Last Updated May 13, 2010

An Accumulation of Readings for Novy’s Classes

Links may or may not be active beyond the semester in which that reading is assigned.

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ACLU: The Case Against the Death Penalty

Anscombe: Mr. Truman’s Degree

Anselm: The Ontological Argument (from Proslogium)

Aquinas: On Voluntary Action

Aquinas: The Five Proofs for the Existence of God

Aristotle: De Anima (selections)

Aristotle: Metaphysics (selections)

Aristotle: On Fatalism (selections from On Interpretation; Nicomachean Ethics)

Aristotle: Time is the Measure of Change (selections from Physics)

Arneson: Marxism and Secular Faith

Asimov: The Last Question

Assy: Eichmann, Banality of Evil & Thinking Arendt’s Thought

Augustine: On Time (from Confessions)

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Baran: The Commitment of the Intellectual

Baron-Cohen: The Biology of Imagination

Bartels & Zeki: Neural basis of romantic love

Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulations

Baxter: People or Penguins

Beauvoir: Woman as Other” from The Second Sex

Bedau: The Case Against the Death Penalty

Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Bisson: They’re Made out of Meat

Black Panther Party: The Ten Point Plan

Borges: Borges and I

Borges: The Library of Babel

Bostrom: Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?

Bowman: The Importance of Whitehead for Contemporary Theology    

Boyd: Collateral Damage in the War on Drugs

Bradbury: A Sound of Thunder

Breton & Rivera: Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art

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Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

Carroll: What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

Chatterjee: Cosmetic Neurology

Churchland & Churchland: Neural worlds and real worlds

Churchland: How do neurons know?

Clark & Chalmers: The Extended Mind

Clifford: The Ethics of Belief

Clynes: Cyborgs in Space

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Davis: The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective

Defoe: The Education of Women

Dennett & Humphrey: Speaking for Our Selves

Dennett: Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds

Dennett: Did HAL Commit Murder?

Dennett: I could not have done otherwise, so what?

Dennett: Temporal Anamolies of Consciousness: Implications of the Uncentered Brain

Dennett: The Role of Language in Intelligence

Dennett: The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity

Dennett: The Self as a Responding – and Responsible – Artifact

Dennett: Where am I?

Descartes & Arnauld: On Cartesian Dualism

Descartes: Second Meditation

Dick: How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

Dostoevsky: The Grand Inquisitor

Dretske: How Do You Know You are Not a Zombie?

DuBois: Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States – Reprise

Dworkin & MacKinnon: The Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance

Dworkin: Intercourse: Occupation/Collaboration

Dworkin: Pornography Happens to Women

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Einstein: Why Socialism?

Emerson: The Comic

Engels: “The Monogamous Family”in Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State

Engels: Letter to Pyotr Lavrov

Engels: Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx

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Feuerbach: The Essence of Religion in General from The Essence of Christianity 

Flanagan & Polger: Zombies and the function of consciousness

Flew:  Theology and Falsification (excerpt and comments from Hare)

Foster: Marx and Internationalism

Foster: Marx’s Ecology in Historical Perspective

Foucault: The Order of Things (preface)

Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Chapter 2)

Frith: Mind Blindness and the Brain in Autism

Fromm: Character and Social Process

Fromm: Individual and Social Origins of Neurosis

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Gaunilo: In Behalf of the Fool

Geras: Minimum Utopia: Ten Theses

Gettier: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

Gramsci: Men or Machines?

Griffiths: Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences … spiritual significance

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Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto

Hardin: Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the Poor

Harvey: The Malice of Inanimates

Hauser: Why isn’t my pocket calculator a thinking thing?    

Heinlein: All You Zombies!

Hollander: “What is the Use of a Brain” from Scientific Phrenology

Hume: Of Liberty and Necessity

Hume: Of Miracles

Hume: Of the Idea of Necessary Connection

Hume: Problem of Evil

Humphrey & Dennett: Speaking for Our Selves

Humphrey: The Uses of Consciousness

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Ingersoll: Individuality

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Jackson: Epiphenomenal Qualia

James: Does Consciousness Exist?

Jamieson: Against Zoos

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Kafka: Before the Law

Kant: What is Enlightenment?

