We explore a range of topics from both contemporary and classical philosophy. The topics are intended to be interesting, understandable and participative. New members are very welcome.

We meet in the downstairs room at the Rifle Club (near Leisure Centre).

Location, fee and, parking information is at the foot of this page.

Dates for the current term are:

2025: Oct 6th & 20th, Nov 3rd & 17th, Dec 1st & 15th.

2026: Jan 5th and 19th, Feb 2nd & 16:th, Mar 2nd & 16th, Apr 6th & 20th, May 4th & 18th, Jun 1st & 15th.

To email me click on my name just above.

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20th October 2025: The basis for our ethical choices

In preparation for this session we have spent some time reflecting on how we each approach our opinions, judgments and choices on ethical matters. As a prompt to helping think about this we came up with a list of keywords: ethical/moral/legal, good/bad, good/evil, right/wrong, justice, fairness, virtue, freedom, happiness, well-being, flourishing, grounding (basis for), absolute/relative, objective/subjective, are ethics a luxury, …

Have we got an approach? Is this just a single approach? Is this approach coherent?

Can we justify or have we good reasons to adopt such an approach?

How do our ideas/intuitions map onto the historical ethical approaches in philosophy.

1. Deontological Ethics (Duty-based ethics)

Morality is about following rules or duties.
What is my duty? Immanuel Kant
Moral actions are those done from duty, not consequences. 
The Categorical Imperative: Act only according to maxims you would will to become universal laws.
Emphasizes rights, justice, and intentions.
Example: Lying is always wrong, even if it might produce good outcomes.

2. Consequentialism (Results-based ethics)

Morality is about the consequences of actions.
What will produce the best outcome? Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill
The right action is the one that maximizes overall happiness or utility.
Moral value is judged by the results of an action.
Example: If lying would save a life or prevent harm, then it's the morally right thing to do.

3. Virtue Ethics (Character-based ethics)

Morality is about developing good character traits.
What kind of person should I be? Aristotle
Focuses on virtues like courage, honesty, generosity. 
Emphasizes moral character over rules or consequences. 
The goal is to achieve eudaimonia (flourishing or a good life)
Example: A virtuous person tells the truth because it reflects honesty, a central virtue.

4. Contractarianism / Social Contract Theory

Morality is based on agreements between rational agents. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Rawls.

5. Relativism

Suggests that moral standards are culturally or individually relative, and there are no objective moral truths.

6. Divine Command Theory

Morality is based on the commands of God or a divine being.

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Notes from 6th October 2025

It was good to see the group again and great to see a new person join us. Thank you for the constructive contributions at this session and I am looking forward to the next one.

GROUP
We took the opportunity to re-visit each of our reasons for being part of the group and how we would like the group to move forward through the term.
General feeling was that having a space to look at what we think and why is a good thing. It helps us to discover our presuppositions and assumptions about how the world works and to have these implicit ideas challenged allowing us to develop a more thought-through understanding. Being able to do this in an informal, relaxed and respectful setting was enjoyable.
It was felt that continuing with an exploratory topic-based approach was a good idea. As was the continued use of media resources (video/audio/text) to provide background and stimulus.

MINDSET
We discussed some of the problems that hamper dialogue and debate in public and political settings including personal attacks [ad-hominem], focusing on who was making the claims and arguments rather than the content of the ideas [genetic fallacy] and also how people refuse to understand the others position and attack a misrepresentation of those ideas [straw-man].

We chatted about the key traits of a philosophical mindset and hit upon the following characteristics:
- Critical Thinking
- Curiosity
- Open-mindedness
- Self-Reflection
- Love of Wisdom
- Creative Problem-Solving.

