logic, Informal Logic, Temporal Logic, Inductive Logic, Many Valued Logic, Paraconsistent Logic, Logic and Artificial Intelligence, Non-Monotonic Logic, Dialtheism, Logical Pluralism, Epistemic Logic, The Logic of Conditionals, Quantifiers and Quantification.
-History of Philosophy: Gottlob Frege, Paul Grice, Bertrand Russell, David K. Lewis, Willard van Orman Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Vienna Circle, Rufolf Carnap (in construction), Karl Popper, Charles Sanders Peirce, Richard Rorty, Donald Davidson, George Edward Moore, John Langshaw Austin, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Kuhn.
**Try to read some of the most important papers mentioned in the articles (at least 4 per subject)**
Duration: 8 to 12 months (can be read along with 5B)
Objective: Go on. It’s too late to reconsider. In this level not all of the books are surveys, some of them defend particular positions (but also reconstruct several antagonistic positions).
Epistemology: Stich - The Fragmentation of Reason, DeRose - The Case for Contextualism, Ghijsen - The Puzzle of Perceptual Justification.
Language: Soames - Philosophy of Language, Stalnaker - Context.
Logic: Sider - Logic for philosophy
Math: Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure, Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics, Balaguer - Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics.
Metaphysics: Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics, Sider - The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science, Bob Hale - Necessary Beings.
Mind: Chalmers - The Conscious Mind, Siegel - The Contents of Visual Experience, Machery - Doing without Concepts.
Science: Suppes - Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures ch. 1-4, Thagard - Computational Philosophy of Science, Van Fraassen - The Scientific Image.
History of Philosophy: Soames - The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy vols 1, 2. Kneale - The Development of Logic, Feser - Scholastic Metaphysics.
Philosophical Methodology: DePaul - Rethinking Intuition, Bashour - Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and Its Implications.
Free choice (one book from this list): Pylyshyn - Computation and Cognition, Bennett & Hacker - Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Jackendoff - Foundations of Language, Casullo - A Priori Justification, Lando - Mereology, Williamson - Modal Logic as Metaphysics, Priest - Beyond the Limits of Thought, Lange - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics, Carruthers - The Architecture of the Mind, Sider - Four Dimensionalism, Rescher - Epistemic Logic, Potter - Set Theory and its Philosophy, Lewis - Counterfactuals, Williamson - Vagueness.
**Try to read some of the most important papers mentioned in the books (at least 4 per subject)**
Duration: 8 to 12 months (can be read along with 5A)
Objective: Read the most important articles in each area using anthologies.
Epistemology: Sosa & Kim - Epistemology.
Language: Martinich - Philosophy of Language.
Logic: Jacquet - Philosophy of Logic.
Math: Putnam & Benacerraf - Philosophy of Mathematics
Metaphysics: Sosa & Kim - Metaphysics.
Mind: Chalmers - Philosophy of Mind,
Science: Lange - Philosophy of Science an Anthology.
Congratulations, you’re an analytic philosophers now (even though you’ve never read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus). You can now begin to learn other philosophy stuff (perhaps the history of early modern philosophy or post-structuralism?)
(Or you can just skip everything and print this table).
Where to continue? An incomplete list of suggestions:
Metaphysics: Ruth Barcan - Modalities, Sider - Writing the Book of the World, Ladyman - Everything Must Go, Sider - Four Dimensionalism, Mumford - Powers, Stoljar - Physicalism, Schmitt - Socializing Metaphysics, Maudlin - The Metaphysics Within Physics, Williamson - Modal Logic as Metaphysics.
Mind: Millikan - Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories, Fodor - The Language of Thought, Fodor - The Modularity of Mind, Block - Consciousness Function and Representation, Dretske - Naturalizing the Mind, Clark - Supersizing the Mind, Carruthers - The Architecture of the Mind, Searle - Intentionality, Stich - From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science, Dennett - The intentional Stance, Clark - Associative Engines, Ludlow & Nagasawa - There’s Something About Mary, Perry - Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness, Margolis - Concepts..
Logic: Manzano - Model Theory, Kozen - Automata Theory, Priest - In Contradiction, Beall & Restall - Logical Pluralism, Garson - What Logics Mean, Popkorn - First Steps in Modal Logic, Van Benthem - Modal Logic for Open Minds, Rayo - Absolute Generality, Priest - An Introduction to Non-Classical Logics, Priest - Beyond the Limits of Thought.
Epistemology: Haack - Evidence and Enquiry, Williamson - Knowledge and its Limits, Greco - Knowledge as Achievement, Goldman - Epistemology and Cognition, Stanley - Knowledge and Practical Interest, Bonjour - The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, Lackey - The Epistemology of Testimony, Rorty - Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Craig - Knowledge and the State of Nature, DeRose - Skepticism, Plantinga - Warrant and Proper Function, Knobe & Nichols - Experimental Philosophy.
Math: Maddy - Second Philosophy, Hartry Field - Science Without Numbers, Lakatos - Proofs and Refutations, Cohen - Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis, Maddy - Believing the Axioms.
Language: García-Carpintero & Maciá - Two Dimensional Semantics, Yablo - Aboutness, Stalnaker - Context, Keefe - Theories of Vagueness, Dummett, Along & Leonardi - The Philosophy of David Kaplan, Soames - Beyond Rigidity, Lewis - Convention, Brandom - Making it Explicit, Grice - Studies in the way of words.
Science: Goodman - Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Maudlin - Philosophy of Physics, Sterlny - Sex and Death, Popper - The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Feyerabend - Against Method, Cartwright - The Dappled World, Kitcher - Science Truth and Democracy, Laudan - Progress and its Problems.
Miscelaneous: Turri - Virtue Epistemology (Epistemology), Chalmers - Metametaphysics (Metaphysics), Correia & Schneider - Metaphysical Grounding (Metaphysics), Landry & Rickles - Structural Realism (Science), Margolis - Concepts (Mind), Lindström - Logicism, Intuitionism, and Formalism (Math), Jokic - Time, Tense and Reference (Language).
Classics from the first half of the 20th century (circa): Frege - The Foundations of Arithmetics, Anscombe - Intention, Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations, Sellars - Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Russell & Whitehead - Principia Mathematica, Russell - The Principles of Mathematics, Carnap - The Logical Construction of the World, Carnap - Meaning and Necessity, Quine - Word and Object, Quine - Ontological Relativity, Quine - From a Logical Point of View.
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