Lectures start promptly at 7:00PM and are held on the 2nd Tuesday of each month June through August 2021.  Our fall 2021 schedule will soon be posted.  The fall 2020 and spring 2021 schedules were canceled due to COVID.

The 2021 summer lectures will be conducted solely via Zoom.  Click the link below the talk abstract to join the meeting.

6-8-2021 Confederate Monuments, Problematic Politicians, and Sexist Art: When is Endorsement Morally Permissible?

Alida Liberman, Ph.D.,  SMU

It is widely assumed that you can meaningfully separate the good and bad characteristics of a symbol, person, activity, or work of art, and can permissibly choose to support the good features while denouncing the bad features. I argue that this is only sometimes true: when certain conditions are met - namely, proportionality, separability, and constrained choice - it is morally permissible to directly endorse some object in virtue of its positive properties while standing against its morally negative properties, even though it would be morally impermissible to directly endorse those negative properties by themselves.

Click the link below to view the talk.  Use passcode FTtc5AM%

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/UqCRhIC9l5eySp9bWnc7Q3nLGsLcAWI12ZSGNUdJqrlJ8_pZ3PweUoOM_FtqcjDZ.tKFr40g-HAH1Fgpe 

7-13-2021 Discovery in the Everyday Practice of Science: The Logic of Unintended Experiments

Fred Grinnell, Ph.D.

Internet synopsis: Generating new ideas is central to what scientists hope to accomplish. What they aim for is learning new things about the world and how it works. The American philosopher Charles Pierce gave the name “abduction” to what he described as the logic of discovery. Dr. Grinnell will focus on understanding abduction when a surprising observation becomes an unintended experiment involving a new research problem that has not been previously studied or possibly even known. Abduction means taking advantage of opportunities that serendipity creates. For science, the consequences can be the beginning of a new field of investigation. For the researcher, the consequences can be life changing.

Click the link below to view the talk.  Use passcode cNw?Ga7p

https://ccsb.zoom.us/rec/share/oSX-Z2z3KGOnfqkoLDjEorJyb4KLlw78LOzJT3PMgQgjkVfLtrUlVpFYQYDT9vo.CmpY0PFyI3u4vDxD

8-10-2021  The Conflict Paradox

Randall S. McKellar, B.S.

There is an alignment error at the core of Human Society. Small and inconsequential when first introduced with the emergence of consciousness, the gap has widened over the millennia of Human existence, a gap that is responsible for our current and historic social ills—everything from wars, terrorism, conflict small and large, to poverty, economic dysfunction and political gridlock, to depression, mental illness, suicide, domestic violence, random shootings and crime on an individual level.  It is not only the cause; it serves as a block on our ability to make significant progress toward eliminating these ills from our lives.
This talk will examine our Human behavioral matrix and the tension between our sense of Community and our need for Conflict as both the prime motivator for our success and the secret cause of our destruction.