Austin Philosophy Discussion Group (APDG)

🔴Camera & Mic Mandatory!

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Expect a large group and breakout rooms for various topics. From personal growth, loneliness, relationships, divorce, grief, etc. TO politics, philosophy, psychology and more.
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Can’t sleep?
Wondering what others talk about and you’re not ?!

The global gossip?
Undiscovered thoughts unraveled only when the rest fall asleep?!
Falling on the path of another ambiguous beingthat could entertain your every cell of enthusiastic curiosity?

* Worried if you fit in ? Thinking you’re not a philosopher?
Worry not!
We engage in life’s matters in productive comprehensive ways suitable for almost all curious.
If you enjoy analytical philosophy, you may join a breakout room with .. the other birds.. of a feather!

You are one of us if you breath, think, eat and .. talk ! .. and then talk some more…
Philosophy is the oxygen for our concerned and concerning.. minds….

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For the event calendar and zoom issues please see: https://www.meetup.com/mindshearts-without-borders/events/tdfdssydcfbqb/
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December 28 - Having finished reading Book VII on "Troubleshooting the Virtues" and "Concomitating Pleasure with Flourishing," we are going to celebrate at this meeting by renewing and recommitting ourselves to the goals we individually cherish. What has Aristotle been saying about these goals of ours and how we are to achieve them in these seven magnificent books? Let us review, reflect, and rejoice in his achievements.
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Our main translation from here on will be by Adam Beresford (Penguin Classics, 2020), but we will occasionally dip into other older English translations to get more insights and interpretations.
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We are live-reading and discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and we are about to dip into book VIII on friendship, social relations, and love.
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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, generosity, candor, …)
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.

December 30 - We are in chapter 5 of Topics, Book I, currently at Bekker lines 102b4–102b26. Aristotle just defined horos, idion, and genos; he will define the remaining concept: sumbebēkos.
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We are using the translation by Robin Smith: Topics Books I & VIII (Oxford University Press, 1997), pages 5–6.
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Smith in his helpful "Introduction" forewarns us that because we don't know what we are ignorant of, we barbarians don't know yet what dialectic is or why we need it. So there will be learning pain involved as we bootstrap ourselves toward knowing and practicing what we will learn. The payoff will be tremendous and will be commensurate with personal effort.
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A new reading adventure beckons you and your willpower. Join us.
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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 ---- 2025.10.21
|-- 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.