Conversations About Philosophy, Volume 1

This compendium includes the following 5 complete books featuring renowned philosophers James Robert Brown, Patricia Churchland, Charles Foster, Alfred Mele and Scott Soames providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. The books are explicitly designed to provide a unique window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be experienced through standard lectures and textbooks. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:

I. Plato's Heaven: A User's Guide - A conversation with James Robert Brown, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto. Topics covered include: Platonism vs. Naturalism and accounts of both approaches to mathematics; non-mathematical aspects of this dispute which is central to contemporary philosophy; new avenues of research into the epistemology of thought experiments with detailed examples, and more.

II. Philosophy of Brain - A conversation with neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland, UC San Diego. Churchland discusses her extensive research in the fields of philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of the mind and neuroethics. Further topics include how the brain works, how we are able to represent the external world of objects and our inner world of thoughts, self and consciousness.

III. Defined By Relationship - A conversation with Charles Foster, writer, traveller, veterinarian, barrister, philosopher and Professor of Law, University of Oxford. This conversation examines Foster's research interests in medical law and ethics while providing behind-the-scenes insights into several of his books in many different fields with a particular focus on "Human Dignity in Bioethics and Law" and the New York Times Bestseller "Being a Beast" both of which explore themes directly pertinent to his academic research.

IV. Free Will: An Investigation - A conversation with Alfred Mele, the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. This conversation examines free will and the different notions of free will that exist, the connections of free will with developments in neuroscience, social psychology and public opinion polls and Mele's key concern about how current and future insights might be directly applied to improve our world.

V. Appreciating Analytic Philosophy - A conversation with Scott Soames, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California. Scott Soames is specialized in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy. This conversation provides a detailed introduction to analytic philosophy, including a number of concrete examples of contemporary relevance to a wide range of other fields.