/lit/ - Literature

>>19831763
This is another intro I like. It's general classical metaphysics, and boots out the interesting stuff that is arguably philosophy of mind, which I didn't like at first, but actually scopes it pretty well.

The fear of secondary sources somehow tainting your interpretation is generally an error. This stuff is generally hard to understand. Are you going to have a novel take that countless others have missed and never get it back because you read a secondary source and it biased you? I don't think so. You're far more likely to avoid errors. Secondary sources are far more likely to help you develop a novel interpretation than stop you from doing so. When you see the dialogue around what X means, and the ramifications of it, it helps you come up with new questions and potential solutions.

Probably the other biggest problem is not going outside philosophy to understand topics. If you're interested in philosophy of mind, it pays to know cognitive science and neuroscience. Plenty of ink has been spilt on bad understandings of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. For both questions of the ontological status of universals and philosophy of language, semiotics and linguistics are helpful.

This is probably what you want. Based on your question, I'm guessing you want to see critical arguments against physicalism, and to better understand exactly what is meant by physicalism so you know why people accept it even if they know these arguments?

That's metaphysics. This will give you a solid overview of the main debates and the main players so you can follow up with primary sources if you want.

About 80% of professional philosophers are "realists'" as respects the external world. That is they think a world outside experience exists, but only a portion of those are physicalists in the common sense. That also means 1/5 think we have to be agnostic on that front, or that describing meaning and being without observer is meaningless. They have good arguments.