Next Live Dialogue - June 4, 2008

Greetings Philosopher Friends,

It's that time once again for your friendly reminder. The next live Thinking Out Loud podcast event will take place this coming Wednesday, June 4th, at 7:00 pm as usual.

The topic selection process will begin promptly at 7:00, allowing us, hopefully, to begin our podcast recording promptly at 7:15. Please come prepared with your favorite topic ideas. You can recycle past topics or suggest new ones. We will decide among them by our usual voting procedure. Our recording session will go for one hour, as always, after which I will be available for an additional 15 minutes to discuss the discussion, as a kind of "post-mortem". If you have gripes, observations, or suggestions to make about how things went, you are welcome to let me know at that time. Of course, you are always welcome to email me your thoughts later as well.

Those of you participating through our cyber connection (Skype), please follow the same procedure as last time. Steve Stokes will be your cyber host. Steve will attempt to add you to our Skype conference call if your Skype ID indicates you are online. I recommend you let Steve know ahead of time if you are planning to participate. It will make his job a little easier as he attempts to get everyone connected who wants to be connected. Thanks.

Finally, let me share with you some interesting statistics:
Total hits on our web site in May: 78,828
Average hits per day: 2,627
Average visits per day: 82
Most popular podcasts for the month:
1. Good Philosophical Conversation
2. Collective Responsibility
3. What is Love?
4. Free Will
5. The Nature of Addiction
6. Limits to Knowledge
7. What is Religion?
8. What is Evil?
9. What is Happiness?

Let's keep up the good work. People are listening.

Best Regards,

Steve

******************************************************
Steve Donaldson,
Personal Growth Consultant,
Independent Educator,
Citizen Philosopher
www.citizenphilosopher.com

P.S. If you prefer to just listen in, that is fine as well. The podcast of our conversation will be released on iTunes few days after the live discussion, usually on the following Sunday. Enjoy.

After the Afterthoughts - a poem & picture

I went out for a run on this beautiful day in May. As I passed the campus water-feature in the dell at the foot of the University science departments, the following words assembled themselves in my mind - a short poem on the nature of philosophy, philosophers and philosophizing. I call it "Still Pond":

Still Pond
Still Pondering
Still Reflecting
Natural Philosopher

The TOL mascot reminding us that philosophy goes way back!

Afterthoughts on Philosophical Conversations

Greetings Fellow Philosophers,

Since our last Thinking Out Loud discussion on "What makes for a good philosophical conversation?", some of you have shared insightful afterthoughts with me. I would like to share some of those perspectives with the rest of you as well.

Here are some short answers to the question,
"What makes for a good philosophical conversation?":
1. A philosophical question.
2. A philosophical method.
3. A willingness to participate ("buy-in")
4. A willingness to listen for understanding.
5. A tolerance for disagreement.
6. A measure of humility.
7. An attitude of curiosity.
8. Brevity.
9. Clarity.
10. Civility.
11. Individual and collective self-discipline
12. Mindfulness.
13. Imagination.
14. A sense of humor.
15. A reverence for truth.
16. Authenticity
17. Restraint of impulsive criticism
18. Thoughtful reflection.
19. A desire to learn and grow.

Steve Whiteman in addressing item #1, "What is a philosophical question?", offered the following thesis:
"A philosophical question is one which cannot be profitably addressed by another discipline."

Steve Stokes offered three more perspectives to help us distinguish between what is philosophical and what is not:

Understanding 1
The Love of Wisdom: this is what philosophy means. But this only leaves us with the two or three new and possibly harder questions; what is love, what is wisdom, and what does it mean to love wisdom.

Understanding 2
Socrates tried to make philosophy clear, not by definition but by illustration. Like a zen koan, he makes the challenging statement that "the unexamined life is not worth living". I interpret this to mean that for humans, to live a life without examining that life as it is lived, is to live a worthless life. From this I gain part of what my understanding of what philosophy is, it is living the examined life.

Understanding 3
At the July (07/05/2007) Thinking Out Loud I introduced the group to my concept of philosophy being about what I refer to as the latent questions of life. Latent questions being those questions that are beyond immediate answers that can be firmly arrived at by the sciences and social sciences.

Here are some snippets of my own afterthoughts in this post-dialogue dialogue:

"I have heard science described as "both a body of knowledge and the process by which that knowledge is discovered." Perhaps philosophy could be described as "both a body of WISDOM and the process by which that wisdom is discovered.""

"I believe it [wisdom] may be THE key distinguishing characteristic of philosophy (certainly one of the key distinguishing characteristics)."

"Man is the "philosophical animal". Therefore, perhaps we need to distinguish among different kinds of thinking. Both man and other animals think. What kind of thinking does man do, beyond that of other animals? Reflective? Contemplative? Mindful? (well..Philosophical)"

"So perhaps we might say that philosophical questions are questions that lend themselves to (or even require) the philosophical process. Philosophical questions are questions that cannot be answered immediately, but rather require deliberation."

"As far as subject matter (as opposed to process) how do we identify the philosophical as opposed to the non-philosophical? I would suggest they are the questions that have to do with meaning as opposed to simple statements of fact. The "why?" and "what does it mean?" questions as opposed to "just the facts, Ma'am" questions."

"...philosophical questions tend to be timeless and universal. So I think it would be fair to object to a topic suggestion on the grounds of being too particular or too "dated". For instance, "Should we have invaded Iraq?" is dated but the more philosophical question "When is it ethical to go to war?" might be more suitable for a philosophical discussion group."

If you have any afterthoughts you would like to add, feel free to send them to me. In any case, I hope some of these ideas will help us become better philosophers, help us formulate good questions, and enhance the quality of our philosophical conversations. It is not too soon to start formulating one or more philosophical questions for our next meeting on June 4.

Enjoy,

Steve

******************************************************
Steve Donaldson,
Personal Growth Consultant,
Independent Educator,
Citizen Philosopher
www.citizenphilosopher.com

Good Philosophical Conversation

Greetings Citizen Philosophers,

The latest Thinking Out Loud podcast has been released on iTunes. The session was recorded on Wednesday, May 7th, and the topic was:

"What makes for a good philosophical conbversation?"

Thank you, Billie Lagerwerff, David Rood, Deborah Martin, John Tytus, Steve Stokes, Steve Whiteman, and Uriah J. Fields, for your participation. We had a lively discussion. For those of you who missed out, here are some of the questions we wrestled with:

What makes a subject matter, philosophical? What makes a conversation style, philosophical? What is required for effective conversation of any kind? Is a cooperative style better than a confrontational style in philosophical discussions? What does it take to understand another's point of view? What is the objective of a good philosophical conversation? Is the search for meaning an essential part of any philosophical conversation? What fosters philosophical thinking in others? What stifles it? Are all philosophical questions timeless and universal? Are all timeless and universal questions philosophical? Must the philosophical topic lie outside the bounds of other established disciplines? Is a conversation about philosophical conversation, a philosophical conversation? Must the philosophical question be answerable? Must it be amenable to examination? What methods of examination are philosophical? How does one measure the success of a philosophical conversation? Who benefits from the conversation? What are the benefits? Are the benefits strictly intellectual? What does it take to benefit from a philosophical conversation? Can one find philosophical insight in any conversation? Can one find philosophical insight in entertainment? How can we find philosophical insight in any present moment?

I want to extend a special thanks to Steve Stokes for his work as our cyber host. Steve succeeded in connecting all four cyber guests, reaching way into the cyber hinterland to retrieve Debbie who was initially nowhere to be found, and on more than one occasion successfully resuscitated connections with David after they mysteriously went dead. On top of working all the connections, Steve monitored the cyber queue and kept me informed on who among our cyber guests was next in line to speak. Needless to say, all this made my job a lot easier. Thank you, Steve.

To subscribe to the podcast with your podcast software (such as iTunes or iPodder) copy and past the following link into your software:

www.citizenphilosopher.com/rss/tol_podcasts.xml

If you have iTunes, you can find us listed in the Apple Music Store directory under Podcasts/Society & Culture/Philosophy, or just do a search in iTunes on Thinking Out Loud People. The direct iTunes link is:

phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=214321935

If you don't have iTunes or other podcast software and just want to download the mp3 file directly, use this link:

Listen to the broadcast (mp3)

You are invited to add your thoughts by clicking on the "comments" link at the lower right hand corner of this post.

The next Thinking Out Loud will be Wednesday, June 4th, at 7:00 pm. No topic has yet been chosen.

If you have any other new topics to suggest or old topics you want to recycle, let me know.

Cheers,

Steve