Book Discussion Group
Summer 2023 Book Reading Group
Fridays, 12:30-2:00 pm: 16 June, 30 June, 21 July, and 4 August
MCPS Library, 737 Heller Hall and on Zoom
Essays on Philosophical Subjects
by Adam Smith, edited by W.P.D. Wightman and J.C. Bryce.
Published by LibertyFund in 1982. Paperback.
~$15 for the LibertyFund version; 35% off coupon of SPRING2023 at checkout; expires June 30th; https://www.libertyfund.org/books/essays-on-philosophical-subjects/
Readings
June 16th: General Introduction, Introduction, History of Astronomy (pp. 1-47) pdf
June 30th: The History of Astronomy Cont’d (pp. 47-105)
July 21st: Ancient Physics and Logic (pp. 106-129), On the External Senses (pp. 134-168)
August 4th: On the Imitative Arts (pp. 171-213)
Please email Henri Chastain (chast061@umn.edu) or mcps@umn.edu for more information.
Previous Book Discussions
Fall 2022
Neal Jahren led a bi-weekly interdisciplinary discussion on Jessica M Wilson's recent book, Metaphysical Emergence (Oxford, 2021), which presents a systematic and unified approach to issues surrounding emergent properties and phenomena as being metaphysically distinct from the base phenomena on which they depend. Her account is based on a causal powers metaphysics and draws primarily from physics.
Readings:
September 23: Chapter 1 (pp. 1-38) Key issues and questions
October 7: Chapter 2 (pp. 39-74) Two schemas for metaphysical emergence
October 21: Chapter 3 (pp. 75-119) The viability of Weak emergence
November 4: Chapter 4 (pp. 120-154) The viability of Strong emergence
November 18: Chapter 7 (pp. 214-251) Consciousness
December 2: Chapter 8 (pp. 252-281) Free will
Summer 2022
Alan Love and Ben McMyler led a bi-weekly interdisciplinary discussion on Kim Sterelny's recent book, The Pleistocene Social Contract (April 2021), which presents a novel evolutionary framework for understanding the evolution of human cooperation and its evolutionary relationship to human cultural learning.
Readings:
June 24: Chapter 1 (pp. 1-34)
July 8: Chapter 1 (pp. 34-53)
July 22: Chapter 2 (pp. 54-92)
August 5: Chapter 3 (pp. 93-123)