Philosophy-in-LA Discussion group to meet Sunday

Hi Everyone!

The September '09 Philosophy-in-LA Discussion group (http://philosophy-in-LA.tribe.net) is happening this Sunday, September 20, 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM (the usual 3rd Sunday of the month). New participants from all backgrounds, points of view and religious belief (or non-belief) are most welcome. We'll be at our usual venue, the Community Room of the Yahoo Center, 2500 Broadway, between Cloverfield & 26th, Santa Monica, 90404.

After the meeting, feel free to join us for dinner and more conversation. Location and details TBA. FYI, mark your calendar with the dates of the following two gatherings: October 18, at 5 PM and November 15 at 5 PM (both are on the 3rd Sunday of the month).

As usual, we are voting on the meeting's topic now. Below, I've listed five philosophical questions or conundrums suggested by the group during previous meetings or by email. Please reply to this email (soon) with the name of the topic(s) that you would most like to talk about! (Anybody can send in a vote, even if you haven't been to previous meetings.)

1) ALTRUISM: IS THERE REALLY SUCH A THING? SHOULD THERE BE? What is altruism? Is altruism a form of hidden self-interest or selfishness? If so, does it still count as altruism? How can you tell if you're being altruistic? Is altruism ever a duty? Is it even praiseworthy?

2) IS THE IDEA OF "AN INDIVIDUAL ORGANISM" AN ARBITRARY BIOLOGICAL NOTION? What is an individual? Is one of our bodily cells or one of our genes as much as individual as each one of us is? Can a species or an ecosystem qualify as being an individual organism?

3) DO WE KNOW ANYTHING FOR CERTAIN? OR, IS ALL KNOWLEDGE FALLIBLE AND REVISABLE? What about the truths of logic and mathematics? Consider claims of this sort, "I have a body, in some sense of that word" or "The world that has existed for longer than the last five minutes" or "I seem to be feeling pain right now" or "I think, therefore I am." Do we know such things with certainty? Do you have other examples of a claim that's known with certainty? Are there different kinds of certainty?

4) DO WE KNOW WHETHER SOMETHING IS GOOD ART RATHER THAN BAD ART? Are our judgments of beauty and artistic merit arbitrary, or do they have a more substantial basis? Is artistic merit mainly a matter of beauty, or are other factors as important or more important (e.g., the ethical, intellectual, or political merits of a work of art)?

Note: six months ago, we discussed a related topic, "What is art and how can we define it?" By contrast, the "good art/ bad art" topic assumes that we already have objects or performances that we take to be art, and we are now concerned with assessing its beauty or other artistic merits, not with saying why it (or anything else) is art, or what defines art.

5) POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: What is it? How has it affected our thinking about politics, for better or worse? Does the term deserve the pejorative status is has? While "Politically Correct" is a fairly new term, it is, arguably, a new label for a very old thing. Think of the various kinds of things that have struck you as being "politically correct." What do they have in common? Are you/ we consistent in our use of the term? Do we simply call "PC" those restrictions on action or speech we disagree with, and withhold the term from those restrictions we agree with? Politically correctness is usually seen as arising from a politically left point of view. But is this accurate? One take on "PC" is that it leads to censorship and the stifling of free debate. Another take is that the label "PC" is little more than a demeaning term for values we should publicly espouse anyway, like appropriateness, politeness, fairness, and respectfulness. We can decide which of these positions (or neither, or both) we think is right.
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Send in a vote for your favorite topic(s) now!

Also, if you have a philosophical question or topic you’ve been dying to talk about, email it to me! That's how we get the topics we vote on each month.


See you there!


Brian
angelonapinhead@yahoo.com


Ps. Apart from my emailing list and word-of-mouth, the people you meet at our gatherings typically hear about us from one of these good websites that you might want to check out: www.hala.org, www.readerscircle.org, www.meetup.com and www.mypeopleconnection.com