What we’re about
P&G is more than just a group of people. It is a community. A community of philosophers, thinkers, book readers, paper readers, and folks that ask the foundational questions. What is the meaning of life? How do we know what we know? What makes us human? These are some of the questions that P&G members explore together through lively discussions and debates. But P&G is not only about intellectual pursuits. It is also a community of thoughtful people coming together to hike, and hangout. Whether it's enjoying the beauty of nature, sharing a meal, or playing games, P&G members bond over their common interests and values. P&G is a community where you can find friends who challenge you to grow and support you along the way.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Rainer Maria Rilke - LettersLink visible for attendees
Read and discuss the fourth letter, on page 13, here
Rainer Maria Rilke Letters
Optionally read the letters on pages 19,23,28, and 33.How do you relate to yourself? And an other? I’ll try to answer…
Pause, and think, and sense, and get beyond your memory and constructed world, the incidental details of your remembered life one minute ago, one hour ago, and the story that you tell yourself about your day, and your life, and what you think that you are, and focus on the present. Can you do this? Are you comfortable, moving within the narrow bounds of your thoughts? Can you stop the spinning from one vague notion to another and focus on the simple present? Can you be alone, and drop the exigencies of both the fabrications of your intellect and the vague animal sense of your emotional current? Pause, and think.
Being alone. Here’s poem by Padraig O Tuama
a video poemThen there is the other. You know when you really connect with another, which almost never happens, as we mostly and casually relate to the other as an it, not a you, not a thou. When it does happen, there is an oceanic feeling, and the words are not fabricated, but are simply an expression of your being. It’s a simple thing, but rare, like the glint of the sun on a spider’s web; but not a pattern, a flowing thing. And the words aren’t actually spoken, but shared. Finding yourself, touching an other, is the distillation of being.
Simple questions; hard to answer.
Now you try to answer…
- Alex Bird: The advantage of dispositional conceptions of lawsLink visible for attendees
Reading for this Meeting: LINK
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WARNING:
It is full of philosophical jargon and complex technical terms. Your expectation should be to treat it as a graduate seminar in philosophy. We don't assume you have a degree in philosophy, but we do assume philosophical maturity, and/or a crazy level of passion for deductive reasoning. If you are into that sort of thing, be my guest. We will start reviewing the first three pages of the paper, and start reading from page 3.Details:
Think of properties—mass, charge, fragility—not as inert labels, but as packages of built-in powers. To have charge just is to repel or attract in certain ways. To be fragile just is to shatter when struck. If that’s true, then the laws of nature aren’t mysterious rules glued on top of the universe—they’re simply what follows from the natures of those properties.
So: fix the properties, and the laws come for free. If mass is essentially that which resists acceleration and generates gravitational attraction, then Newton’s laws aren’t contingent “cosmic habits,” they’re locked in by what mass is. That’s why Bird says laws are metaphysically necessary—they hold in all possible worlds where those properties exist.
