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Boston Causality Club Meeting Agendas

CC agenda for 12/05/04

Welcome and Introductions

Go over agenda for meeting: opening thoughts, update on CFN, networking update, issues/concerns, music, break, presentation on naturalism and responsibility, then discussion.  Any comments on agenda, its content or structure?  This is your group. 

Opening remarks:

We believe naturalism has considerable virtue as a world view.  Here’s a section from Flanagan’s The Problem of the Soul on one virtue of naturalism:

“Kant drew a distinction between the ideas that regulate or guide an inquiry or project, and those that are the result of an inquiry or project…The first kind he called regulative ideas or ideals, the second kind constitutive ideas.  (74)

“The regulative idea that this world…is fully natural, obedient at every juncture to whatever laws nature abides, has proved again and again to be progressive, to yield knowledge.  The regulative ideal that holds out for the sort of causation required of free will has led nowhere.

“The view that assumes nonnatural causation of the sort a Cartesian free will requires not only assumes something we have good reason to believe is false and is lacking in credible resources to explain the advances of the human sciences, but is actually a morally harmful picture.  It engenders a certain passivity in the face of social problems that lead certain individuals to be malformed.  There are bad people in this world, but if we think that bad people are bad simply, or even mainly, because they choose to use their free will badly, we are making a big and costly mistake.” (152-3)

Update on CFN

Networking/Fellowship Update

 Issues and concerns -  What would people like to explore?  Ask people to voice their questions and concerns, add to list:

 Music – Eugenio Righi, flute

(Break)

 Presentation on responsibility (part of a positive naturalism), discuss, close.

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CC agenda for 11/21/04 

Welcome and Introductions

Go over agenda for meeting: opening thoughts, update on CFN, networking update, issues, break, presentation on naturalism and self-control, then discussion.  Any comments on agenda, its content or structure?  This is your group.

Opening remarks:

We believe naturalism has many applications. An example of applied naturalism, from on online book about self-help therapy by Clayton Tucker-Ladd:

Step 1: Learn to think like a determinist. Think of all behavior as caused and lawful. Discover the causes. (This is a long, rather deep and tiresome discussion of determinism--stick with it. It is not easy to change how we see the world.)

Step 2: List disturbing situations. Recognize that you would do what others have done, if you were them and had their past and environment. Accept your own past behavior.

Step 3: On a moment by moment basis you can learn to accept behavior as lawful, not awful.

After accepting your long-standing pet-peeves and self-criticism, you need to focus on your day to day thoughts, expectations, and feelings which are still upsetting you. The procedure is the same; look for the causes, understand the behavior, persuade yourself that the action has its causes and is lawful. Your hopes and ideals about what is a "good person" may not change, but you can give up your irrational demands that things always turn out the way you want. You can challenge your "shoulds" and "musts," your insistence that you, others, and the world should have been different. Instead of getting upset because things that haven't worked out as you wanted them to, rely on applying your knowledge of behavior in the future so you can get closer to your goals and ideals.

 Update on CFN

Networking Update

Issues and ideas -  What would people like to explore?  Ask people to voice their questions and concerns, add to list:

(Break)

Presentation on self control (part of a positive naturalism), discuss, close.

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CC agenda for 11/7/04

Welcome and Introductions

Go over agenda for meeting: opening thoughts, update on CFN, networking update, next steps for CC, break, then presentation on naturalism and politics and discussion.  Any comments on agenda, its content or structure?  This is your group.

Opening remarks:

Purpose of group: social fellowship, explore and manifest naturalism for ourselves personally and for wider community (Ken: “walk the walk”), build community of naturalists, pursue projects consistent with and informed naturalism, spread the word about naturalism and its benefits. 

We believe naturalism has considerable significance. An example of the significance of naturalism, from an interview with Cristoff Koch, neuroscientist and author of The Quest for Consciousness: (http://www.sci-con.org/articles/20041101.html)

"Immanuel Kant argued two centuries ago against the possibility of a physical event occurring without a prior, physical cause that is, against the idea of a truly free will. Every scientist knows perfectly well that whenever something happens somewhere at sometime, this event has to caused by something else (or a combination of other factors; the universe is causally closed as the philosophers like to say).

Yet, of course, I perfectly well feel that I am in charge, that it is me, Christof, that decided to type this text on my laptop. That is, from a psychological point of view, my actions are not predetermined …. The question is what are the neuronal correlates of this conscious feeling of agency, of being in charge? What are the computational algorithms that underlying its outputs and what are the sources of information this module uses …? All of these are experimentally accessible questions.

The successful conclusion of my quest, identifying and understand the neuronal correlates of all aspects of consciousness, is bound to have significant consequences for ethics. They may give rise to a new conception of what it is to be human, a view that might radically contradict the traditional images that men and women have made of themselves throughout the ages."

 Update on CFN

Networking Update

Next steps for CC

[Issues and ideas (not done, did “Next steps for CC” above)

(Break)

Presentation on progressive political implications of naturalism, discuss, close.

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Causality Club    Center for Naturalism      Naturalism.Org     Applied Naturalism     Spirituality     Philosophy