It was felt that these traits applied to daily life by:
- Navigating complexity with more confidence
- Improved and more coherent worldview
- Learning how to engage in productive disagreement
- Personal growth and a more meaningful life

NEXT TOPIC
It was agreed that we would begin to explore ethics (and related ideas of morality and legality) as our next topic.
Instead of adopting a top-down, textbook approach we decided spend part of our time before our next session reflecting on how we each come to our opinions, judgments and choices on ethical matters. Having thought about how we approach this then dig a bit deeper and see if we have good reasons to adopt such an approach.
At the next session we will share these thoughts and see if/how they map on to the historical ethical approaches in philosophy.
As a prompt to helping think about this we came up with a list of keywords: ethical/moral/legal, good/bad, good/evil, right/wrong, justice, fairness, virtue, freedom, happiness, well-being, flourishing, grounding (basis for), absolute/relative, objective/subjective, are ethics a luxury, …

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6th October 2025: First Meeting of New Season

I thought we could share some ideas for the shape of the new season,

Then, as a starter I thought we could ask "What is a philosophical mindset?"
As always our approach will be informal and conversational.

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Autumn Term 2025

It was good to see some new names enrolling for the group. I hope that you will enjoy and take something from the sessions and look forward to your contributions to our explorations.

Unfortunately, I am not able to kick off the term with a meeting as planned on the 15th of September. Our next session will be 6th of October 2025.

As below, I am happy to take suggestions for topics especially from folk new to the group.

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Ideas/Suggestions for Sessions from September 2025.

We begin a new series of sessions in September 2025. I would be very happy to take suggestions on how to structure our topics from September.

In our most recent sessions we have explored: "What Exists?", "What is Knowing?" and "What am I?"
We can now move on to #4 in our list of "Guiding Questions" which is "What is Free Will?"

Another thought would be to go through the traditional arguments for the existence of God. Tackling one, two or three arguments per session.

Cosmological (Cause of the universe)
Teleological (Purpose, design and fine-tuning)
Ontological (Definition of God)
Axiological (Objective moral values)
Desire (Longing for something more)
Reason (Source of reliability of logic)
Religious Experience (Personal encounters)
Aesthetic (Beauty and wonder)
Consciousness (Philosophical)
Pascal’s Wager (Pragmatic)
Historicity (Truth of the biblical accounts)
Reformed Epistemology (Properly basic beliefs)

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16th June 2025: Idealism

From Bishop Berkley (pronounced Barkley) to the present day, some philosophers find both Physicalism/Materialism and Dualism (Substance or Property) inadequate explanations of the way the the world actually is.

Idealism claims that (maybe against common sense intuition) reality is primarily mental not physical.

In our final session of the term we conclude our survey of the dominant ontological views of the self.

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2nd June 2025: A Dualistic View of the Self.

We continue exploring views of the self. We will look at Idealism next time we meet.

This time we look at a form of dualism called hylomorphism. This draws on the work of Aristotle as developed by Thomas Aquinas.

The main prompt is a short video called Body and Soul produced by the Thomistic Institute in a series of videos called Aquinas 101.

Body and Soul
https://youtu.be/mTzNGUCJkm4?si=3x1qOqH9ZE1CrwyZ

This rests on some metaphysical assumptions. If you wish to, you can refer to these videos.

Being and Metaphysics
https://youtu.be/T5SSbVeEN-g?si=zO01CofdE__6BCxe
Act & Potency
https://youtu.be/7AzrbXjDLiM?si=wYyOhGEsIfWQ4huv
Form & Matter
https://youtu.be/rGXMo28Bqsw?si=wvb1b0IDlh1YVGhA
Essence & Existence
https://youtu.be/9twxzDealBY?si=a4zBkyST-5_Dlbh0

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19th May 2025: A Naturalistic View of the Self.

Remember start time is 2:15pm

Is the mind just an Ego Trick?

BUNDLE THEORY OF THE MIND
This session will be based around a TED Talk called "Is there a real you?" by Julian Baggini. The talk is based on his popular book "The Ego Trick", which is an introduction to the bundle theory of mind.
The talk is here:
https://youtu.be/Q80MfH7xPPE

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Half-term/Easter/Bank Holidays

Our next scheduled meeting is 19th May 2025. We may have some informal sessions before then, so if you would be interested in joining these then please let me know.

