Past Philosophy Club Meetings

November 18th
We will be discussing Trolley Problems. Recommended materials:
Philosophy Bites podcast on the Trolley Problem here
Wikipedia Entry
Variations and Quiz
The Trolley Problem by Judith Jarvis Thomson
SEP Entries: Deontological Ethics, Doing Vs. Allowing Harm, Double Effect

October 28th:
Professor Ariew will be joining us for a discussion of professionalization(what grad school is like, expert performance (how to get ahead in philosophy)). He recommends reading "A Star is Made" before the meeting and consulting The Philosophy Gourmet Report, which ranks philosophy departments.

October 21st:
We will be discussing aesthetics, specifically the Washington Post article "Pearls Before Breakfast" and Morris Weitz's article "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," which can be found on Jstor.
Other resources you might want to look at:
Audio of Joshua Bell's Performance
Stanford Encyclopedia articles on Definition of Art, Aesthetic Judgment, Conceptual Art, Philosophy of Music

Film screening, radio show episode of note

Sorry for not getting this info up earlier, but Astra Taylor's Examined Life documentary is playing this afternoon at Stephens College's Citizen Jane Film Festival. According to the site, Taylor will be at the screening, which starts at 3 at Windsor Auditorium. Astra's last film was Zizek! about Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian cultural theorist, who is featured in Examined Life with Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Cornell West and Kwame Anthony Appiah, among other modern day philosophers, theorists and critics. Tickets are $5 for students and available at Ragtag.

Also worth checking out is Act One of last week's This American Life episode, number 366, "A Better Mousetrap 2008." It might be interesting to listen to with what Dr. Markie's recent talk in mind. You can currently download the episode for free either from the show's site or from iTunes until, most likely, tomorrow, when this weekend's episode becomes available; however, you can always stream any episode of the show, in full, for free from the TAL site. Here's the description of the story:

Act One. Mother of Invention.

Karen Sosnoski's one-year-old son, Anton, was born with what's known as Mosaic Down Syndrome, a rare condition where some of his cells have the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome and other cells don't. So as he grows, he could end up having all the health risks and challenges of Downs syndrome...or just a few of them. Through a website, Karen found a kid with the same diagnosis, named Tim Colvin, who was doing really well...perhaps because his mother, Kristy, invented a surprising and unusual way to raise her son. When some people hear about what Kristy did, they're shocked. Karen went to talk to Kristy and Tim about how Tim was raised. (13 minutes)

Don't want to miss timely updates? Add this blog to your Google Reader and you won't have to worry about forgetting to check the blog, or wasting time checking it in hopes of a new post, since there aren't that many, that often. Though I doubt the latter is very prevalent! Anyway, enjoy.

Upcoming talks on campus

Some of our budding classicists and, well, other nerd-types might be wise to take note of a few talks on campus next week sponsored by our History department. For the 2008 Fordyce Mitchel Lecture Series, they're bringing in Dr. Christopher Pelling from Oxford (faculty page here and a slightly more substantive Wikipedia entry here). The general theme is "How Greek Historians Explained History" and information on each is as follows:

• "Cleopatra" (7 PM, Monday, October 6, Stewart Hall 100)
  
• "Herodotus: Gods and Men - and Women Too" (4 PM, Tuesday, October 7, Agriculture Building 2-16)
• "Thucydides: The Limits of 'Realistic' Thinking" (4 PM, Wednesday, October 8, Tate Hall 104)
• "Polybius: What Made Roman History Different" (7 PM, Thursday, October 9, Agriculture Building 2-16)
  

And the following week from MU Peace Studies, a talk on nonviolence delivered by Dr. Barry Gan, director of the Center for Nonviolence and Professor of Philosophy at St. Bonaventure University in New York. Here's the info:

People who abhor war and domestic violence struggle with the question of how harm to the innocent can be prevented and social justice promoted by non-violent means. You are invited to hear Dr. Barry Gan present a lecture "Out of the Ashes of Violence: Violent Myths and Nonviolent Realities," that addresses these issues at 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 13, in 114 Strickland Hall on the MU Campus. The talk will be free and open to the public. It will deal with misconceptions that lead people to resort to violence when problems can be resolved nonviolently.