Keller & Nelson: Presentists Should believe in Time-Travel

Kipling: The White Man’s Burden

Klein: The Shock Doctrine: a discussion

Knox: Towards a Philosophy of Humor

Kotzee: Why Hobbits Cannot Exist

Kunzru: You are Cyborg

Kurrild-Klitgaard: The Paradox of Rebellion

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Lanier: You Can’t Argue with a Zombie

Lappe: Like Driving a Cadillac

Le Guin: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Leiber: Space-Time for Springers

Lenin: Socialism and Religion

Levine & Sober: What’s historical about historical materialism?

Lewis: Holes

Lewis: Paradoxes of Time Travel (pg.67-80)

Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration

Locke: Of Identity & Diversity

Locke: Of the Extent of Human Knowledge

Luxemburg: The Janius Pamphlet (Chapters 1, 8)

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Mackie: Evil and Omnipotence

Mao “Study” (Chapter 33 - The Little Red Book)

Marable: “Introduction” (How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America)

Marx: Communist Manifesto

Marx: Inaugural Address to the 1st International

Marx: Letter to Lincoln

Marx: The British Rule in India

Marx: The Future Results of the British Rule in India

Materialism and Idealism: Selections from Hobbes, Berkeley

McGinn: Apes, Humans, Aliens, Vampires, and Robots

McGinn: Consciousness and Space

McIntosh: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

McTaggart: The Unreality of Time  

Mill: On Liberty

Mill: Speech in Favor of Capital Punishment

Mill: The Negro Question

Milton: Areopegitica

Minsky: Conscious Machines

Moody: Conversations with Zombies

Moseley: Just War Theory

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Nagel: Death

Nagel: What is it like to be a bat?

Naturalizing the Soul & Scientific Revolution: Selections from Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes

Nell and O’Neill: Justice under Socialism

Newton: Space, Time & Motion    

Noonan: An Almost Absolute Value in History

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Paley: Teleological Argument

Pannekoek Marxism and Darwinism (sections iv-vii, ix, x)

Park: The Function of Fiction

Parmenides: On Nature

Plato: Phaedo (selections)

Plato: The Ring of Gyges (from The Republic)

Plato: Timaeus (selections)

Plotz: Gimme Some Skin

Plutarch: The Ship of Theseus

Pojman: The Case Against Affirmative Action

Povinelli & Vonk: Chimpanzee minds

Premack: Teaching language to an ape

Putnam: Brains in a Vat

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Quine: Two Dogmas of Empiricism

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Rachels: Does Morality Depend on Religion?

Rachels: Killing and Letting Die

Rachels: The Challenge of Cultural Relativism

Ridley: The New Eugenics

Robertson: The Question of Human Cloning

Roosevelt: Second Inaugural Address

Rowe: The Cosmological Argument

Roy: The New American Century

Russell: The Case for Socialism

Russell: The Ethics of War

Russell: Why I Am Not A Christian

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Saletan: Wok the Dog

Sanford: Where was I?

Sartre: Existentialism is a Humanism

Searle: Is the Brain a Digital Computer?

Searle: Minds, Brains, and Programs

Sellars: Is There a Synthetic A Priori?

Sen: Development Thinking at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Shaw: “Socialism and Liberty” from The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism …  

Singer, D.: Why we need a new manifesto

Singer, P.: A Vegetarian Philosophy

Singer, P.: Famine, Affluence, and Poverty

Singer, P.: The Freedom to Ridicule Religion

Singer, P.: The Singer Solution to World Poverty

Sober: What is Wrong with Intelligent Design

Sontag: Fascinating Fascism

Stevens: Anecdote of the Jar

Stewart: The Limits of Trooghaft

Swift: A Modest Proposal

Swinburne: Mind-Body Dualism (Interview, Science and Religion News)

Swinburne: The Existence of God

Swinburne: The Justification of Theism

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Too Many Monkeys

Turner & Sahakian: Neuroethics of Cognitive. Enhancement

Twain: Comments on the Moro Massacre

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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Van den Haag: The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense

Van Gelder: The Deep Blue Yonder

Varzi: Doughnuts

Vogel: Harder Times: Undocumented Workers and the U.S. Informal Economy

Voltaire: “On Religion”

Voltaire: A Treatise on Toleration

Vonnegut: Harrison Bergeron

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Wannsee Protocol

Warren: On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion

Williams: The Myth of Passage

Winstanley: “Declaration from the Poor Oppressed of England”

Woods: The Communist Manifesto After 150 Years