Another epistemological classic is on the agenda for this meeting – the first and one that philosophers have had to address in one way or another for twenty-four centuries: Plato's dialogue Theaetetus. You may already have this in your library. If not, it is readily available for free online. Try gutenberg.org for several formatting options. The…

For this meeting we are going to have a discussion about aesthetics. We will be using the book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton. One can find a new paperback version of this starting at around $12 and an ebook starting around $7. For the first meeting we will read the first four chapters.…

We will conclude our discussion of the book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by Roger Scruton. In the last half of this book, the author examines what is sometimes termed “serious art.” This is quite fitting for us, since our meetings always involve what is sometimes termed “serious perlustration,” sometimes with dialectic excurses.

We are tackling one of the classics for this meeting: David Hume and his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Published in 1748, it has profoundly influenced epistemological studies to this day. For the eighth, we'll discuss the first half, through Section VII. Since it is a classic and no longer in copyright, it can be…

We will finish discussing David Hume's classic, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In the second half of the book Hume talks about free will and critiques miracles, among other topics. These things are still quite controversial and often ruffle feathers even 300 years later. And we intend to do just that. At least we will if…

We will begin a discussion of the book, Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999), by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. For the 9th we have a little different reading assignment: Read as much as you can of Part I, but at least the first four chapters. This is a…

We will continue with the book, Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to Western Thought, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. This is a long book and the group has decided that they do not want to spend more than one or two additional sessions on it. So, for our March meeting…

Note that April 11 is not the second Wednesday of the month, the time we have been meeting recently. We will finish discussing the book, Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to Western Thought, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. This is a long book and we hope that you have…

We will begin reading A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (2001) by Christian Delacampagne. The paperback version retails for around $28 ($23 on Amazon), but there are used books available for less. There is no ebook edition for this title. For the 11th we will read through Part I. What is unique about this book…

We will continue reading A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century by Christian Delacampagne. For the 8th we will discuss chapters 2 and 3, in which the author covers the development of Western philosophy during the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. Interestingly, this seems to have influenced some philosophers.

We plan to conclude our discussion of A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century by Christian Delacampagne. Early in my study of philosophy I was told that if you really want to understand a philosopher, you need to understand who or what he or she is responding to. Delacampagne provides this in spades, sometimes to the…

For this meeting we are going to begin a discussion about distributive justice. First, we'll do an overview. Both the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy have articles on distributive justice. You can read either one or both of them for our next meeting. After that, we'll decide together what direction we want to go.…

We will discuss a paper by Nancy Fraser, “Social Movements vs. Disciplinary Bureaucracies: The Discourses of Social Needs” (1987) Center for Humanistic Studies Occasional Papers, Number 8, 3-37. For a copy of the paper, click here. Also, we are, actively looking for a good location to start in-person meetings again. If you know of a centrally located…