3/21 Meeting!

Good morning, persimmonious friends and family! Good fruit.

We’ll be meeting this Thursday (3/21), 2PM-3:20PM, at KH B3019. As the roundtable combo continues to rack up, this time we’ll be holding a roundtable discussion on the analytic/continental distinction in philosophy! This is a topic that briefly came up during our first roundtable discussion this semester. Often, the field of philosophy gets divided into two subfields: analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. What are the differences between these two? Are there any significant differences? I’ll talk a little bit about the history of how this distinction started to be made in philosophy, and then we can get into some more nitty-gritty details.

It’s a little past mid-semester, and I’m not gonna be cheeky like I typically am. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself, and that you’re getting enough to drink and eat. Coursework and exam prep’s hard. Lots of love to you all!

Best,
Sakib

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3/14 Meeting!

Hello, steam-basket friends and family!

We’ll be meeting this Thursday (3/14), 2PM-3:20PM, at KH B3019. This time, we’ll be continuing our roundtable from last week on religion and the philosophy of religion. We can talk more about the specific relationships between religion and philosophy, and faith and reason; we can also get into some more details about the Divine Hiddenness argument regarding the existence of God that we were starting to get into last week.

I have some big updates for this Tuesday. It’s gonna be National Humanities Advocacy Day! It’ll be tomorrow, March 12th, and the club will be tabling together with the Philosophy Department from 12-5PM in front of the Annenberg Science Complex, Wing B. Come stop by! Some of us will be in costumes, and David Pitt says that students might apparently have snacks, wherever he got that news from.

After we’re done tabling, we’re gonna head off to the second AI debate! This semester, the theme is, specifically, on AI and ethics. Richard Dean and Mohammad Abed will be duking it out in front of a large audience. It will be tomorrow, March 12th, from 5-6:15PM, and it will be held at the State Playhouse on campus. It’ll be a good time! Definitely come check it out.

Wishing you all well! Lots of love.

Best,
Sakib

3/7 Meeting!

Hello, antonomastical friends and family! I’m waiting for confirmation from the council on what we’ll be doing this week. Stay tuned. 10 minutes of time will have passed between the end of this sentence and the beginning of the next.

We’ll be meeting this Thursday (3/7), 2PM-3PM, at KH B3019. To quote myself from last week, “[we’re] going to have another roundtable discussion!” This time, Victor Q. suggested we talk about religion and the philosophy of religion. Guiding questions: Is Islamic philosophy a thing? What is the relationship between religion and philosophy? Faith and reason? How can the two interact with one another in the world? Why is religion important in philosophy? Is my cat a religion? (Yes.) It’ll be good.

Also, to quote myself again from last week, “we have a special lecture coming up” Thursday! Dr. Tom Holden, from UC Santa Barbara, will be lecturing on “Hume on Modal Discourse.” It will be held this Thursday (3/7), from 3:15PM-5PM, at KH D4044. We will be heading over to the talk from the meeting; this is also why our meeting will be slightly shorter this week! Here is a small blurb about the talk:

“Hume regards the ‘absolute’ necessity attending demonstrable truths as simply an expression of our imaginative blocks, and thereby avoids any commitment to a mind-independent and extra-empirical domain of absolute modal properties and facts. I develop this interpretation of Hume’s metaphysics of absolute modality, situate it against a wider understanding of Hume’s philosophy of language, and defend it against some recent objections.”

Also also, here is your reminder that National Humanities Advocacy Day is coming up next Tuesday, March 12th, and the club will be tabling with the Philosophy department from 12-5PM. Then we will be heading over to the AI debate, which will be on the ethics of AI (I promise I’ll give you more information about that later). But keep posted! I’ll remind again next week.

Okay, that’s all I got for you. Take care!

Best,
Sakib

2/28 Meeting!

Hello, coalescent friends and family! No, I don’t know what that word (“hello”) means, and I would love it if someone finally taught me what it is.

We’ll be meeting this Thursday (2/28), 2PM-3:20PM, at KH B3019. We’re going to have another roundtable discussion! The topic will be, broadly, about emotions and philosophy. Here are some guiding questions to chew on: What kind of things are emotions? What are the reasons we feel specific emotions at specific times and places? What kind of ethical and political import do certain emotions have? Is my cat an emotion? Can she be one? (Again, I don’t have a cat yet). Hopefully, we’ll be able to proceed the way we did during the last roundtable, where we slowly moved from the more general points to the more particular ones.

