Philosophy in Pubs, Oxford

Most know about the placebo effect. It is where your mind works with your body to heal, because it believes it can/will despite the 'medication' being imaginary.
But have you heard of its evil twin, the Nocebo effect? This is where you are convinced you are ill when there's no medical evidence showing you have anything wrong with you.
There are many examples of the Nocebo effect. Here is one. Most don't read the small print on the folded sheet of paper inside a packet of drugs.
However, when a patient is read out, in a serious voice by a doctor, the side effects of a drug, they are far more likely to suffer those side effects.
If humans just had a bias towards wanting to get better, then the Placebo effect could be that. But the Nocebo effect questions the whole mind/body relationship.

It seems that for better, or for worse, the biological machinery humans are born with can easily be affected by the rather woolly concept of expectation.
Studies on Nocebo seem to suggest that several things turbo-charge it. Belief in the person telling you something. A track record of something appearing to have an effect.
Thirdly, and interestingly, others around that person acting as if whatever someone's been told is inevitable.

So where is the philosophy in this? Well, much has been made of the separation of mind and body in understanding humans.
The brain is seen as the clever thinking thing that accepts signals from the body and the world, through sense organs like sight and touch, sound, smell etc.
The brain is then where, supposedly, this sensory data is evaluated independently as to the quality, truth, meaning etc. of the information it receives.
Meanwhile, the body is seen as mechanistic, reacting to the influence of food, exercise, injury etc.
Yes, the brain appears to make the body move, and yes, the placebo effect won't fix a broken leg caused by falling out of a third story window.
Nocebo/Placebo still begs the question; how and why does the body react to the abstract ideas we have within our heads about our health? Be it imagined side effects, shifting pain thresholds, the veracity of drugs and, in extreme examples, allowing the body to die because of a mistaken cancer diagnosis? This last example one of many documented in Helen Pilcher's book entitled 'This book may have side effects'.

Perhaps the idea that the brain is detached from the body, that the mind is somehow separate, is mistaken. That what can be seen as ethereal or metaphysical thoughts and the material body, are not two distinctly different things.

Take the analogy of driving a car. Deciding in your head that you are not breaking down doesn't stop your car from not working if it is faulty. . Nocebo/Placebo seems to achieve this though, with thoughts able to fix, heal, or for Nocebo, make us sick. Human health seems to have a very large psychological component to it then, something modern medicine has recently woken up to. And to such an extent, one could argue, that the concept of mind/body no longer serves our health needs. Yet it persists.

Could it be that how humans think and feel is less mind/body, but an interplay between body, belief, being, expectation and cultural context?

Part one. What is behind the influence of our minds on our bodies, and why/how is this trick achieved?
Part two. What other models of seeing humans may be viable, if we were to dispense with the traditional mind/body concept?

PiPs is part of a national movement to encourage people to think about some of the 'big ideas' in life. No expertise necessary, only the desire to do what Wittgenstein described as 'untangling the knots in the way we think about things'.
It is a collective activity, not a debating club.
Everyone attending, and there is often a wide range of people present, is encouraged to listen to and engage with the topic. We hope it is fun and provides plenty of food for thought.
The organisers are trying to find ways to collect money from attendees towards the costs of running the sessions, mostly the costs of using this Meetup site. One of the organisers has something on their phone that can take payments. Suggested amount? Just a few quid now and again for regulars. For anyone turning up for the first time, it's free.

We all use our imaginations to think about how things are, were, or could be. We can imagine what life is like for someone on the other side of the world, or what culture was like 1,000 years ago, or how we will travel in the future. We can imagine alternate realities and creatures like unicorns.

But how far does imagination actually reach? When we imagine something, are we discovering a genuine possibility, or simply rearranging ideas we already possess? A unicorn combines a horse and a horn: has imagination created something genuinely new, or merely recombined what was already there?

In the first half, we'll ask whether imagination is a reliable guide to what is genuinely possible. Is everything we can picture something that could, in some sense, be real? Wittgenstein wrote "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Can we imagine things that are impossible? And what do we mean by "real" in the first place; Sherlock Holmes really is a fictional character, but he isn't real in the same way Napoleon was, or Keir Starmer is, or HS2 might be.

In the second half, we'll look at where our imagination comes from. Our imagination is shaped by our language, the culture we live in, and the stories we read. But if the limits of our imagination are constrained by experience, what does that mean for how we understand each other and the world?

Questions:

First half

1. What do we mean when we say something is possible?
2. How does imagination help us think about possibility?
3. Can we imagine the impossible?
4. What's the relationship between fiction, possibility and reality?

Second half

5. How do our experiences, such as language, culture, and stories, shape or limit our imagination?
6. Can we understand people whose ways of imagining the world are very different from ours?
7. Are there things that only some people can imagine, or can anyone imagine anything with enough explanation and shared language?
8. What are the implications for how we understand each other and the world?

PiPs is part of a national movement to encourage people to think about some of the 'big ideas' in life. No expertise necessary, only the desire to do what Wittgenstein described as 'untangling the knots in the way we think about things'.
It is a collective activity, not a debating club.
Everyone attending, and there is often a wide range of people present, is encouraged to listen to and engage with the topic. We hope it is fun and provides plenty of food for thought.
The organisers are trying to find ways to collect money from attendees towards the costs of running the sessions, mostly the costs of using this Meetup site. One of the organisers has something on their phone that can take payments. Suggested amount? Just a few quid now and again for regulars. For anyone turning up for the first time, it's free.

***

Topic to be confirmed.

---------

Anyone can attend this session. No experience in philosophy or knowledge of the subject is required in advance. Just come along and enjoy. Our events use the the 4Cs of community philosophy:

• Caring for others, making space for their contributions
• Collaborating to get a better mutual understanding rather than scoring points
• Critically assessing what we say, clarifying what is meant and asking what reasons support assertions
• Creatively coming up with alternative perspectives, rather than dogmatically sticking to our initial positions

We welcome everyone of a wide range of ages, social and educational backgrounds etc. Don't worry if you don't have a qualification in philosophy - almost no-one does. Occasionally, attendees will be asked to watch, read or listen to a short piece of material in advance of the session (as the 'stimulus' for discussion), but this will be minimal and will be made clear in the description of the session.

We ask for donations of £1 per session from those who can afford to pay to cover the costs of the Meetup subscription. First timers are exempt. Don't feel obliged to pay if you can't afford it - or pay less. Feel free to put £5 to cover five sessions or however you want to donate - this is left entirely up to you.

Topic to be confirmed.

***

Anyone can attend this session. No experience in philosophy or knowledge of the subject is required in advance. Just come along and enjoy. Our events use the the 4Cs of community philosophy:

• Caring for others, making space for their contributions
• Collaborating to get a better mutual understanding rather than scoring points
• Critically assessing what we say, clarifying what is meant and asking what reasons support assertions
• Creatively coming up with alternative perspectives, rather than dogmatically sticking to our initial positions

We welcome everyone of a wide range of ages, social and educational backgrounds etc. Don't worry if you don't have a qualification in philosophy - almost no-one does. Occasionally, attendees will be asked to watch, read or listen to a short piece of material in advance of the session (as the 'stimulus' for discussion), but this will be minimal and will be made clear in the description of the session.

We ask for donations of £1 per session from those who can afford to pay to cover the costs of the Meetup subscription. First timers are exempt. Don't feel obliged to pay if you can't afford it - or pay less. Feel free to put £5 to cover five sessions or however you want to donate - this is left entirely up to you.