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What we’re about

In this group, we choose a work of philosophy (essay, book, speech, etc.) and then discuss it together. The only requirements are an interest in philosophy and a willingness to read the work prior to the meetup.

While members are responsible for acquiring the texts themselves, we can usually help in locating them. Please inquire if you're having difficulty.

At present, we are working through the Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind.

In past sessions, we've read:

  • 2024
    • "Meaning, Communication and Representation" by John Searle
    • "Moral Beliefs" by Philippa Foot
    • "Evil and Omnipotence" by J. L. Mackie
    • Pyrrhus & Cineas by Simone de Beauvoir
    • "Structure as Subject of Justice", "Difference as a Resource" and "Pregnant Embodiment" by I. M. Young
    • "Self-Reliance" by R. W. Emerson
    • "Two Concepts of Liberty" by Isaiah Berlin
    • "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" by W. V. O. Quine
    • "Mad Pain and Martian Pain" by David Lewis
    • Lament for a Nation by George Grant
  • 2023
    • "The Counter-Enlightenment" by Isaiah Berlin
    • "The Use of Knowledge in Society" by Friedrich Hayek
    • What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill
  • 2022
    • Modernism as a Philosophical Problem by Robert Pippin
  • 2021
    • "Why it's good to be wrong" by David Deutsch
    • We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour
    • Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
    • On Violence by Hannah Arendt
    • "What is it like to be a bat?" by Thomas Nagel
    • "Absolutes and Particulars" by Sophie-Grace Chappell
  • 2020
    • "Driven by Compression Progress" by Juergen Schmidhuber
    • "Nostalgia for the Absolute" by George Steiner
    • "The Fixation of Belief" by C. S. Peirce
    • "The Conservative" by R. W. Emerson
    • A selection from Medieval philosophers, ed. Bosley & Tweedale
  • 2019
    • Beyond Good & Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
  • 2018
    • The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
    • Considerations on France by Joseph de Maistre
    • Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling
  • 2017
    • Selected essays on ordinary language philosophy by Stanley Cavell and J. L. Austin
    • "Divinity School Address" by R. W. Emerson
    • The Present Age by Søren Kierkegaard
    • Selections from The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton & James Madison
    • The "Preface" and "Introduction" to Phenomenology of Spirit by G. W. F. Hegel
    • Parmenides by Plato
  • 2016
    • Essays from Critical Theory Since Plato, compiled by H. Adams
    • The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
  • 2015
    • Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

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