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Three views of "The Self"

For next few sessions we will explore different conceptions of the self. We will look at Naturalism, Christian Substance Dualism, and Idealism.

My source material will be the following books. (NB. There is no requirement to read these unless you wish to.)

The Ego Trick Julian Baggini.

Body & Soul Moreland & Rae

Irreducible Federico Faggin

To give me time to look at the other two books, we will first cover the naturalistic view presented by Julian Baggini. A useful introduction is a TED Talk "Is There a Real You" given by Baggini.

https://youtu.be/Q80MfH7xPPE?si=kR-cD7dVxDGBf77D

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17th March 2025: Towards an idea of the "Self"

Before we start: What would happen if you gave up observing Lent for Lent?

For our next session on the 17th March 2025 I would like to put the final pieces in place as a precursor to a conversation about the idea of the self.

On the 3rd of March we talked about the concept of the three stances (i.e. physical, design and intentional) as described by the (I would have said contemporary, but, have to sadly say) recently deceased philosopher Daniel Dennett. We will briefly look at his idea of “Real Patterns” [which we did not get to discuss]. More details below. And…

We will discuss the classic (and I really mean classic i.e. about 2000 years ago) thought experiment on the concept of identity: “Ship of Theseus” by the ancient Greek writer Plutarch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
We may, or maybe not, have a look at my version of the conundrum: The Curious Case of Lady Penelope’s Sports Car.

** Real Patterns **
Dennett argues that patterns, particularly in the context of information and consciousness, are not merely abstract but can be "real" in a meaningful sense.

Levels of Description: He suggests that different levels of description (like physical, biological, and psychological) can reveal different patterns, each valid within its own context.

Real Patterns vs. Physical Patterns: Dennett distinguishes between physical patterns (those grounded in material substance) and real patterns (which can emerge from complex systems and interactions).

Intentional Stance: He discusses the usefulness of adopting an intentional stance toward entities, treating them as if they have beliefs and desires, which allows for meaningful predictions about their behavior.

Functional Explanation: Dennett emphasizes the importance of functional explanations in understanding complex systems, arguing that real patterns can be understood through their roles and functions.

Emergence: He highlights the notion of emergence, where complex patterns arise from simple rules or components, suggesting that real patterns can emerge from simpler underlying structures.

Critique of Reductionism: Dennett critiques reductionist approaches that seek to explain phenomena solely in terms of their constituent parts, advocating for a more holistic understanding.

Implications for Science and Philosophy: He discusses the implications of real patterns for both scientific inquiry and philosophical questions about mind, meaning, and consciousness.

Pragmatic Approach: Finally, Dennett takes a pragmatic stance, arguing that recognizing real patterns has practical benefits for how we understand and engage with the world.

Sean Carroll, on his Mindscape podcast, in conversation with Daniel Dennett in January 2020. They cover some of these ideas. It is a bit of long listen at about two hours. If you prefer to read there is also a full transcript.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/06/78-daniel-dennett-on-minds-patterns-and-the-scientific-image

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3rd March 2025: A bridge between "Emergence" and "Individuality "

NOTE: New start time of 2:15pm

For this meeting we will use the plan for 3rd February 2025 below and try again to look at 'the intentional stance' and 'real patterns'.

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Notes to 3rd February 2025

We had an unplanned discussion on cause and effect. Not sure what caused that!

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3rd February 2025: A bridge between "Emergence" and "Individuality"

We have spent two sessions on "emergence" by looking at how very simple constraints on development can lead to very surprising, and apparently complex, behaviour at a higher level. Specifically we looked at Conway's Game of Life and at the various Boids algorithms.

