Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The Waning of Materialism by Robert C. Koons, et al.

When I was in graduate school, materialism was about the only position respected. Mention the soul and you would be laughed out of the room. Well, philosophical fashions have changed [for the better!]. See The Waning of Materialism by Robert C. Koons, et al. - 23 major philosophers - from Oxford, Yale, UCLA and other universities - use all the tools of the latest philosophy to show the insufficiency of a materialist view of the world. And some of the best anti-materialist are not in the volume, e.g. David Chalmers and Michael Rea. the papers are technical - they are for trained philosophers. But the very existence of the volume should give pause to those who simply assume that materialism is obviously correct.