About us
Philosophers and Gamblers is a philosophy reading group for people who want to engage seriously with academic philosophy.
Our main weekly event is a Monday reading seminar where we work through philosophical papers slowly and carefully. We often spend multiple weeks on a single paper, reading passage by passage, reconstructing arguments, clarifying concepts, and debating what the author is actually claiming. The point is not to rush through material or collect impressive titles. The point is to understand the argument deeply enough that we can explain it, challenge it, and think with it.
Topics may include ethics, political philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, social philosophy, philosophy of science, and other areas where serious arguments are being made. We keep a shared archive of past readings, so the group has continuity rather than just floating from topic to topic. You can see our past readings here: https://app.notion.com/p/Philosophy-Meetings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8?source=copy_link
This is not a casual opinion circle or a motivational discussion group. It is a place for people who enjoy reading difficult texts, asking precise questions, and staying with an argument until it finally starts to give up its secrets.
Some events in the group may be hosted by other organizers and may follow different formats, including online discussions. The Monday seminar is the core reading event: slow, focused, text-based, and argument-driven.
Upcoming events
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Derek Parfit | The Non-Identity Problem (Part 6)
·OnlineOnlineA live, text-driven seminar on major works in philosophy (mostly analytic). We read the paper together, slowly—stopping to clarify terms, reconstruct arguments, and stress-test claims.
Next week's reading:
https://www.notion.so/Philosophy-Meetings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8?source=copy_link
WARNING
Browse the current and upcoming papers, along with past readings and meetings:
https://opaque-artichoke-859.notion.site/Philosophy-Meetings-and-Readings-2332a602b2fc804f9be6e50c13d7d3a8
Expect highly technical material, dense terminology, and high abstraction. 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. We start with page 10.
HELPFUL
https://notebook.google.com/notebook/149b4bde-aaf0-4e3f-b95f-21470db0d2e3/artifact/1f99edfa-d4b5-462f-a381-1bddcc0e448c?utm_source=nlm_web_share&utm_medium=google_oo&utm_campaign=art_share_1&utm_content=&utm_smc=nlm_web_share_google_oo_art_share_1_
and
https://notebook.google.com/notebook/149b4bde-aaf0-4e3f-b95f-21470db0d2e3/artifact/444f9869-2a85-4456-a75b-e830f9ed7d72?utm_source=nlm_web_share&utm_medium=google_oo&utm_campaign=art_share_1&utm_content=&utm_smc=nlm_web_share_google_oo_art_share_1_
DETAILS
What does it mean to harm someone?
At first, the answer seems obvious: you harm a person when you make their life worse than it otherwise would have been.
Derek Parfit’s famous Non-Identity Problem shows that things become much stranger when our choices affect not only how future people live, but which people exist at all.
Suppose someone chooses to have a child under conditions that predictably result in a serious disadvantage. Later, the child asks: “Why did you choose this for me?”
The natural response is that the parent harmed the child.
But Parfit points out a problem. If the parent had made a different choice—perhaps waiting several months before conceiving—then a completely different child would have existed.
So the comparison is not:
this person with a worse life
versus
this same person with a better life.
It is:
this person exists
versus
this person never exists at all.
If that person’s life is still worth living, can we really say they were made worse off?
And if nobody was made worse off, what exactly makes the original decision wrong?
This puzzle becomes even more important when we think about future generations. Decisions about climate, technology, public policy, war, or economics can change the course of history so much that different people will eventually be born depending on which choices we make.
That creates a disturbing possibility:
A future generation may suffer because of our choices, yet the individuals in that generation may owe their very existence to those same choices.
So can they say that we harmed them?
Parfit’s problem challenges a basic idea in moral philosophy:
> Must something be worse for someone in order to be morally worse?
This seminar will explore Parfit’s Chapter 16, “The Non-Identity Problem,” from Reasons and Persons.
Some of the questions we will discuss:- What does it actually mean to harm someone?
- Can a person be wronged by being brought into existence?
- Can an action be morally bad even if it makes no particular person worse off?
- Do future people have claims against us?
- Should morality evaluate what is best for individuals, or can one possible future simply be better than another?
The paper begins with a strange puzzle about reproduction, but quickly develops into a much larger question about how morality should deal with future people whose existence depends on the very decisions we are trying to judge.
No background in philosophy is required. The reading is short, but the problem is not.17 attendees
Aristotle’s Organon — Topics II — Live-Reading
·OnlineOnlineNovember 3 – We are reading the 2nd-half of chapter 3. The last chapter was on grasping an object through its expression and account: [1] use paronyms to identify P as a coincident, [2] have a chain of definables of the S, [3] have an account each for P and S (and recursively) to see if any assumed combo is untrue, [4] set your premise and try to object to it, [5] acknowledge common usage but defer to precise references.
.
----
.
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 ---- 2025.10.21
|-- Topics Book II ---- 2026.09.29
|-- 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.
4 attendees
Past events
3051
