Ask HN: Learning about philosophy

Survey the landscape first - get a hand-wavey high level understanding on the two primary schools today: analytic vs continental philosophy. Then study each one’s history and origins.

Read this book (also available as YouTube videos I think): https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explaine...

This will give you high level introduction of the landscape across the various epochs, the big ideas and their main purveyors.

At the end of that you should have a good idea which philosopher/era/ideas interest you most. Only then consider diving deeper.

Specifically because you speak of mental models and “developing a personal philosophy” (and because you are on this website I am making some assumptions about your background ans familiarity with computer science/information theory) I also recommend Luciano Floridi. The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design

https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Information-Theory-Philosophy-C...

Books aren't nearly as good because you won't get to discuss the ideas with other students who are also learning the subject, which is half the fun and half the point of philosophy. You'll also miss out on the insights and explanations of the professor, which will be very valuable, if the professor is any good.

As for books, the Socratic dialogues are probably the best place to start, since the ideas pretty easy to grasp compared to later philosophy, they're written in an engaging way, and give you plenty of food for thought. Also, much of later Western philosophy is a reaction to, comment on, or has been influenced by Socrates and Plato. You'll be much more "in the loop" after getting some familiarity with ancient Greek philosophy than if you just dived straight in to later work.

Something else you'll want to be aware of is that in contemporary philosophy there are two major approaches: Analytic and Continental. Adherents of these approaches generally despise one another, denigrate, or ignore one another's work, though at least more recently the Analytics have been starting to read, re--envision, and appropriate Continental thinkers.

The Analytic approach dominates philosophy in the English-speaking world (and is coming to dominate the rest too), and when you take philosophy courses that's the view you'll most likely be exposed to, and it's Analytic philosophers you're most likely to be recommended when you ask about philosophy, especially on sites like HN, which are more likely to be peopled by fans of logic, rigor, and science, which Analytics themselves are huge fans of.

But your exposure to philosophy would be incomplete and probably really biased if you were mostly exposed to Analytic thought or viewed philosophy primarily through an Analytic lens.

I knew a little already, so I started with topics in metaphysics/epistomology, made up my mind about them, and moved more into meta-ethics/ethics and more "practical" philosophies. Reason being, if you have a strong stance on something like free will, a lot of your ethics can be derived from there.

If you ever want to talk about it, feel free to shoot me an email evankozliner@gmail.com

I've also got a blog and substack where I write sometimes. You need to write about this stuff to really absorb it imo.

https://thinkoutloudnews.substack.com/ https://medium.com/@evankozliner

Philosophy is a cosmos, the same way that science is: you study particular fields within it based on what you want to get out of them.

The "questions of life" fall into several categories (not exhaustive): biological, phenomenological/experiential, emotional, moral, existential, absurd. Do any of those interest you?

Edit: I also want to say that I strongly encourage people interested in reading and learning philosophy to do it in a class or group setting, at least initially. It's good to be an independent reader and interpreter, but most philosophy makes heavy use of terms of art that can be profoundly misleading or easy to misinterpret on one's own, particularly when getting started.