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Lectures start promptly at 7:30PM and are held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month January 2025 through May 13, 2025.   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. 

1-14-2025   Computational Epistemology, Intelligence, Science, Mathematics, and Society (The end of classical philosophy)
 

Mark Wong

Today we have access to computational tools (computers and algorithms) that rapidly explore the limits of our models of thinking. This is a short talk on a vast and complicated tour through the current technology of data mining transforming to knowledge, intelligent use of that knowledge to attain some goal, and deep learning through self-reflection to improve and abstract that knowledge. This is the landscape of intelligent machines we are creating and unleashing upon the world. Questions of morality, ethics, safety, necessity and responsibility are crucial to the decisions we must ponder. I hope to give a glimpse into the technical details of where we are and implications of how the impact our decisions we make today will influence the current and future interaction of machine intelligence with society.

To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/2IS0T8FiKHPh-dX7ljfZdZBUgNC0X9_-tM2fFcw8efwDaIKdVhAXSRWVaFSOPnmk.JT_MxgH_Wvd6dVEm

Passcode: rw9$*a*x

Slide Presentation

1-28-2025  Were You Ever an Embryo?

Luke Roelofs

When determining how much weight to give a certain being in our moral decisions, how should we factor in the potential for future development, as opposed to what it’s like here and now? This is an important question in many current debates - for example, many people think that human embryos deserve protection even when they don’t yet have properties like consciousness or autonomy, because those properties could develop in the future. This talk distinguishes two ways to think about this potential: viewing the embryo as an ingredient in a process which could lead to those properties belonging to something, and viewing the embryo as already being the very same thing that those properties will eventually belong to. It then argues against the second way - the facts of human development are too messy for there to be objective identity or non-identity between an embryo and a child. The answer to “were you ever an embryo?” is that it’s a bad question

To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/BcXfqGqqjT7NTB9dly-TeVucu1-EBf8tty2u_zbJe-lE9_BXXPGx3-TBgeHJ21pI.MmFEesLgBN2O9s59


Passcode: 67NfZ##1

2-11-2025  How we can Strengthen Democracy through Relational Dialogue

Speaker: Michael J. Lundie, Ph.D., Staff Cognitive Scientist, Applied Research Projects, Inc

We are a divided nation. Perhaps this is never more apparent than during this presidential election year. Ominously, we can no longer rest assured of a peaceful transfer of power. We are in a quandary as to which voices in the media we should turn to for guidance amidst the din of polarized political drama. Rather, the one outcome that appears inevitable is that a disturbingly large percentage of Americans will be convinced that our nation is headed over the brink regardless of how an election turns out. Despite these grim facts and incessant media echo chambers reminding us that we are a polarized nation experiencing toxic tribalism, few offer compelling solutions. We believe that helping everyday Americans to master the art of relational dialogue is the solution. In Part I of this presentation, Michael Lundie posits an empirically grounded account of political belief and cognition based on core values and moral foundations, drawing on the work of Jonathan Haidt and Shalom Schwartz. This perspective attempts to elucidate the reasons for democratic polarization. In Part II Michael Lundie discusses why the news media, opinion news outlets, social media, and the two-party system present the impression of such a starkly divided world. There are good reasons that our politicians use negative campaigning, scare-tactics, and hyperbole to convince the voters to support them…because it works…so it’s pragmatic – they believe it is their job to do so. They need to inspire urgent uniform action to win an election, so they frame themselves as the only savior in a crisis. That’s simply how the political game is currently played, but it doesn’t mean that we must acquiesce to it or to accept this state of affairs as being inevitable. In Part III a framework is discussed focusing on specific strategies and tactics backed by social and behavioral science that could enable voters to engage in constructive, productive, and enlightening conversations around political topics. An emphasis is placed upon speaking to one another as fellow travelers on a journey toward self- and societal understanding, rather than as warriors lined up on opposing sides of a political battlefield. An open attitude and a good-faith effort to understand one another is the way forward. A better understanding of ourselves and talking to (instead of at) one another are the best ways to mitigate polarized political attitudes.

To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/h4lknmfA24SnCgGjHEgRZrkHcqrN9jLtIS3nrzRBCLhFQvp3iCf0iQS8XFjrJ0sS.RxSMGyI5Idguj3AO

Passcode: &0XGVq9S

PowerPoint: Presentation

2-25-2025 Human, Post-Human, and Transhuman: The impact of AI on human self-understanding

Speaker: Dr. Robert Hunt,  

In the modern period advances in science altered popular concepts of human personhood. These changes laid the ground work for imagining a human-like intelligence in a humanoid machine. The simultaneous development of modern computers and modern neuroscience made it possible to eventually create artificial intelligence. The post-humanist and transhumanist dreams of the 1950’s now appear near fulfillment. It remains to be seen how humans will respond as we begin to live with the presence of AI avatars and androids with something approximating human intelligence, to understand what is, and is not, distinctive about our humanity. 

