Philosophy Study Group

 

Organizer:  Curt Hillstrom

Date: Oct 21, 2024

Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Location:  via Zoom

At our last meeting we discussed the book, What Would Nietzsche Do?: Philosophical Solutions to Everyday Problems, by Marcus Weeks. This book took various problems that people may encounter in everyday life and offered solutions to them that some well-known philosophers would have presumably given. Since that book covered just about every major aspect of philosophy, we decided to zero in on one or two of the problems and examine them a bit closer.

 

The one chosen is on page 51: “I’m nearly 50, FFS! I’m fed up with being an accountant – should I follow my dream of being a rock star?” The philosophical problems the author says he’s covering are, “How can we find meaning in our lives? Does what we do define who we are? How far are we in control of our own destiny?”You are expected to do some supplemental readings to prepare yourself for this meeting, but you are free to decide what those readings are. Needless to say, for this topic they’re legion. Our usual online sources of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), and Wikipedia do not disappoint. Here’s a couple of recommendations.

Wikipedia has an article covering answers to the meaning of life from an exceptionally broad array of angles, though it’s rather long.
The SEP has an intriguing-looking article on recent philosophical approaches to the meaning of life.

If we manage to finish off this topic, we’ll go on to the problem on page 79: “Is it OK to believe in homeopathy?”, which the author says addresses the philosophical questions of, “Is belief less valid than scientific evidence? Is there a foolproof way of proving something is true? What is “scientific method,” and can it be trusted?”

Again, you are free to choose your own readings, though you will find once more that they’re so numerous that you’ll need several lifetimes to finish reading them. Try this article on epistemology from the IEP.

And if we should finish determining how everyone should live their life and what Truth is, I think that will probably be good enough.

I would also like to apologize for the lateness of this notice. My wife and I decided to defer our tax return to October 15 this year and, as a result, I have been spending many hours scrambling to finish this while ignoring just about everything else. I would not only prefer to be reading philosophy, I would rather be chained to a wall and starved than have to track down 1099’s and understand arcane financial terms. Maybe we’ll just give away our assets – all $3.72.

Curt