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Philosophers
Lectures
start
promptly at 7:30PM and are held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each
month January 2026 through December 8, 2026. 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.
1-13-2026
Child [Mal]treatment in America
Speaker: Beth Williams
Beth Williams is a former advocate for
children in child welfare proceedings. In this presentation, she asks
the question “when is a child mistreated” as she explores the
historical context of a child’s role in society in America. A child’s
role in the world determines what constitutes maltreatment. Beth will
explore the transition from “seen and not heard” to having quasi-adult
agency before the age of legal adulthood and the paradoxical view that
persons between the ages of 18 and 25 are legal adults who need special
treatment as we learn more about brain development.
1-27-2026
Cancelled due to bad weather
2-10-2026
Our Search for Meaning–Frankl’s Interpretation of Will
Speaker: Davidson Sutherland, MDiv
In a world that often tells us
happiness comes from power, success, or pleasure, many still find
themselves asking a deeper question: What makes life worth living? In
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl offers a strikingly different
answer. Writing from his experience surviving Nazi concentration camps,
Frankl suggests that what sustains us is not what we gain or control,
but the meaning we choose to live for.
This conversation will
explore Frankl’s insight that the will to meaning is the most enduring
human drive: one that remains available even in suffering, loss, and
uncertainty. Together, we’ll reflect on how meaning, rather than power
or pleasure, provides a more stable foundation for resilience, purpose,
and hope in our personal lives and in our shared world.
To listen to the talk, click the link below and don't forget to copy the passcode below the link:
Passcode: ?SEM0$EA
2-24-2026 A quantum biological neural correlate of consciousness (NCC)
Speaker: Chris Rourk, patent attorney, formerly a scientific researcher at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
NCCs
are powerful tools for understanding how neural process are associated
with the human experience of consciousness, but they do not provide an
answer to all of the questions that relate to that experience. For
example, why do we choose a specific action (free will), and why is
there an integrated conscious experience from many different cognitive
and sensory processes (the binding problem)?
Quantum
biology is the study of biological processes that cannot be explained
classically, and which can only be explained with quantum mechanics. It
has been applied to the mitochondrial electron transport chain and to
photosynthesis, among other things, and has provided useful and
falsifiable hypotheses about those biological processes. However, in
the realm of consciousness, quantum mechanics has failed to provide
such hypotheses. A common objection from neuroscientists to the various
quantum consciousness ideas that have been proposed is that quantum
mechanics is not needed to explain anything related to how the brain
functions, and that classical processes can fully explain its function.
This presentation will first discuss neural
correlates of consciousness and then apply the quantum biology of
ferritin to neural correlates of consciousness. Ferritin is an
iron storage protein that has been extensively studied and found to
support electron tunneling and to have other bioelectric and
biomagnetic properties that can be explained using quantum mechanics.
The consistent expression of those properties throughout plant and
animal species has also manifested itself in the basal ganglia, a
biological system that has been conserved in animals for over 500
million years. The presentation will also discuss evidence that
supports the presence of a neural signaling mechanism in dopamine and
norepinephrine neurons that uses electron tunneling associated with
ferritin, and which can also explain why specific actions are selected
and how diverse neural and sensory signals are integrated into a
singular experience. Unlike well-known quantum consciousness ideas that
have been rejected by numerous neuroscientists, this hypothesized
signaling mechanism has predicted subsequent discoveries in
neuroscience and provides explanations for biological functions.
To listen to the talk, click the link below and don't forget to copy the passcode below the link:
Passcode: 1k!n39Z0
3-10-2026
Why Language is Significant for Justice in Augustine’s Political Thought
Speaker: Miriam McElvain
In
his early dialogue On Order, Augustine argues that human association is
rationally ordered because it arises from individuals sharing knowledge
of intelligible realities with others through language. Consequently,
for Augustine, although expressions of justice in political order are
partial and limited by the particular circumstances of the political
community, because language is a means by which human beings
communicate intelligible truths, political order is subordinate to
universal standards of justice.
