Access to the Small Meeting Room is either through the main hall ie the Ormskirk Room (where there may be another group) 0r by the rear door. From the car park, walk past the main door. The rear door is just round the corner, facing the same way as the main door. It is normally behind a steel shutter which I will raise for the meeting.
We cover a very varied set of topics – philosophy of science, of politics and of morality and more. Our recent topics have been: February – Schrodinger’s Cat and Anti-Realism in Science; April – Testimony; May – Rationality, and July – Plato and Popper on Democracy; August – What is mathematical truth? and September – Does global warming impose an obligation on individuals to restrict their carbon emissions?
There will be no meeting in October.
Next Meeting – Tuesday 12th November – Kant’s Moral Philosophy
Kant is famous for his Categorical Imperative – ‘Act only on that maxim that one can at the same time will to be a universal law’. This is the basis of his rule based morality – ‘deontology’ – which is still one of the three main approaches to morality (the others being Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics). But Kant stated this imperative in a number of alternative ways. We will look at how he derived this imperative, at whether the alternative statements are equivalent and at how far any statement of the imperative yields a viable basis for morality.
Topics for further meetings have yet to be decided.