In terms of our "Six Guiding Questions", we are working through Question (1): "What Exists?" Moving "up" from fundamental structures to higher levels.

We will soon be moving on to look at the very rich ideas of identity and individuality. Which are foundational to, the upcoming, Question (3): What am I?

Before this, I think it may be useful to explore some ideas presented by philosopher Daniel Dennett (who died in April 2024).

Having reviewed all of this: I fear that I may be being far too ambitious for one session. I will let it lie for now and if we we need to take further sessions over these foundations then so be it.

The ideas are:
(A) The three stances: physical, design and intentional.
(B) The intentional stance in more detail.
(C) Real patterns.

In our session we will try to come to a working understanding of these ideas.

I will paste below my edited versions of summaries produced by, my good friend, the free version of ChatGPT, on the above topics.

** (A) The Three stances ** (perspectives/views/attitudes)
Daniel Dennett proposed the "three stances" as a framework for understanding and interpreting systems, particularly in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The three stances are:
* Physical Stance: This stance focuses on the physical properties and behaviors of a system. It relies on scientific descriptions, such as the laws of physics and biology, to explain how a system operates.
* Design Stance: In this stance, we attribute purpose or functionality to a system based on its design. We consider how the system's components work together to fulfill certain goals, often used in contexts like artificial intelligence or biological organisms.
* Intentional Stance: This stance involves interpreting a system as if it has beliefs, desires, and intentions. It is particularly useful in understanding behavior in complex systems, like humans or animals, where ascribing mental states can help predict actions.

These stances highlight different ways to approach and understand complex entities, each useful in different contexts.

** The intentional stance **
Daniel Dennett's concept of the "intentional stance" refers to a way of interpreting and predicting the behavior of entities—whether they are people, animals, or even machines—by treating them as if they have beliefs, desires, and intentions.

• Perspective: The intentional stance is one of three perspectives we can take to understand behavior. The other two are the physical stance (focusing on physical laws) and the design stance (focusing on how something is designed to function).
• Assuming Intentions: When we adopt the intentional stance, we assume that the entity acts based on its beliefs and desires. For example, if you see a dog running towards a ball, you might infer that the dog believes the ball is something to chase and desires to play.
• Predictive Power: This approach helps us predict behavior effectively. By understanding what an entity might want and believe, we can make educated guesses about how it will act.
• Utility: Dennett argues that the intentional stance is particularly useful for complex systems, where behavior cannot easily be explained by simpler physical or design explanations.

The intentional stance allows us to navigate and interact with the world by attributing mental states to others, facilitating understanding and communication.

** Real Patterns **
Dennett argues that patterns, particularly in the context of information and consciousness, are not merely abstract but can be "real" in a meaningful sense.

• Levels of Description: He suggests that different levels of description (like physical, biological, and psychological) can reveal different patterns, each valid within its own context.
• Real Patterns vs. Physical Patterns: Dennett distinguishes between physical patterns (those grounded in material substance) and real patterns (which can emerge from complex systems and interactions).
• Intentional Stance: He discusses the usefulness of adopting an intentional stance toward entities, treating them as if they have beliefs and desires, which allows for meaningful predictions about their behavior.
• Functional Explanation: Dennett emphasizes the importance of functional explanations in understanding complex systems, arguing that real patterns can be understood through their roles and functions.
• Emergence: He highlights the notion of emergence, where complex patterns arise from simple rules or components, suggesting that real patterns can emerge from simpler underlying structures.
• Critique of Reductionism: Dennett critiques reductionist approaches that seek to explain phenomena solely in terms of their constituent parts, advocating for a more holistic understanding.
• Implications for Science and Philosophy: He discusses the implications of real patterns for both scientific inquiry and philosophical questions about mind, meaning, and consciousness.
• Pragmatic Approach: Finally, Dennett takes a pragmatic stance, arguing that recognizing real patterns has practical benefits for how we understand and engage with the world.

