Philsoc Away Day, Sunday 23rd July 2017onUNIVERSALSOn Sunday 23rd July 2017 we held our sixth AwayDay at Pigotts. 26 of us gathered at Pigotts, including the four Philsoc members who gave excellent talks on the subject of Universals. The programme and details of the speakers, appear below, with transcripts of their talks or notes linked from titles of their talks Pigotts is a historic and wonderfully rural location in the Bucks countryside near High Wycombe, a place to escape all urban distractions and enjoy philosophy. The format is not unlike Members' Days held in Rewley House, but cosier and more bucolic! The day, as always, included a slap-up lunch provided by members – or their wives! Pretty good value for 2017's all-in price of £15
The theme of Universals is a central topic in philosophy since at least the time of Plato's Ideas or Forms. Plato's Forms reappeared almost unaltered as Bertrand Russell's universals in the latter's extremely readable and inexpensive The Problems of Philosophy (1912). Universals also masquerade as 'properties', 'types', 'kinds', 'attributes', 'qualities', 'features', etc. The precise relationship between such universal qualities, properties etc and the particulars to which they are attributed or in which they inhere continues to exercise philosophers to this day. What universal quality does any particular game have – say tennis, patience, ring-a-ring o' roses or blind man's bluff – that enables us to recognise it as a Game at all? Is it an internal essence, or some transcendent ideal to which they all approximate, or a human concept of gameness; or are they only 'games' because we have decided to call them call them that? Each speaker had a one hour slot in which to give his talk of 30-35 minutes and then answer questions. The speakers along with synopses of their talks are as follows. Clicking on a talk's title takes you to a transcript of the whole talk. Bob Stone is a classicist, who specialised in Greek philosophy at
university, where he developed a taste for the whole range of philosophical
thinking. Since retiring from full-time classics teaching eight years ago, he
has attacked philosophy with a vengeance, doing more than twenty OUDCE online,
weekly and summer-school courses, not to mention countless Rewley House
weekends. His hobbies are cricket, arguing about philosophy, writing talks and
Review articles, and editing other people's. Neil Webb, originally from Brighton, currently lives in Scotland
where he has made his home since 1987. He studied philosophy at the University
of East Anglia back in the early 1980s and works in the field of financial
services regulation. Neil has only dabbled with philosophy since graduating,
but does hope to undertake a Masters in the subject when he retires. Bob Clarke studied physics at Bristol University and has since
pursued a career in science and engineering. He co-ordinated Workers
Educational Association (WEA) philosophy courses in south-west London for over
thirty years, which led him to take degrees in the History of Ideas at
Kingston University and at Birkbeck College, London. Peter Gibson is the Secretary of the Philosophical Society. He
taught philosophy to sixth formers for many years. In 2014 he completed a PhD
at Birkbeck. He runs a website (philosophyideas.com), and is trying to write a
book which bridges the gap between introductory philosophy and the more
advanced stuff. He remains naively convinced that philosophy is easier than it
looks. Frank Brierley |