What we’re about
- Welcome! Salt Lake Philosophy Club aims to spread the wonder & wisdom of philosophy to the whole SLC area by regular discussion of philosophical works and topics.
- Roughly every 3 weeks we will meet to freely discuss a philosophical (or philosophy-related) reading which will be chosen & posted beforehand.
- Although actually reading philosophy is a key goal here, we also have occasionally more open meetings for discussing a particular philosophical topic--even drawn from a hat!
- Overall our goal is to understand & appreciate the wonderful world of wild, conflicting thoughts that smart people across all times and places have come up with when facing the Big Questions. Questions like: Who are we? What is the good? What is truth? How ought we to live together? And why is meetup so expensive lately?
Upcoming events
1
Is Everything Relative? (The Idea of A Conceptual Scheme)
Barnes & Noble Booksellers Sugarhouse, 1104 East 2100 South, Salt Lake City, UT, US"You live in your own world". "It's like we're not speaking the same language". "We're just talking past each other".
We are all familiar with the challenge of seeing the world as other persons or cultures experience them. But is this because different languages and mindsets live in genuinely different worlds? Or is there common ground to be found between even the most alien cultures and ways of life?
Our next philosopher, Donald Davidson, argues the latter: no matter how alien two languages or models of the world may be, if they both contain truth there is always in principle some way to translate between them. Relativism, in other words, can only go so far.
Donaldson's 16-page essay from 1974, "On The Very Idea Of A Conceptual Scheme", is denser than most of our readings so far, but also more typical of contemporary academic philosophers' works--gritty, analytical, but rewarding for the effort.
A pdf of the essay is available here. Hope you'll join us!
1 attendee
Past events
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