The Stone Reader

In college I chose my concentration in philosophy, essentially a minor even though you'd think it was a major, so it was just a handful of courses, mostly in political philosophy which I found highly interesting, and logic, which I found interesting and useful (considering it's a foundation of digital design and mathematical proofs, which I was slogging through in other courses), although it seemed to me the logic class got fuzzy when it wandered into the philosophical element, maybe part because it was taught by a grad student, but also I think it was just hand-wavy with thought experiments (basically "thoughts" with the word "experiment" appended).

This collection of essays by philosophers (mostly academics, because there aren't a lot of corporate philosophy departments nor a government philosophy agency) pretty much reinforces my take on philosophy. I like political philosophy because it's useful, in the way that science is useful for engineers, or at the very least influential enough that people start wars and kill millions of people because people believe a particular one. I guess you could say that about religion, too, and the essays don't get too much into that - there's plenty of debate on philosophy, as these are taken from an NYT column so the points of view alternate in a debate format, but there's more bashing of science as religion-like without irony. But there is an essay on irony. Anyway, there's plenty of good stuff here, and education on the history of philosophy and contemporary debates among schools of thought, but also some duds that sound just like my couch-dwelling Fox TV-watching neighbors, which makes you wonder what it takes to get a philosophy degree.