Aristotle Engages With Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (The Undivided Self)

Welcome everyone to the next meetup series that Jen and Philip are presenting! (starting April 14)

This time around we are reading the book: The Undivided Self: Aristotle and the 'Mind-Body Problem' by David Charles

The format will be our usual "accelerated live read". What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 30-40 pages of text before each session and pick a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

The meetup meets every second week, so there will always be lots of time for participants to get the reading done.

Here is the reading schedule. It is expressed in terms of numbered meeting events rather than in terms of dates.

• First Meeting (April 14): read up to page 40, April 14
• Second Meeting (April 28): read up to page 68
• Third Meeting: read up to page 93
• Fourth Meeting: read up to page 117
• Fifth Meeting: read up to page 162
• Sixth Meeting: read up to page 193
• Seventh Meeting: read up to page 224
• Eighth Meeting: read up to page 253
• Ninth Meeting: read up to page 286

A tenth meeting may or may not happen depending on whether participants feel that we need to do an extra meeting to try to get an overview of the book as a whole.

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Anyone is welcome to come and listen, even if they did not do the assigned reading for that session. However if you want to speak in the meetup, please be sure to do the assigned reading.

For the first two hours of the meetup we will try to speak only about the specific paragraphs that participants have chosen and which we will read out loud.

For the third and final hour (the "free for all") we can talk about any aspect of philosophy that people want to talk about. Anything goes in the final hour "free for all"!

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In this meetup, all technology-related issues are handled by Jen. So if you cannot get into the meetup or are having other technology-related issues, there is no point contacting Philip. Philip is still trying to master the art of building a phone out of two tin cans and a string. : (
So don't contact Philip, contact Jen instead and get some real answers!

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Please note that in this meetup series we will be doing philosophy, and not history of ideas. What this means is that we will be trying to find flaws in Aristotle's reasoning and in his mode of presenting his ideas. The same goes for the contemporary theories in Philosophy of Mind which we will encounter. In both cases we will be trying to improve the ideas in question and perhaps proposing better alternatives. Historians of ideas are people who try to understand ideas from the past. Of course philosophers must try to do this too, but they then go on to critically assess the ideas in question. In this meetup, we will be philosophers and not historians of ideas!

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Here is the blurb from the book:
Aristotle initiated the systematic investigation of perception, the emotions, memory, desire and action, developing his own account of these phenomena and their interconnection. The Undivided Self aims to gain a philosophical understanding of his views and to examine how far they withstand critical scrutiny. Aristotle's account, it is argued, constitutes a philosophically live alternative to conventional post-Cartesian thinking about psychological phenomena and their place in a material world. Charles offers a way to dissolve, rather than solve, the mind-body problem we have inherited.

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If you have never read Aristotle's main book about this topic, we recommend 2 excellent translations:

1. First is "Aristotle De Anima" translated by C.D.C. Reeve
2. Second is "Aristotle's On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection" translated by Joe Sachs

Please note that "On the Soul" and "De Anima" are the same work, just translated differently.