Happy New Year to all Socrates Café goers in the Coffee Gallery in Altadena California, this month, we would be meeting again on the 18th.

In December, we philosophized "death". We all knew what death was until we started asking questions like "How do you know if someone dies?", "What is the cause of death?", "What is a good death, or a bad death?", "Can we look forward to death?", "What is life after death?", "What do Christians, or atheists think about death?". We used the Socratic Method and challenged one another in our assumptions, because of this, the word "death" seemed at the end to warrant another three hours of discussion. However, we decided to kill death and come up with topics of interest for this month. Here is the list:

Universe vs Multiverse, Theism vs Atheism, Fanaticism, Deconstructionism, What makes life worth living and the role of productive work in life?

We would decide on the topic when we meet again on the 18th, see you all there.

P.S, The Socrates Café is a movement started by Socrates, of course, but its popularization goes back to the book Socrates Café by Christopher Phillips. Chris started the first Socrates Café ten years ago and started the nonprofit organization the Society for Philosophical Inquiry to assist the growth of the now 400 communities of inquiry around the world. To learn more about the Socrates Café movement, visit http://www.philosopher.org/ , there is also a survey you can take about your experience attending the Cafés.

Mike Li

Sep 16, 2008 --

A late reminder for the Sep meeting of Altadena Socrates Cafe on Sep 21, 12n-3pm. Sorry I've missed the last couple of meetings but I'm sure you've been in good hands.

If anyone cares to post an update from the August meeting to the meetup board, it would be appreciated.

-Bernard

July 9, 2008 --

Again belated update since you already got the automated send at the beginning of the month.

** I will be out of town and thus not at the meeting on Sun, Jul 20 unless someone has perfected the means for me to be in two places at once (and speakerphone doesn't count). The group will still meet, just that you'll have to pick someone else to facilitate (and if you like them better, they can keep doing so!) **

This will be a highly abbreviated summary of the last meeting:

With prompting from Uriah, we continued our discussion of sacrifice, in particular challenging the definition of loss without reward. In particular Uriah wished to point out that Jesus' sacrifice exists within a broader context than the assertion that it was not merely a value proposition of one life for Everlasting Life for all.

We looked at a several different angles (albeit, as many agreed at the end, not satisfactorily): Is religion sacrifice? Is worship sacrifice? Does sacrifice only make sense in terms of a greater good or does only the intent of person making the sacrifice count? What is the nature of reward/greater good? Is sacrifice the same as altruism (I personally gave a strict biological definition in terms of population genetics but this was found tangental at best).

Stanley brought up the idea of virtue as its own reward, which raised the issue of virtue as part of the social contract. Jan stated that these are all forms of delayed gratification and that sacrifice is a manipulation of others.

(Tangentally, Jan explained his theory that addiction is a benefit for society (for a fuller explanation, I urge you to ask Jan himself).

Eventually we returned to the idea of whether the reality of the sacrifice (does it actually accomplish something) or the perception of the sacrifice (symbolic or personal meaning) matters.

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Post-meeting:

1. Given our divergences and tangents in the past meeting, a few have asked for more structure in the discussion. We have done this in the past by having the person who has a question to raise coming up with a short write-up explaining their position and/or making a short list of 4-6 follow-up questions in order to structure the dialogue. Alternately this can be created at the very beginning by the facilitator.

For example:

QUESTION: What is God?

PREMISE: While most American (92% in one poll, including ~20% of atheists) claim a belief in God or higher power. (Washingon Post, 2007; http://tinyurl.com/6yf3yz). However, the definition of God seems elusive. It is said America is one of the most religious countries in the world, yet it is also one of the most secular. For example, the poll by American Religious Identification Survey at City University of New York finds 16% of American think of themselves as nonreligious ( http://tinyurl.com/5b9dj9 ).

FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS:

-- Can we individually believe in God/Higher Power yet be non-religious? What does this mean for you?
-- What is the importance of Piety? (I will define piety as "active practice of religious beliefs", ie, regular prayer, attending service, following precepts of faith (e.g., 10 Commandments, Beatitudes, etc.)
-- Are we (Americans in 2008) really religious? (What is "religious"?) Or are we paying lip service?

2. It was asked are we doing the dialogue the right way (ie, the Christopher Phillips way). I am of the opinion that THERE IS NOT ONE WAY OF DOING A DIALOGUE or more to the point, THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY OF DOING A DIALOGUE. (There are wrong ways, e.g., everyone yelling at each other; personal attacks and righteous indignation). The job of the facilitator and the discussants is to avoid these. Different groups do it different ways depending on the intent of the facilitator and the group members. Dialogues may or may not be successful. Personally, it is not my idea to be holding a seminar in philosophy but I don't want merely a BS session either.

(At some point, we may just have a meta-meeting on "Why do Socrates Cafe?"; we've done this in the past and it is good to keep or regain our bearings.)

May 16, 2008

Once again I am late sending this update about the last meeting and for the next meeting. We had three returning and three newcomers (welcome!)--Hope everyone can come again! We had a highly spirited discussion starting from my oft-asked question "What is the meaning of life?", which we honed down to "From where do we find personal purpose for our lives?"

The dialogue wended through various sources for meaning: biological imperitive, cultural context, inherant personality, etc. It was noted there is often a tension between a self-perceived purpose vs. cultural signals (eg, bearing children). Uriah insightfully profered this arises out of a hierarchy of values in conflict with a democratic plurality of values. From the idea of being "successful in life", we pondered how do we know what is right vs wrong, better vs worse. This led us into a historical analysis of the evolution of Christian ideals from the Greeks through contemporary philosophers and ultimately how do we know what we know (ie, Epistemology).

For May, we have been asked to discuss "what is consciousness"? Where and how we take this question will depend on you, fellow Socrates Cafe attendees!

PS. In the rush of discussion, I *forgot* to give away the copy of "Six Questions of Socrates" last time. I will do this (someone remind me!) at the one-hour break next time.

-Bernard

The Altadena Socrates Cafe has been meeting for over three years. Inspired by Christopher Phillips' books, scores of people are meeting for these modern version of Socratic dialogue. These are intended to be group conversations which often move in a spiral, touching on topics in ways that may not be obvious at first. Our purpose is to bring back thoughtful dialogue in counterpoint to the shouting pundits of so-called debate on TV and radio.

One need not be an academic or expert. We seek diversity of thought from people from all walks of life.

ALL ARE WELCOME. ALL WE ASK IS THAT YOU BRING AN INQUISITIVE MIND AND A WILLINGNESS TO LISTEN.