Past Discussions:
Past Discussions:
SPRING 2007
Meeting 8 - April 26, 2007 @ The Bombay Bicycle Club (3506 N. Saint Mary's St.)
It was pointed out to me that Senior Week events have claimed the Tiger's Den at our usual meeting time. As they outnumber us, we will be retreating to the Bombay Bicycle Club. Its located at 3506 N Saint Marys St; it's really about a block away from campus, but if anyone wants/needs a ride give me a call (713 702 7524) and I'll pick you up.
The piece for this week is something written by Fred Dretske, entitled "How Do You Know You Are Not A Zombie?" Zombies are cool. Philosophy is cool. So you should all come out to the Tiger's Den this week and talk about it. http://humanities.ucsc.edu/NEH/dretske2.htm
Meeting 8 - April 12, 2007 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
Adam will be presenting, in an informal fashion, a new logic he is in the midst of developing that makes use of both times and possible worlds. I've seen some of his work in this area, and it is both interesting in itself and it's applications. There's no background reading this week, just show on up.
Meeting 8 - March 8, 2007 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
This week Austin Johnston will be presenting his Hemlock Award winning paper, entitled Modest Actual Intentionalism and the Problem of Failed Intentions. Modest Actual Intentionalism and the Problem of Failed Intentions
Meeting 7 - February 22, 2007 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
We'll be meeting this Thursday at 5:00 pm in the Tiger's Den. This week we'll be discussing Curry's Paradox. Through some pretty standard and innocuous logical rules, we can deduce that penguins rule the universe. See http://luddite.cst.usyd.edu.au/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Jason/PenguinsRuleTheUniverse
But just how to solve this problem is a bit tricky. The piece for this week is from Greg Restall of the University of Melbourne. He's taking a look at inadequacies of some of the approaches thus far to solve these type of self reference paradoxes. http://consequently.org/papers/costing.pdf
If the symbolization is a bit scary, don't worry about it, but I think it would significantly help discussion if some people were able to get through it. JC Beall also has an article on the subject over at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy if you're interested.
Meeting 6 - February 8, 2007 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
There is a lecture this Wednesday the 7th at 7:00 PM in the Chapman Auditorium on "Homosexuality in the Bible". Both Drs. Garcia and Walker are extremely knowledgeable in their fields, and it is assured to be enlightening. I would encourage you all to attend. In addition, I have a piece by a John Finnis, entitled "Homosexual Conduct is Wrong". It's a short piece, but between these two there should be enough to keep us busy.
Meeting 5 - January 25, 2007 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
The piece this week, by request is from Sam Harris. It's a chapter from a book called "The End Of Faith", and in this chapter, he's working to develop a rational basis for ethics. I put a link up at http://cs.trinity.edu/~jhemann/Harris-EndOfFaith.pdf and I loaded it into the "Course Documents section on blackboard.
Meeting 4 - November 9, 2006 @ 5:00pm Chapman Center Room 031
PST will not be having our standard PST meeting at the Tiger's Den this week. Instead, we have a guest lecture by Dr. Michael Rohlf entitled "Contradiction and Consent in Kant's Ethics". The talk will be held on Thursday, November 9th at 5:00 pm in Chapman 031. Dr. Rohlf is an alumnus of the TU Philosophy department and current Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Skidmore College.
Meeting 3 - October 26, 2006 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
This week Adam Masters will be guiding a discussion of his thesis paper. Adam's paper is generally discussing the placement of the harm of death. Thesis link
Meeting 2 - October 12, 2006 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
This week's piece, an essay by O.K. Bouwsma entitled "Descartes' Evil Genius". It focuses on the illusion perpetrated by the Evil Genius of Descartes' Meditations. It's a quick read on a topic with which we're all familiar and should provide a good discussion. You should have all received an emailed pdf copy of the essay.
Meeting 1 - September 14, 2007 @ 5:00pm Tiger's Den
Our first meeting of the year will be this Thursday the 14th in the Tiger's Den at 5 o'clock. The paper up for discussion this week is a piece by Helen Longino entitled "Can There Be a Feminist Science?". In addition to being itself interesting, this paper serves as a jumping-off point for a number of issues in feminism and philosophy of science.
Here is a link to the article. http://www.cec-wys.org/kontext/6ad3fcef/Longino_Can%20There%20Be%20a%20Feminist%20Science.pdf .
"Can There Be a Feminist Science?" by Helen Longino
"The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" by Ray Kurzweil - discussion led by Matt Simmons
"A Priorist Response to Subsequentism" by Adam Masters, winner of the 2006 Hemlock Award
"Plato's Republic", Book V, 477a
"The Aesthetic Appreciation of Our Envionments" by Allen Carlson