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Philosophers
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:
Passcode: rw9$*a*x
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:
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:
Passcode: &0XGVq9S
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:
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:
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:
Passcode: #H63Yf2u
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:
To view the slide Presentation, click on the link below:
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:
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.