Sean Carroll, on his Mindscape podcast, in conversation with Daniel Dennett in January 2020. They cover some of these ideas. It is a bit of long listen at about two hours. If you prefer to read there is also a full transcript.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/06/78-daniel-dennett-on-minds-patterns-and-the-scientific-image/

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Six Guiding Questions

I might venture that everyone should have, at least the beginnings of, an answer to six questions.

The questions are: (1)  What Exists? (2) What is Knowing? (3) What am I? (4) What is Free Will? (5) What is Right and Wrong? (6) What is Justice?

In September, October and November of 2024 we spent some time addressing question (2).

In our last two meetings, looking at 'emergence', we were sneaking up on question (1). We will follow this thread and next time look at the concept of "real patterns" before tackling the idea of 'identity' - what makes a thing a particular thing. This will lay some groundwork for moving on to question (3).

(1) What Exists?
What does it mean for something to exist and what is the basic nature of reality?

(2) What is Knowing?
What does it mean to say that we know things and how sure can we be?

(3) What am I?
We all have the experience of being a conscious self. What is the fundamental nature of consciousness and the self.

(4) What is Free Will?
How do we account for the experience of having 'free will', the ability to have done otherwise?

(5) What is Right and Wrong?
What is right and wrong and how do we decide?

(6) What is Justice?
We all live in society, how do we craft fair social policy and an effective criminal justice system?

/Graham, 21st Jan. 2025

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20th January 2025 - Emergence

We will continue our topic from the 2nd December 2024. (Please have a look over the notes for that session).

Emergentism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism

First we'll quickly revisit Conway's Game of Life for those who were not present.

Then we'll investigate another classic example of emergent behaviour. Boids reproduces flocking, shoaling and herding behaviour.

Starling murmuration : https://youtu.be/m6YDhVeW5Kc?si=pvkcY1HFDGMjo6rX

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids

As with the Game of Life, Boids is an example of how high-level organised behaviour is the result of a few very simple low-level rules.

To start the conversation we will watch this short video.

https://youtu.be/QbUPfMXXQIY?si=Npoz_Y3OCRgfPtfU

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Hope that you had a great break over Christmas and New Year.

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2nd December 2024 - What is Emergence?

We will tie up any outstanding thoughts anyone has about our last topic of "Knowledge".

On the 2nd December we will explore the concept of emergence.

One definition might be...

"Emergence is the idea that complex systems and patterns can arise from the interactions of simpler components, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, new properties or behaviors emerge that can't be predicted just by looking at the individual parts of the system."

We will start by looking at Conway's 'Game of Life'. In the process we will discover how higher level entities can emerge from a very simple algorithmic rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

A deep dive into emergence by Sean Carroll can be found at this podcast. It is quite long at 1h30m, skip to 9:25.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/11/11/295-solo-emergence-and-layers-of-reality

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4th November 2024 - What is the basis for sound knowledge?

Philosophers have been trying to define and to provide a basis for knowledge since Plato (427–347 BCE).

We continue our exploration of the topic by looking a little deeper into approaches to 'grounding' knowledge.

The three approaches we will look at are Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism.

Short YouTube videos on these approaches:

https://youtu.be/d8slB3lpv44?si=ZqRU8U8BUcGfYf0o

https://youtu.be/Fe7rxu3R55g?si=dxZGaIx07DtUjRkz

https://youtu.be/Qer7j7hyqxU?si=r0hOMQdEpxNLA6Wx

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21st October 2024 - The Good Life

Knowledge is the basis for effective action in the world. But, how should we act.? I will not be able to attend this session but members of the group guide an initial exploration of what it means to live a good life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra1Dmz-5HjU

We may return to this topic later.

In our last session session continued our look at knowledge and began to sketch three, possibly overlapping, approaches to knowledge Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism. We will return to these in November.

