We will be reading Jaegwon Kim’s paper, “Reduction and Reductive Explanation: Is One Possible Without the Other?” at this week’s meeting. The meeting is Monday, 1/30 in Conference Room 019 in the basement of Reynolds, from 7-8:30 PM. Here is a link at which you can access it: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585878.001.0001/acprof-9780199585878-chapter-11

Here is an abstract of the paper:
“Reduction and Reductive Explanation: Is One Possible Without the Other?” discusses the assumption often made by philosophers to the effect that reductive explanation must be distinguished from reduction, and that even where reduction fails, reductive explanation is often possible and in fact successful. The paper explores the relationship between reduction and reductive explanation with regard to three models of reduction, bridge‐law reduction, identity reduction which strengthens bridge laws into identities, and functional reduction based on functional analyses of properties to be reduced. It is argued that bridge‐law reduction delivers neither genuine reduction nor reductive explanation, that identity reduction gives us reduction but not reductive explanation, and that functional reduction yields reductive explanation and, arguably, reduction as well.

While the paper is fairly technical, don’t feel that you need a deep background in metaphysics to participate– we’ll be spending most of our time working through the positions and Kim’s arguments, and I’ll be happy to field questions at any level (though the deeper they are, the less likely I’ll be able to give a fully satisfactory answer).

Hope to see you there!
-Phil

The next Philosophy Club meeting will be Monday, January 23, from 7-8:30 PM in the conference room in the basement of the Reynolds Club. Jonathan Ma will be leading a discussion of “Why Animals Do Not Have Rights,” the fifth chapter of Carl Cohen’s book The Animal Rights Debate. The chapter is available at http://carl-cohen.org/books/AnimalRightsDebate/chapter5.pdf. Hope to see you there!

-Ajay Ravichandran

The first Philosophy Club meeting of the quarter will take place this upcoming Monday (January 9) from 7-8:30 PM in the conference room in the Reynolds Club basement – please note the change in day and location from last quarter. Since we’re meeting in a new location, Philosophy Club board members will be standing at the entrance to the basement (just to the right of the C-Shop) just before 7 to lead those attending the meeting to the new room. We’ll be discussing Robert Adams’ paper “Involuntary Sins,” which can be found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2184713?origin=JSTOR-pdf – e-mail ugphilclubboard@lists.uchicago.edu if you have trouble finding a copy. Adams presents an interesting challenge to the widespread intuition that we can only be morally responsible for those features of our actions that are under our direct voluntary control by drawing on the (in his view) equally compelling intuition that we can be morally responsible for our motives. Hope to see you there!

-Ajay Ravichandran

This week we will be reading David Papineau’s paper: “Must a Physicalist be a Microphysicalist?” Below is a summary of the paper:

This chapter challenges the entailment from physicalism to microphysicalism — the view that all facts metaphysically supervene on the microphysical facts. It observes that physicalists can avoid microphysicalism by rejecting physical microscopism. Humean supervenience is a strong version of microphysicalism, and it is false if a non-Humean view of laws is true. But such a view is consistent with physicalism. A weaker form of microphysicalism adds microphysical non-Humean laws to get a broader microphysicalist supervenience base for all facts. On this view, all the laws are metaphysically determined by microphysical laws and microphysical initial conditions. In response, the chapter argues that the existence of emergent Broad-laws, i.e. macroscopic laws that are not metaphysically dependent on microphysical laws and microphysical initial conditions, is consistent with physicalism. It also argues that physicalists can consistently deny that facts about persisting objects, including organic and artefactual objects, metaphysically supervene on microphysical facts.

You can access the paper here: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/philosophy/people/staff/academic/papineau/articles.aspx

We will meet Thursday from 7-8:30 PM in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club. Hope to see you there!

-Phil

For this week’s meeting of the Philosophy Club, I’ll be leading a discussion of “Some Thoughts About Caring” by Harry Frankfurt. In this paper Frankfurt presents an outline of the features which distinguish caring about something from merely wanting it, with the goal of demonstrating that our action is guided not just by considerations about what we do or do not desire, but also by considerations about what is and what is not important to us.

The paper can be found at:

http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=article&id=563101&download=yes

The meeting will be held in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club this Thursday (11/03/11) from 7:00-8:30 PM. Hope to see you there!

Josh Fox

For this week’s meeting of the Philosophy Club, we will be
discussing Peter Singer’s “Equality for Animals?” Peter Singer
argues that as long as we acknowledge that animals are
sentient beings who can suffer pain, we have a moral
obligation towards them just as much as we do to the human
community. He further argues that the superior mental ability
of humans is no grounds to exclude animals from equal
treatment.

We will meet Thursday, 10/20, from 7-8:30 PM in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club.

The paper can be found at:

http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1979—-.htm

See you guys Thursday,

Josh Kim.

For this week’s meeting, Josh Fox will be leading a discussion of Tamler Sommers’ paper “The Objective Attitude.” The paper explores the ways that accepting the claim that people lack the freedom necessary for moral responsibility would change how we relate to others and to ourselves, with the aim of undermining the common fear that accepting the impossibility of moral responsibility would significantly impoverish human life. A copy of the paper can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.487.x/pdf.

E-mail ugphilclubboard@lists.uchicago.edu if you have trouble finding a copy. The meeting will be in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club (on the 2nd floor, across from Hallowed Grounds) from 7-8:30, as usual. Hope to see you there!

-Ajay Ravichandran

For this week’s meeting of the Philosophy Club, we will be discussing Clinton Golding’s “A Conception of Philosophical Progress.” It argues that the aim of philosophy is to resolve and clarify philosophical problems– an endeavor which is distinct from settling final answers or solutions.

You can access this paper at:

http://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1389&context=eip

Be sure to contact me if the link does not work for you.

The meeting will be from 7:00-8:30 pm on Thursday 10/6, in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club. We hope to see you there!

Best,
Phil Yaure

Attached below are the 2011 Philosophy Club Catalog and paper spreadsheet. These are meant to be used as guides to help select papers for our weekly meetings. Feel free to browse through them for papers that you would like to present, or request that someone else in the club present.

The catalog provides basic information, such as the paper’s broad subject and an abstract, while the spreadsheet tracks some more detailed data, including specific topics, length, and estimated difficulty. The spreadsheet will also be updated during the year to keep track of which papers we have already read.

We hope to see you at our meetings this year!

-Phil Yaure

Catalog

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VyS9BHn8no8deLelkFK2BWCgRMOCQ-GcTbBQLpk2_k4/edit?hl=sv

Spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au4LhW-sSKcfdGFaUjFZb0FfRi1UZm42amFEdlJLekE&hl=sv#gid=0

The first Philosophy Club meeting of the year is this Thursday (September 29) from 7-8:30 pm in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club (on the 2nd floor across from Hallowed Grounds). We’ll be discussing Russ Shafer-Landau’s paper “Ethical Disagreement, Ethical Objectivism and Moral Indeterminacy.” The paper can be
found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2108492.pdf – e-mail ugphilclubboard@lists.uchicago.edu if you have trouble finding a copy. It’s an interesting effort to explore how awareness of the ways in which moral judgments can be indeterminate can affect the debate over the objectivity of morality. Hope to see you there!

-Ajay Ravichandran