To listen to the talk, click the link below and don't forget to copy the passcode below the link:
Passcode: s*do8LHF
3-24-2026
The Scientific Search for Self, Mind, and Will
Speaker: Paul Tobolowsky, MD
Through most of human history, it has
been assumed that we exist as individual selves with independent minds
that make willful decisions. Current technology offers the opportunity
to do brain scanning as people perform mental tasks such as reading,
speaking, making decisions, perceiving the world through our sensory
systems, and thinking abstractly. The brain can even be tested in its
baseline state when it is not actively thinking. This talk is a summary
of current scientific investigations into deep philosophical
issues.
To listen to the talk, click the link below and don't forget to copy the passcode below the link:
Passcode: 9P1C=4+d
4-14-2026
In Defense of Clear-Sighted Hypocrisy
Speaker: Alida Liberman, Ph.D.
Moral
hypocrisy—understood as a lack of consistency between what you believe
you ought to do and what you actually do—is routinely condemned.
However, the presenter argues that openly embracing our own
hypocrisy—and being more accepting of hypocrisy in others—has both
instrumental and non-instrumental moral benefits. Many people resolve
the dissonance caused by a gap between their values and their actions
by engaging in self-deception, wishful thinking, or standard-lowering.
Instead, a more productive response is to be more open and honest about
your failures. Sometimes, moral improvement only occurs if one is
willing to pass through a transitional hypocritical phase that involves
opening one’s mind to the prospect of change, even while your behavior
remains stubbornly fixed. And even when such clear-sighted hypocrisy
does not lead to moral improvement, it is valuable for its own sake: it
is morally better to grapple with the uncomfortable self-knowledge of
your own shortcomings than to avoid discomfort by refusing to engage in
real self-reflection.
4-28-2026
American Transcendentalism, Theodore Parker and Issac Hecker
Speaker: Eric W. Palfreyman, M.A., M.A., J.D.
In
so many of those discussions, American Transcendentalism was a center
point of our discussions. Though I am a Christian, it would also be
true to say I am a Transcendentalist. I am a Transcendentalist
Christian. As a less mature scholar than my dad, I was not familiar
with two American Transcendentalists that my dad had read: Isaac Hecker
and Theodore Parker. Both were great thinkers, both were participants
of the Transcendentalist experiment at Brook Farm, and both were
seekers after truth. Yet, if one purchases the newest version of, for
example, the Norton Anthology of American Literature, neither of them
are included, nor are their writings easily available to persons on in
a scholarly environment. This, I suggest, is a mistake. Emerson and
Thoreau are not affiliated with any formal religion. In the end, in
fact, they both argue against participation in those on the grounds
that they are too formal and externalistic. Hawthorne and Melville
continue to be studied for their literary output and importance. But
neither Hecker nor Parker is included. Isaac Hecker converted to the
Roman Catholic Church, and Theodore Parker was a “reforming minister”
of the Unitarian Church.
In my
mind and in my own life experience, Hecker and Parker both have a very
important perspective on a Transcendentalist approach to Christianity
within religious organizations and movements. In fact, they are the
best hope of influencing the lives of believers with the energizing and
renewing power of Transcendentalist ideas within religious traditions
and practices.
5-12-2026 The Real Problem(s) with Time Travel
Speaker: Phillipe Chuard
Time travel—and whether it is possible at all—has exercised
writers, physicists, philosophers, and the general public, since at
least the 18th Century (though there was an explosion of time-travel
stories in the early days of the 20th Century,
especially in the United States). Lately, one of the biggest challenges
thought to undermine the possibility of time travel has had to do with
the grandfather paradox (the time-traveller-to-the-past had better not
do anything lethally harmful to their own
ancestors). Though the solutions to this paradox have been problematic
themselves, it’s far from clear how problematic the grandfather paradox
in fact is, I’ll suggest. Instead, the real threat to the possibility of
time travel comes from the much more mundane
issue of whether it is possible to change the past at all, leading to
more prevalent and serious contradictions. To make it worse, the best
(and only) solution to this more pervasive paradox (positing distinct
temporal dimensions) also seems to make time-travel
(as we typically conceive of it) impossible. Finally, a surprising
source of difficulty concerns the conceptual possibility of time-travel:
what exactly we mean when we describe an agent as "traveling in time"
(in a substantive and non-metaphorical sense)
has turned out to be even more problematic.