NYC Philosophy and Psychology Readers Community

Do we actually have free will? Or is it an illusion?

In this session, we’ll explore four of the most influential and accessible papers in the modern free will debate.

We’ll read and discuss:

• Harry Frankfurt — Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility
• Daniel Dennett — On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want
• Derk Pereboom — Determinism al Dente
• Thomas Nagel — Moral Luck

Together, these readings challenge some of our deepest assumptions:

• Do we need the ability to “do otherwise” to be free?
• Would indeterminism actually give us the control we’re looking for?
• Are we truly responsible for who we are and what we do?
• Is “luck” more central to our lives than we’d like to admit?

Readings for this Meetup
Four papers approx. 60 pages total. PDFs can be found online through JSTOR, PhilPapers, Academia.edu, and through the library.

Note:
This group is currently underway. I have closed it for RSVP for now. I may open it in the future if we need more attendees. I am managing the RSVP's off meetup for this event so the attendees here are not an accurate reflection of what we have, we currently have about 15 people, if there are dropouts or changes I can reopen for new people.

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Hi Folks,

Please join us for a slow and close reading of Arthur Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Representation.

Schopenhauer is incredibly important as:

• One of the first major Western philosophers to deeply integrate Eastern ideas (after studying the Upanishads and Buddhist thought)
• One of the earliest Western philosophers to build a comprehensive atheistic worldview
• A major critic of Kantian philosophy, reshaping Kant’s “thing-in-itself” into his own concept of the Will
• An outspoken opponent of Hegel, his contemporary and rival professor at the University of Berlin
• The primary philosophical influence on Nietzsche, who regarded Schopenhauer as his great educator

Schopenhauer introduces the Will as the thing-in-itself — the inner reality underlying all appearances. His metaphysics explores how human desire drives suffering, and how we can transcend it through compassion, selflessness, and creative expression, especially through art.

### 📖 Apply to Join

This text is challenging but rewarding. To get the most out of it, you’ll need:

• Some background in Kantian philosophy (especially the principle of sufficient reason, the phenomenal / noumenal divide and Kant's "architectonic"); familiarity with Eastern thought is a plus
• The ability to closely read and interpret complex philosophical arguments
• The communication and social skills to express ideas clearly in discussion

You can apply to join by first RSVP'ing to this event, then filling out the Google Form survey linked on this event's location page — I’ll review responses personally.

### 📚 Reading & Participation

In 1945 two peasants
Were digging for fertilizer only to dig into a jar about 60 cm long

Forrst they were afraid to open it in fear of jinn that might be hidding inside. Then they considered that it might contain gold. Only to find old leather volumes of text they couldn’t understandand

This discovery turned out to be Nag Hammadi library. A jinn and gold at the same time.

In this meeting we will discuss:

💎 Discourse on 8th and 9th (Hermetic text) pages 183-185
💎 Thunder: the perfect mind
G. Macrae translation pages 168-171
A. Mcguire translation pages 172-174
(The choice is yours)
💎 Hymn of the Pearl not from nag hammadi but found here https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hymn_of_the_Pearl

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was an Austrian born philosopher known for his contributions to the philosophy of science and his political philosophy. In Conjectures and Refutations, Popper collects a sequence of lectures and articles which expound his idea that science, and knowledge in general, progresses by a sequence of conjectures, guesses which do their best to explain the body of evidence at the time, and refutations, critical tests which aim to reveal the inadequacies of our current models. Responding to the Logical Positivists who thought that scientific facts could be verified as true by successive experimentation, Popper argues that conjectures can never be established as true. Despite this view, Popper gives a passionate defense of rationality and a reminder of the need to be constantly open to correcting our mistakes. We will read the entirety of Conjectures and Refutations (Skipping some of the more technical appendices and footnotes) over the course of six weeks.