Month: March 2019

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Freedom: Part 6

I hope you’re well. Here are the notes on our 5th March meeting. Thanks Zarina for taking the notes, and thanks Shane and others for your recommendations.

Optional Materials

We’ll look at two articles about free will. If the modern views prove less than insightful then we can do another session using more classical philosophy—please do let me know if you have any other resources.

  1. Harris, Sam. “Life without Free Will.” (9 September 2012).
  2. Horgan, John. “Will This Post Make Sam Harris Change His Mind About Free Will?” (9 April 2012).
  3. Life is a Coin With One Side. This American Life. 662: Where There Is a Will Act Two: Life Is a Coin With One Side.
  4. Fruit Flies, Freeloaders, free will, post on No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons.
  5. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Kaufmann. 1966. 188: “Natural History of Morals” in Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. New York: Vintage Books.
  6. Worth having a look at the recommendations from our last session.

Plan for Future Meetings / Request for Help

This is a tentative plan of topics, subject to change as the conversation evolves:

  • Monday, 11 March: Free Will/Determinism
  • Monday, 25 March 2019: Sovereignty?
  • Monday, 8 April 2019: Digital freedom?

Please let me know if you have any material that might be of interest or relate to a future topic—this could include books, articles, videos, podcasts, exhibitions, films or anything else you can think of.

I would also welcome suggestions for other aspects of freedom that we could consider.

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Notes on Freedom: Part 5

Last week we talked about capitalism and its alternatives, based on the Earn a Living video series and the first part of a documentary on anarchism, both produced by ARTE, a French-German cultural/intellectual TV channel.

Topics

  • We started by discussing Universal Basic Income: from the nationwide, randomised pilot in Finland, which just completed its first year, it doesn’t appear to stimulate employment, but it does seem to make people happier, which might not be a bad outcome. See an article about it here.
Continue reading “Notes on Freedom: Part 5”