Starting with our Inaugural meeting on Wednesday the 7th of February, the 1st Wednesday of the Month we will start with a Zoom session. For now we will meet once a month online, but in future will look at a less formal meetup also on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, most likely in person.
To kick off our inaugural meetup of the devils' advocates Tony will present a talk on the subject of free will, and use this to illustrate how our group may organise itself going forward.
Popular in Lay Philosophy discussions about Free Will are common, but rarely result in agreement. Wikipedia covers the "broad schools of thought" and is worth reading as a primer, to tonight's talk.
However since it appears agreement is rare, Tony has tried to take a more scientific and skeptical approach to this subject and actually does something too few philosophers seem to do, first start with a definition of Free Will, and only then go on to debate its existence or otherwise. Whist this is a "pet theory" of an unqualified philosopher, it introduces to the listener some of the key topic in this debate and hopefully suggests a way to overcome what seems to currently to be an impasse.
Once Tony completes his Presentation we will do the following;
- Open the floor to questions of clarification only.
- Have a short break
- Then we will return and then;
- If time permits give everyone the opportunity to ask questions or comment on the subject at hand
- Sometimes people also like to comment on an issue raise by another attendee as well
- Finally, Tony as speaker will have an opportunity to present agreement with or rebuttal of comments from the floor