To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/9-yIOgqV6h17vtcA9b7nkg9J6PQpWEHoIGuBmXAlvqDp5Va0ltL-vXht6_sDf9at.CJvB0tFjMkJoWgQ8
Passcode: dsK3*?%u

3-11-2025  Why Plato Was One-Third Right (About The Forms)

David Drumm

In the famous image of The Cave, Plato bequeathed to the philosophic tradition the enduring notion of the eternal and universal Forms as the ground of all phenomenological experience and this concept is elaborated throughout all of Plato’s dialogues. How does the concept of Forms stand up to 2500 years of subsequent development in philosophy and in the sciences? This talk will distinguish three different varieties of the Forms and make the case that one (but only one) of these three varieties stands up to the rigor of subsequent developments

To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/MSsK4KQpN9JtPHqsJEUVzuhZr2mygA_cZ8SblH2kBearZdgocxPuaCRGPIH2gbia.FxHEkdeN92lnhvd9

Passcode: RVE$7s*%

3-25-2025  The Evolution of Empiricism: Its Ancient Roots, Medieval Disappearance, and Modern Revival and Fragmentation

Dave Dixon


This presentation focuses on the history of empiricism as a broad school of philosophical thought and its origins in Antiquity.  It traces the roots of empiricism to Epicureanism (with its materialist atomism) and especially to Pyrrhonist skepticism (with its Empiric school of medicine, radical skepticism, and proto-subjectivism).  Substantial attention is given to these two ancient schools because an understanding of them seems to be very helpful for understanding modern empiricism.  Particular attention is given to the differing ancient interpretations of phantasiaia, of relevance to later empiricism.   The presentation notes the disappearance of these two ancient schools for about a millennium during which Aristotelianism dominated western thought, mentions some philosophical developments toward the end of the Middle Ages that seem to have contributed to a revival of them, and addresses how the rediscovery of them seems to have led to the development in early modernity of the modern school of empiricism, initially within a framework of the Christian religion and as an attempt to fuse Renaissance atomism (in the tradition of Epicureanism), Renaissance skepticism (in the tradition of Pyrrhonism), and Protestant Christianity.  As time permits, it further notes that, at about the time empiricism hit a high point in popularity in Britain in the late seventeenth century with the great successes of John Locke, Isaac Newton, and others, it began fragmenting into subjectivist empiricism (in the tradition of Pyrrhonism), objectivist empiricism (in the tradition of Epicureanism), and religious empiricism (within the tradition of Protestant Christianity), each generally diverging philosophically from the other two.


To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/aICH0ICmh29rNxOk9aAPMLW8aIjTPvwCvOpqbBdjYRvR3KRQrh25RFONBi2mBnKG.qM5wSAUeB3f0i4xr

Passcode: #H63Yf2u

Slide Show: Empiricism

4-8-2025  The Joys of Philosophy: Why One Should Study This Field of Inquiry

Rob Olson

There are as many definitions of philosophy as stars in the sky.  This lecture will explore this question and answer how one can benefit from studying and reveling in the enchanting world of philosophy and ideas.


To listen to the talk, click on the link below:

Rob Olson, 10-08-2025

To view the slide Presentation, click on the link below:

Slide Show: The Joys of Philosophy

4-22-2025  The Delusion that You Can Download the Human Self

Roy Abraham Varghese, author

Is consciousness a “software program” running on a biological computer (the brain) that can be transferred to sophisticated computers of the future? Ray Kurzweil claims that “A person is a mind file. A person is a software program.”  Elon Musk says, “We could download the things that we believe make ourselves so unique. … As far as preserving our memories, our personality, I think we could do that.” Generative AI and other computing advances have mainstreamed these kinds of views. I will try to show that these are radically confused ideas that misconstrue sentience, conceptual thought and the human self.

To view the talk, click on the link below and enter the passcode when prompted:

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/3erTXan_O6ZRDSn9lH7_FpgxLRAf3864UovUDTol7nVRIihJ8rNbVA8xQKNONG6X.aTNFU-sKVtm5jx5e


Passcode: H3fVX%@m

5-13-2025  SMU Award-Winning Philosophy Student Lecture

Speaker: SMU Philosophy Student

The SMU Philosophy student who wins the Steve Sverdlik philosophy writing contest will present their paper, followed by a related lecture by an SMU philosophy professor.