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Sat, 04 Jun 2011
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Ray Billington – Philosophy: The Pilot of Life
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‘Pilot of Life’ is a bold claim. In the UK, philosophy has often been assigned a back seat in people’s thinking. In fact many still consider it to be the reserve of only a (somewhat odd) few. Yet, from the time of the Greek philosopher Thales, 2.5 millennia ago, through to such recent philosophers as Russell, Sartre and Chomsky, philosophical perceptions
have challenged people’s assumptions about, for instance, the meaning of morality because they compel us to think carefully about any theme under consideration. Philosophy means the love of wisdom, and a life without philosophy is surely a life without a pilot.
have challenged people’s assumptions about, for instance, the meaning of morality because they compel us to think carefully about any theme under consideration. Philosophy means the love of wisdom, and a life without philosophy is surely a life without a pilot.
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Tue, 14 Jun 2011
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Bob Clarke – Time
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I will discuss the implications for the Philosophy of Time arising out of Modern Physics.
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Tue, 12 Jul 2011
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Ben Basing – Punk & Defining Art
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Many people starting the Philosophy of Art assume that the best way to begin is to define what we mean by Art. I will discuss several attempts to do this but by using punk as an example will suggest that the mission is futile, not least because artists keep trying to subvert any offered definition.
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Tue, 27 Sep 2011
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Jim McCluskey – Ways of Knowing
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The talk will make reference to old and new ideas about science, to knowing through the senses, and also to mysticism.
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Tue, 08 Nov 2011
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Peter Bowman – Erwin Schrodinger and the Biological Basis of
Consciousness |
Erwin Schrodinger was one of the top physicists of the twentieth century and is most well known as the discoverer of wave mechanics but he also had interests in biology and in particular the nature of consciousness where his thinking was years ahead of his time – let’s catch up.
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Sat, 19 Nov 2011
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Christine Van Der Vat – The Birth of Western Philosophy
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What is the Explanation for the Shift from Mythological to Scientific Thinking in Ionia
in the 6th Century BC ?
The ‘succession’ myths of the Middle East and Greece in which gods played a leading role provided the picture of an ordered world, comprehensible to the human intelligence. The earliest ‘Presocratic’ philosophers rejected these traditional sources of knowledge. They too wanted to provide a picture of an ordered world but replaced the ‘magic’ of capricious gods with rational criteria and material principles.
In the course of the afternoon we shall attempt to establish why it was the 6th century Ionian Greeks thinkers who rejected traditional explanations for reality and sought to
provide an explanation of the phenomenal world by speculating about what
they saw around them. The spirit of scientific enquiry had been born.
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Tue, 13 Dec 2011
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David Fisher & Martin Birdseye – Killing Osama Bin Laden – right or
wrong? |
Killing Osama Bin Laden – right or wrong? An open debate introduced from opposing viewpoints by David Fisher and Martin Birdseye.