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Lectures start promptly at 7:30PM and are held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month September 2023 through December 12, 2023.   Our meetings are held at the New New Chinese Buffet,  3822 Belt Line Road, Addison, TX 75001 (972) 243-1198,   Zoom access will NOT be available. 


9-12-2023  Raised Religious?

Karl Meisenbach, B.A. Philosophy

Were you...Raised Religious?  What was/is the impact? Childhood years? Teen years? Senior years? Let’s explore the basic philosophy of what it means to be “raised religious” first as a child, then a teen, and off into adulthood. And if we agree these are the philosophical fundamentals, we are using to develop child and teen minds, what could possibly go wrong?  What are the psychological influences?   Bring your childhood and teen years memories to think about answering the question — Raised Religious?

9-26-2023 Second-Best Ethics

Mark Curtis-Thames, Ph.D.

Our current divisive diversity is not successfully addressed by suppression of alternative views, conversion of the other to one’s own view, banishing or barricading the other from one’s world, or by transactional bargaining.  Given that one’s own ethics is one’s first-best ethics, what is needed is a second-best ethics.  The speaker proposes “systemic ethics” as a rational second-best ethics that makes sense of the diversity of ethical theories, giving individuals and groups a unified toolkit and decision process, which all involved can agree, while perhaps not optimal, are nevertheless at least minimally ethical.

Click on the link to listen to the Zoom recording 

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/F1uIjGjhfoMrKC-l2cEh11vukZNj0loU1pw5MnKlFPjcEJec21o_d_REd8k7gavl.icCDt01rVulVRTgs

Passcode: u3T%yTtd

10-10-2023  The Mist of Time: China's Earliest Philosohical Concepts

Bruce Jones, Independent Scholar

Our understanding of early China comes from oral literature-- poetry and songs communicated over hundreds of years and hundreds of miles and in many, many languages and cultures. China’s earliest philosophical ideas apparently evolved out of Taoism, Confucianism, and the Yin and Yang. Bruce Jones is credited with the discovery of what is being called the Rosetta Stone of China’s bronze ritual vessels.  In this discussion he will explore a time in China when legends and ideas took shape, guiding China’s enormous culture for millennia. Jones hopes to bring a freshness to timeless ideas which have survived for so long.

Click on the link to listen to the Zoom recording 

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/XVon0S_roVfHjkpW4HwTwKOCo8NmzrqMiJp3CiKqsq99JX6U-9mhUr1sxaB4FuEC.uCJmvHfwJcsI8MXX
Passcode: 4XNYt^2o

10-24-2023 The Nature of Reality

Paul Tobolowsky, M.D.

Philosophers through the ages have sought paths to an understanding of reality. Current science suggests that reality is far different from the way we perceive it. This talk examines how the ideas of philosophers from prior eras stand up to the science of today. Our senses do not tell us "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Let's look at the worldview of prior philosophers in the light of current scientific ideas about what our senses tell us.              


11-7-2023  Friedrich Schelling: Most Underrated Philosopher of the Nineteenth Century?

David Drumm, J.D. , Dallas Philosophers Forum Treasurer

In many histories of philosophy Fredrick Schelling’s thought is considered merely a stepping-stone between Fichte and Hegel. This is a gross injustice. Schelling’s productive career outlasted Hegel’s by 20 years or so. The writings of the mature Schelling interject a note of creativity and process into idealism and are an important precursor to existentialism and other developments.

Click on the link to listen to the Zoom recording 

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/n0MU3KJzF9i3vqHVvfPCr0gnHqkJcSFjsKmKKq7UuP-Jzvz-heKcIXrYcyyrRXtE.y0xtLHUQeCdDtXSq

Passcode: ??3@rie@

 


11-28-2023  The Life, Times, and Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza

Rob Olson, MLA (Philosophy) Dallas Philosophers Forum President

Baruch Spinoza is considered one of the foremost—and likely the most radical- thinkers of the Enlightenment. Indeed, such revolutionary thinking led to his excommunication from his synagogue. Of all the philosophers of the 17th century, Spinoza is among the most relevant today

Click on the link to listen to the Zoom recording 

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/-iyhBUOjRAy_0AhX3vwV0BLqt37V5dybfD5lowmgZR08cq2zZvTVd_NWo0Ufo4rT.2__OSaN6dH7e0agI

Passcode: 8*5p*Bq7

12-12-2023  Ordering Goodness in the Universe of Possibilities

Andy Jennings, MS, MDiv., Ph.D.

William Rowe’s Evidential Argument from Evil (EAE) claims that, very likely, there are events in the actual world so horrendous and pointless that the world would be better overall had some alternative occurred instead. What exactly does it mean, though, for one set of circumstances to be better than another set of circumstances? In other words, how can we assign truth to a statement like, “It would have been better were x to happen/have happened than were y to happen/have happened?” This lecture will argue that, upon analyzing this type of comparative statement, Rowe did not achieve the inductive strength he desired in his EAE.