Also, we have a special lecture coming up tomorrow! Dr. Jose Gandarilla Salgado, from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa, will be lecturing on “Moving Out of Neoliberalism? Uses of Law in a Recent Latin America Cycle.” It’ll be held tomorrow, February 26th, from 3:15PM-5PM, at KH B1019. Here is a small blurb about the talk:

“The current world is experiencing a moment in which the permanence of neoliberalism is not a matter of democracy, justice or human dignity governed by post-truth, but the aspects related to the production of normativity; the latter is the real or most significant space where permanence of neoliberalism plays. The battle against the alleged irreversibility of neoliberal social order shows persecution processes against those who oppose it. When they come to govern and lead the state apparatus, they face a whole consolidated network of quasi-supra-constitutional agreements and complicities that try to promote in Latin America a disciplining or persuasive message to prevent the beneficiaries of this economic model from losing their voracious interests. hat seems to be the great challenge facing the South of the world today: the drift of the uses of the law, towards alternative (always uncertain) or fascistic ends, concealed under the principle of unrestricted respect for ‘legality’.”

Okay, cool. Sweet. Wonderful. Fantastic! Glorious… Lovely?

Best,
Sakib

2/21 Special Lecture! No Meeting!

Hello, printer-compatible friends and family!

Let me cut to the cheese here: we won’t be meeting this Thursday (2/21) for a club meeting! Instead, we’re gonna go attend, as I said last week, “a cool talk” that’s “coming up!” Dr. Myisha Cherry, of UC Riverside, will be lecturing on “Women Breaking the Rules through Rage.” This will be held this Thursday, February 21st, from 3:15PM-5PM, at the Los Angeles rooms B and C at the University Student Union. I’ll send out another reminder about this talk on the day of. Here’s a small blurb on what the talk is about:

“Dr. Cherry argues, using women of color as examples, that rage at racial injustice breaks not only “feeling rules” applied to members of oppressed groups, but also “racial rules”— emotive, cognitive, and behavioral rules that enforce white superiority, entitlement, and respect. Such rule breaking threatens racial domination projects within a capitalist, white supremacist, and male dominant society. This explains why some are resistant to and critical of rage–particularly the apt, motivational, and productive kinds–and why a person who has this rage is a resistance figure.”

There should also be a poster for the talk attached to the message!

Something something insert printer-compatible paper joke here. Insert wildly funny punchline that gels with everyone’s sensibilities at once. Insert line here that’s brief metacommentary on the message-form.

Best,
Sakib

2/14 Meeting!

Hello, allotropic friends and family! For the meaning of that word, please reference the Cuvier v. Geoffroy debate in the 1830s in biology on the transformation of biological forms independent of variations in matter.

We’ll be meeting this Thursday (2/14), 2PM-3:20PM, at KH B3019. Last week, we decided that we would hold a roundtable discussion! Here are the questions that will guide the discussion: What is philosophy? What kind of thing is it? What does it do, and what can it do in the world? Is my cat a philosophy? Can she be one? (I don’t have a cat yet). Part of this discussion will involve introducing the different kinds of philosophy that are done in the field. So, do not worry if you are new to philosophy altogether; you will still be able to engage well in the discussion!

Also, we have a cool talk coming up soon! Dr. Myisha Cherry, of UC Riverside, will be lecturing on “Women Breaking the Rules through Rage.” This will be held Thursday, February 21st, from 3:15PM-5PM, at the Los Angeles rooms B and C at the University Student Union. I’ll send out another reminder about this talk next week, and then another another reminder on the day of. Here’s a small blurb on what the talk is about:

“Dr. Cherry argues, using women of color as examples, that rage at racial injustice breaks not only “feeling rules” applied to members of oppressed groups, but also “racial rules”— emotive, cognitive, and behavioral rules that enforce white superiority, entitlement, and respect. Such rule breaking threatens racial domination projects within a capitalist, white supremacist, and male dominant society. This explains why some are resistant to and critical of rage–particularly the apt, motivational, and productive kinds–and why a person who has this rage is a resistance figure.”

There should also be a poster for the talk attached to the message!

That’s all! Let me know whether you believe biological forms can spontaneously generate independent of heredity, or whether accidental variations accruing over time are what account for the evolution of species.

Best,
Sakib

2/7 Meeting!

Good afternoon, gymnopaedic friends and family!

We will be meeting this Thursday (2/7), 2PM-3:20PM, at KH B3019. Because it’s the first meeting, we’ll be meeting up for introductions and icebreakers (we have many cool new members this semester!), and we’re going to brainstorm what topics we wanna discuss this semester (including what topic we discuss for the NEXT meeting after this one). Also, we’re going to participate in the National Humanities Advocacy Day on campus! It will be held sometime in March; more details to follow. We’ll talk about how we’re planning to participate in it this upcoming meeting.

If anyone knows how to prepare a sourdough starter in under 3 hours, please let me know.

Best,
Sakib