Denver Philosophy Book Club

Evelyn will host our discussion of The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics by Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb. Evelyn suggested this book.

The story of four remarkable women who shaped the intellectual history of the 20th century: Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch.

On the cusp of the Second World War, four women went to Oxford to begin their studies: a fiercely brilliant Catholic convert; a daughter of privilege longing to escape her stifling upbringing; an ardent Communist and aspiring novelist with a list of would-be lovers as long as her arm; and a quiet, messy lover of newts and mice who would become a great public intellectual of our time. They became lifelong friends. At the time, only a handful of women had ever made lives in philosophy. But when Oxford's men were drafted in the war, everything changed.

As Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch labored to make a place for themselves in a male-dominated world, as they made friendships and families, and as they drifted toward and away from each other, they never stopped insisting that some lives are better than others. They argued that courage and discernment and justice--and love--are the heart of a good life.

This book presents the first sustained engagement with these women's contributions: with the critique and the alternative they framed. Drawing on a cluster of recently opened archives and extensive correspondence and interviews with those who knew them best, Benjamin Lipscomb traces the lives and ideas of four friends who gave us a better way to think about ethics, and ourselves.

If you would like to host one of our events and you have a book in mind, please let me, Karl Kiefer, or Mark Hopkins know, and we will create a Meetup event for your book, assuming your suggested title qualifies as a book on philosophy in our view. Our criteria are somewhat vague, but let's just say that we are not interested in books on the supernatural. We are interested in books that you might find in a syllabus for a college philosophy course. You can always email me at camkruger@gmail.com if you have questions and/or suggestions.

As always, it's essential that everyone who comes to the meeting reads the book in its entirety and brings something for the potluck.

Happy reading!

Karl will host our discussion of "All Concepts Are Ad Hoc Concepts"
by Daniel Casasanto & Gary Lupyan. Karl suggested this paper. Download the PDF by clicking on the link above.

This 19-page paper is not difficult to read nor technically obscure, but will likely challenge your intuitions about the meaning of meaning, and should provide for a lively and stimulating discussion.

From the introduction: "To explain how people think and communicate, cognitive scientists posit a repository of concepts, categories, and word meanings that are stable across time and shared across individuals. But if concepts are stable, how can people use them so flexibly? Here we explore a possible answer: maybe this stability is an illusion. Perhaps all concepts, categories, and word meanings (CC&Ms) are constructed ad hoc, each time we use them. On this proposal, which we call the ad hoc cognition (AHC) framework, all words are infinitely polysemous, all communication is 'good enough,' and no idea is ever the same twice.... If this is true, then a central goal of research on language and cognition should be to elucidate the fleeting, idiosyncratic neurocognitive representations that people actually use for thinking and communicating, rather than to discern the nature and origin of context-independent CC&Ms, which, we argue, only exist as theoretical abstractions. Thinking depends on brains, and brains are always changing; therefore thoughts are always changing. Rather than trying to explain concepts, categories, and word meanings as things that we have in our minds, like entries in a mental dictionary or mental encyclopedia, it may be more fruitful to build theories of conceptualizing, categorizing, and constructing word meanings: things that we do with our minds."

If you would like to host one of our events and you have a book in mind, please let me, Karl Kiefer, or Mark Hopkins know, and we will create a Meetup event for your book, assuming your suggested title qualifies as a book on philosophy in our view. Our criteria are somewhat vague, but let's just say that we are not interested in books on the supernatural. We are interested in books that you might find in a syllabus for a college philosophy course. You can always email me at camkruger@gmail.com if you have questions and/or suggestions.

As always, it's essential that everyone who comes to the meeting reads the book in its entirety and brings something for the potluck.

Happy reading!

Richard will host our discussion of Molecular Storms: The Physics of Stars, Cells and the Origin of Life by Liam Graham. Richard suggested this book.

“Following in the footsteps of Stephen Hawking's ‘A brief history of time’ and Simon Singh's ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ this exceptionally accessible book will you leave marveling at the wonders of the world and, if you didn't listen to your science teachers, wishing you had. Graham writes with the mind of a physicist and the soul of a poet.”

- Nicki Hayes, CCO, The Communications Practice, author of First Aid for Feelings.

“Only a few writers have managed to turn the highly technical jargon of science into language accessible for interested lay readers. Isaac Asimov showed us how it could be done, and Carl Zimmer and Brian Greene are continuing today. In Molecular Storms, his first book, Liam Graham has shown that he has the essential quality required to join this group, a love of first learning then explaining how the universe works."

- David Deamer, Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz,author of Assembling Life.

Why is the universe the way it is? Wherever we look, we find ordered structures: from stars to planets to living cells. This book shows that the same driving force is behind structure everywhere: the incessant random motion of the components of matter. Physicists call it thermal noise. Let’s call it the molecular storm.

This storm drives the fusion reactions that make stars shine. It drives whirlpools and currents in atmospheres and oceans. It spins and distorts molecules until they are in the right orientation to react and form new substances. In living cells, it drives proteins to fold and molecules to self-assemble. It is behind every detail of the astonishing molecular machines that control cellular processes.

Using cutting-edge research, Molecular Storms takes us on a dazzling journey from the early universe to the interior of the smallest living things. There, in a nanoscale world of biological devices, it explains the physics behind the chemical system which we call Life.

Whether you're someone with a general interest in science or a student looking to add context to your studies, this book is for you. Molecular Storms is an accessible and captivating read that will deepen your appreciation of the power of science to explain the world.

If you would like to host one of our events and you have a book in mind, please let me, Karl Kiefer, or Mark Hopkins know, and we will create a Meetup event for your book, assuming your suggested title qualifies as a book on philosophy in our view. Our criteria are somewhat vague, but let's just say that we are not interested in books on the supernatural. We are interested in books that you might find in a syllabus for a college philosophy course. You can always email me at camkruger@gmail.com if you have questions and/or suggestions.

As always, it's essential that everyone who comes to the meeting reads the book in its entirety and brings something for the potluck.

Happy reading!

Jim Black will host our discussion of Consciousness Explained by Daniel C Dennett. Jim suggested this book.

Daniel Dennett's "brilliant" exploration of human consciousness — named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times — is a masterpiece beloved by both scientific experts and general readers (New York Times Book Review).

Consciousness Explained is a full-scale exploration of human consciousness. In this landmark book, Daniel Dennett refutes the traditional, commonsense theory of consciousness and presents a new model, based on a wealth of information from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Our current theories about conscious life — of people, animal, even robots — are transformed by the new perspectives found in this book.

"Dennett is a witty and gifted scientific raconteur, and the book is full of fascinating information about humans, animals, and machines. The result is highly digestible and a useful tour of the field." —Wall Street Journal

If you would like to host one of our events and you have a book in mind, please let me, Karl Kiefer, or Mark Hopkins know, and we will create a Meetup event for your book, assuming your suggested title qualifies as a book on philosophy in our view. Our criteria are somewhat vague, but let's just say that we are not interested in books on the supernatural. We are interested in books that you might find in a syllabus for a college philosophy course. You can always email me at camkruger@gmail.com if you have questions and/or suggestions.

As always, it's essential that everyone who comes to the meeting reads the book in its entirety and brings something for the potluck. Jim will provide main course ( spaghetti or pizza ), so please bring wine, dessert, or salad.

Happy reading!