The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

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About us

Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community (online and in-person) for anyone interested in philosophy, including newcomers to the subject. We host discussions, talks, reading groups, pub nights, debates, and other events on an inclusive range of topics and perspectives in philosophy, drawing from an array of materials (e.g. philosophical writings, for the most part, but also movies, literature, history, science, art, podcasts, poetry, current events, ethnographies, and whatever else seems good.)

Anyone is welcome to host philosophy-related events here. We also welcome speakers and collaborations with other groups.

Join us at an event soon for friendship, cooperative discourse, and mental exercise!

You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Bluesky and join our new Discord for discussion and to stay in touch with other members.

(🚨🚨🚨 WARNING: FRADULENT EMAILS are circulating that IMPERSONATE organizers of this group and eventually ask you for money or personal information if you engage. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED SUCH AN EMAIL OR IF YOU ARE UNCERTAIN about any message claiming to represent this group, PLEASE REPORT IT by contacting the main organizer Darren directly through Meetup's messaging system or email us at philosophyto [at] gmail [dot] com. Be vigilant for scams in general, which are everywhere these days and easier than ever to generate because of A.I. 🚨🚨🚨)

Feel free to propose meetup topics (you can do this on the Message Boards), and please contact us if you would like to be a speaker or host an event.

(Note: Most of our events have moved online because of the pandemic.)

"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
— from "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", Wittgenstein

"Discourse cheers us to companionable
reflection. Such reflection neither
parades polemical opinions nor does it
tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail
of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the
wind of the matter."
— from "On the Experience of Thinking", Heidegger

See here for an extensive list of podcasts and resources on the internet about philosophy.

See here for the standards of conduct that our members are expected to abide by. Members should also familiarize themselves with Meetup's Terms of Service Agreement, especially the section on Usage and Content Policies.

See here for a list of other philosophy-related groups to check out in the Toronto area.

Please note that no advertising of external events, products, businesses, or organizations is allowed on this site without permission from the main organizer.

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Make a Donation

Since 2016, the Toronto Philosophy Meetup has been holding regular events that are free, open to the public, and help to foster community and a culture of philosophy in Toronto and beyond. To help us continue to do so into the future, please consider supporting us with a donation! Any amount is most welcome.

You can make a donation here.

See here for more information and to meet our donors.

Supporters will be listed on our donors page unless they wish to remain anonymous. We thank them for their generosity!

If you would like to help out or support us in other ways (such as with any skills or expertise you may have), please contact us.

Note: You can also use the donation link to tip individual hosts. Let us know who you want to tip in the notes section. You can also contact hosts directly for ways to tip them.

Featured event

Disorderly Time: What Death and Midlife Crises May or May Not Reveal about Value

Fri, Oct 16 · 3:00 PM EDT

Larkin Building, Room 200, 15 Devonshire Place, University of Toronto, Toronto, on, CA

As Susan Wolf (2015 [1999]) suggests, value theory is concerned with questions that are simultaneously universal and personal. Nonetheless, there is little attention paid to the question of the personal uptake of these questions. Arguments that cite the examples of near-death experiences (or, more strongly, the deathbed) and midlife crises focus on the idea that these experiences provide special (albeit defeasible) access to questions about intrinsic value and meaningfulness. These experiences are, it is thought, a helpful corrective to the distractions that interfere with our ability to know what has intrinsic value or what would make our lives (more) meaningful. The problem is that it is not clear why (or, more skeptically, whether) these experiences actually do this.

In this talk, I have three aims. First, I show that though the deathbed and midlife crises are, in line with our intuitions and our everyday parlance, what I dub "vantage points on value," it is not for the familiar reasons. It is (largely) because they highlight what I will characterize as the "personal" aspects of intrinsic value and meaningfulness in life. I show, second, that the 'personal' is not reducible to the subjective aspects of value or to a subjectivist picture of intrinsic value and meaningfulness. I conclude by briefly comparing the argument I give here to alternatives advanced by existentialists and, more recently, Samuel Scheffler.

Caroline Arruda
https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/philosophy/people/fulltime-faculty/caroline-arruda
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Tulane

About the Speaker:

My research focuses on issues at the intersection of ethics (both normative ethics and metaethics) and philosophy of action. The basic idea that guides my research is the following: examining the central features of agency will inform our answers to fundamental questions about our moral and political obligations to others, the nature of moral motivation and normative reasons as well as the kinds of reasons we have to value our capacity for full-blooded agency. In pursuit of this idea, my research has two foci: 1) Non-Standard Forms and Expressions of Agency: our understanding of agency ought to include not simply fully developed, rational humans but also collective agents, non-human animal agents and those aspects of human agency that fall below full-blooded agency. 2) The Nature of Moral Agency and its Import for Metaethics: our distinctive agential capacities are understood through the lens of their import for understanding moral deliberation, moral motivation, normative reasons and moral truth.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Free refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here [to be posted].

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai