Get Philosophical at Socrates Café Rockville

UUCR sponsors Socrates Café Rockville on the 4th Saturday of each month, 7:00 to 9:00 pm, in Founder's Hall (in Building 1).

Have you ever wanted a time and a place to have a meaningful discussion about important issues? Have you ever asked yourself questions like these, and wanted to explore them with others:

• What is happiness? How does one pursue it?
• Is torturing terrorists OK?
• What obligation do we have to help the needy of the world?
• When is war justified?

So much public discussion is shrill and adversarial that it’s hard to find a way to discuss respectfully and reasonably, with a goal of learning, not “winning” the discussion.

What is Socrates Café?

The brainchild of philosopher Christopher Phillips, Socrates Café is a philosophic discussion in small to mid-sized groups (up to about 10 people), conducted loosely in the style of Plato's Socratic dialogues. That means that questions are often used to prompt participants to clarify their statements or to consider logical problems with their line of thinking. Often there are many more questions than answers, but the discussions tend to be far-reaching and very stimulating. Participants themselves generate the questions to be discussed each time. They can expect to leave with a better idea of what they think and what others think on questions of significant moral or ethical import.

Our Socrates Café is open to all interested persons, UUCR members and others. We’ll have a coffeehouse-style atmosphere, with coffees, teas and light refreshments available. There is no cost to attend, and no sign-up is required. Just come and explore ideas! For further information, contact Kyle Hedges. Click for directions to UUCR.

When is Socrates Café?

We meet on the fourth Saturday evening of each month (except December), 7 - 9 PM.

Links of Interest to Inquiring Minds

Questions about what we know and how we know it come up often and in various forms at our Socrates Café. So too do questions about the relationship of philosophy to science. There is a tendency by many of us (though certainly not all) to reserve to philosophy (and religion) only those questions that are not answered or clearly answerable by science. So, I thought you might find interesting, from a philosophical point of view, a list published by the journal Science of the top 125 questions not yet answered by science.

A few of my favorites from the list are:

• What is the biological basis of consciousness?
• What is the universe made of?
• Is ours the only universe?
• Why is time different from other dimensions?**
• Do deeper principles underlie quantum uncertainty and nonlocality?
• Is morality hardwired into the brain?
• What are the limits of learning by machines?
• What are the roots of human culture?

An article about the list appeared in the Washington Post on Monday, July 4, 2005.
The full list with supplemental information can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/125th/