Sep

30

Will the Internet Drive us to Nihilism?

September 30, 2010 | 2 Comments

This week in UPA we’re reading the conclusion of Hubert Dreyfus’s book On the Internet. His conclusion builds to the idea that the internet will drive us all to Nihilism! This distinguished professor is a member of the UC Berkely faculty. His specific interest in the philosophy is existentialism. To find out why Dreyfus would [...]

Sep

23

UPA’s First Grad Student Talk of the semester!

September 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Dear Philosophers, This Friday we are having our first major event of the semester! We are having our first graduate student talk by Tomas Bogardus. Tomas will be giving a talk on personal identity. We invite you to join us in our next meeting with all of your questions and comments: Friday, September 24, 2010 [...]

Sep

15

Why do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?

September 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Dear Philosophers, This week we are discussing Robert Nozick’s analysis of a phenomenon we see in our society today. In our society there is a trend of the Intellectual opposing Capitalism. Nozick claims that this trend is an “anomaly.” Further, he offers an account of why it is the case that the Intellectual opposes Capitalism. [...]

Sep

8

Russell’s Universals

September 8, 2010 | 4 Comments

This week in UPA, we’re reading a chapter from Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy called The World of Universals. In this chapter, Russell, the author of Why I am Not a Christian, talks about his belief in an unsensible world of being, where universals subsist. It might seem strange for such a metaphysical, Platonic [...]

Sep

6

The Minutes from our September 3rd Meeting

September 6, 2010 | 4 Comments

We hope everybody is having a good Labor Day weekend! For anyone who missed the last meeting we will post some brief announcements. (1) We will introduce a new tradition for our meetings. At the end of the meeting we will have two members give concluding remarks (limit 5 min. each remark). This practice is [...]

Sep

1

Karl Popper’s “What is Dialectic?”

September 1, 2010 | 106 Comments

Dear Philosophers, First, we would like to thank all of you who came out to our first meeting! We really enjoyed the discussion over T.K. Seung’s “Methods of Philosophy.” There were many excellent comments and arguments made in our discussion. We look forward to seeing you this week for our second meeting. This week we [...]