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7th October 2024 - In Search of Certainty

This session we will continue our exploration of the idea of knowledge. Last time we kind of settled, moderately comfortably, on the idea of knowledge as being a justified, true belief (JTB). This has been a fairly broadly accepted definition until the 1960s when Gettier proposed a chink in the armour of the justification link.

We will spent a part of the time looking at what are called Gettier cases where it would seem that someone has a belief that is true and also that they are confident that they have a justification for that belief. BUT, what if that justification did not actually connect with a 'genuine' justification? Would this mean that the person with the JTB actually had genuine knowledge?

In the search for certainty, Rene Descartes said that "I think therefore I am" was an incontestable truth and used this as a foundation stone to build back to a true set of knowledge of the world.

I will play the YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLKrmw906TM (about 10 mins), So no worries if you cannot watch this ahead of time. This gives a brief introduction to the "Cogito ergo sum" idea that Descartes presented in his "Meditations".

Faced with these responses to the idea of "capital K, Knowledge", what does it mean to say that we know something?

We might be confident about our 'beliefs'. Having found that the idea of "justification" might be problematic... how secure is the idea of 'truth'.
Further topics: Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism.

As always the our approach will be friendly, informal and conversational.

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16th September 2024 - First Meeting of New Season

Thank you to exisiting members for your constructive contributions at last season's meetings. It will be great to welcome some new faces to our informal and friendly group.

We will start this term with an exploration of the concept of 'knowledge'. In the jargon this is epistemology.

We will tackle this big topic over a series of sessions. This short YouTube video introduces some of the ideas we will cover over the coming weeks. There is no requirement to watch it.

https://youtu.be/kXhJ3hHK9hQ

Understanding knowledge involves trying to nail down ideas like belief, truth and justification to arrive at an understanding of knowledge as justified, true belief.

We will look at apparent shortcomings of JTB.

Then we will try to evaluate some approaches to grounding/securing knowledge. Foundationalism, Coherentism, and Reliabilism.

As always the our approach will be informal and conversational.

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Notes to 16th September 2024

Knowledge as Justified, True Belief.

What does it mean to to know something?
Knowledge of…
Knowledge how…
Knowledge that…
Any difference between these three?

Look at ‘Knowledge that…’
If you say that you ‘know’ something you are making a claim.
You are making an ‘assertion’ (a confident statement of fact or belief).

What is the difference between an assertion and a proposition?
A proposition steps back from an assertion and leaves open the possibility that it may be true, false or indeterminate.
The cat is on the mat.
The cat will be on the mat tomorrow.

What does it mean to ‘believe’ something?
If I believe ‘the cat is on the mat’.
that means that my ‘attitude’ to the proposition is that it is ‘true’.
Note that so far this an ‘internal’ thing.

What does it mean to say that something is ‘true’?
Correspondence theory say that something is true if it matches (comports with) reality.
So ‘the cat is on the mat’ is true ‘true’ if the cat is actually on the mat.
Note that ‘the cat is on the mat’ has moved up a gear to being an assertion (a claim to truth).

Some things might might not be as easy to settle as ‘the cat is on the mat’.
The proposition…
“Immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating pet cats and dogs.”
… can only only be either true or false. Whether it is true or false is completely independent of what anybody thinks, feels, believes or claims to know. It depends purely on whether the proposition corresponds to reality.

Donald Trump speaks as though he knows this. Many people appear to believe it.

What are the steps that move from belief to knowledge?
Well you cannot know something that is false, so the belief must at least be true.

Even if it is true but you are isolated from the truth/falsity of the claim you still do not know.
What is the final step?
You need good reasons or a ‘justification’ for the belief.

For Donald Trump to ‘know’ this then it firstly must be true and further he must have a justification for his belief.

What would constitute a justification?
First hand experience and reliable testimony.

Vast majority of what we might claim to know depends on the testimony of trusted sources.
News versus fake news.

Further topics: Gettier cases, Scepticism, Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism

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