What we’re about
We're a community that practices and discusses philosophy, being free and open to all levels and backgrounds. We offer seminars, a variety of discussion formats, and the occasional lecture / guest speaker.
Many meetings will have fewer RSVPs than people who actually attend. This is because overtime people stop making use of Meetup.com and instead communicate with their groups via Discord, Slack, Zoom, E-mail, or similar You can think of the list of events hosted on this Meetup as advertisements for groups seeking new participants.
Our philosophy offerings are organized and facilitated by volunteers. If you have a philosophy offering - or an offering that compliments the study of philosophy, such as in literature, the sciences, and so on - that you'd like to advertise through this Meetup, please contact the organizer. We're grateful to those who want to enrich Portland with study and discussion!
Participants must speak, write, and act in a considerate, professional, and respectful manner, and be prepared for the meetings that they attend, having reviewed the materials to the degree necessary to participate. If you haven't reviewed the materials but still wish to attend an event, please consult the event facilitator regarding the best manner for you to be present.
We look forward to studying philosophy together!
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Acquiring Character Traits -- Aristotle's Nicomachean EthicsLink visible for attendees
July 6 - This meeting will be a Q&A session to understand fully Aristotle's scenario for troubleshooting what we human beings call lacking self-control (despite our sincere intentions), which, in olden times, is called incontinence or weakness of will.
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The two-part scenario and the key findings are at NE VII.3 1147a24–b5. My summary is on the cloud drive here. https://mega.nz/file/bigWBZSL#L4oq0FmkN9in71kzFtgWm6b5wXMHyEPVuA_HYqahvCU Bring your own questions about the text if you are interested in joining this Sunday's meeting.
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When you are on a diet, and you feel hungry, it matters, according to Aristotle, whether you "see" this piece of cake either as fattening or as sweet. How are you supposed to "see" that? How should you "see" that?
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~, book VII, which is about troubleshooting the virtues.
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The prerequisite to this book is our answering for ourselves these questions from the prior books, to which we will briefly review:
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1. What is a virtue of character {ēthikē aretē}?
2. How does one come to acquire it? (E.g. [Aristotle’s], ambition, bravery, gentlemanliness, ambition, …)
3. From a first-person perspective in being virtuous, how does one feel and what does one see (differently, discursively) in a given situation of everyday living?
4. From a third-person perspective, how is the virtuous person (of a specific virtue) to be characterized?
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The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows. - Aristotle's On Interpretation - Live-Reading--European StyleLink visible for attendees
July 8 - We are returning to the fifth and sixth paragraphs of chapter 13 to rediscover an often-neglected distinction between possibility and necessity as analogous to the changeable and the unchangeable. The bookmark is set at Bekker line 22b29. George will present his findings.
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Aristotle grapples with competing notions of "possibility" {dunamis}--metaphysical possibility concerning a thing's capacity and ability versus epistemological possibility concerning whether the evidence justifies a predication. In this last part of the chapter, he addresses the metaphysical.
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On the nature of anything existent, it is necessarily what it is. What are possible to be or not to be for it depend on what it is already. Some existents have opposite possibilities; but some have only one-directional possibility. Fire, for example, is going to be hot; it cannot not be hot. So, fire has the one-directional possibility about being hot.
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What else? Join the meeting and discuss.
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----Organon means "instrument," as in, instrument for thought and speech. The term was given by ancient commentators to a group of Aristotle's treatises comprising his logical works.
Organon
|-- Categories ---- 2023.02.28
|-- On Interpretation ---- 2023.12.12
|-- Topics
|-- On Sophistical Refutations
|-- Rhetoric*
|-- Prior Analytics
|-- Posterior Analytics(* Robin Smith, author of SEP's 2022 entry "Aristotle's Logic," argues that Rhetoric should be part of the Organon.)
Whenever we do any human thing, we can either do it well or do it poorly. With instruments, we can do things either better, faster, and more; or worse, slower, and less. That is, with instruments they either augment or diminish our doings.
Do thinking and speaking (and writing and listening) require instruments? Yes. We do need physical instruments like microphones, megaphones, pens, papers, computers. But we also need mental instruments: grammar, vocabulary words, evidence-gathering techniques, big-picture integration methods, persuasion strategies. Thinking while sitting meditatively all day in a lotus position doesn't require much instrumentation of any kind, but thinking and speaking well in the sense of project planning, problem-solving, negotiating, arguing, deliberating--that is, the active doings in the world (whether romantic, social, commercial, or political)--do require well-honed mental instruments. That's the Organon in a nutshell.
Are you an up-and-coming human being, a doer, go-getter, achiever, or at least you're choosing to become one? You need to wield the Organon.
Join us.
