Send donations via Zelle to: donate@philosophersforum.org

Send donations via Venmo to: Dallas Philosophers

Lectures start promptly at 7:30PM and are held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month January 2026 through December 8, 2026.   Our meetings are held at the New New Chinese Buffet,  3822 Belt Line Road, Addison, TX 75001 (972) 243-1198,   Zoom access will NOT be available. 

1-13-2026   Child [Mal]treatment in America

Speaker: Beth Williams

Beth Williams is a former advocate for children in child welfare proceedings. In this presentation, she asks the question “when is a child mistreated” as she explores the historical context of a child’s role in society in America. A child’s role in the world determines what constitutes maltreatment. Beth will explore the transition from “seen and not heard” to having quasi-adult agency before the age of legal adulthood and the paradoxical view that persons between the ages of 18 and 25 are legal adults who need special treatment as we learn more about brain development.

1-27-2026 Could there be instantaneous sensory experiences?

Speaker: Phillipe Chuard

Ever since William James (1890) raised it, philosophers have struggled with the question of whether—and in what sense—the stream of consciousness might be continuous: could it be really continuous (in the very same sense in which the series of real numbers is) or merely continuous subjectively (in the sense that there doesn’t seem to be any gaps in our consciousness)? While many philosophers remain unsure as to how to even start addressing this question, just as many express a complete certainty that, obviously, there cannot be any conscious sensory experience which lasts not more than an instant. After clarifying the terms of this issue, this presentation will critically assess some of the arguments advanced against instantaneous experiences and suggest that, in fact, such experiences may well be possible.

2-10-2026  Our Search for Meaning–Frankl’s Interpretation of Will

Speaker: Davidson Sutherland, MDiv

In a world that often tells us happiness comes from power, success, or pleasure, many still find themselves asking a deeper question: What makes life worth living? In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl offers a strikingly different answer. Writing from his experience surviving Nazi concentration camps, Frankl suggests that what sustains us is not what we gain or control, but the meaning we choose to live for.

This conversation will explore Frankl’s insight that the will to meaning is the most enduring human drive: one that remains available even in suffering, loss, and uncertainty. Together, we’ll reflect on how meaning, rather than power or pleasure, provides a more stable foundation for resilience, purpose, and hope in our personal lives and in our shared world.

2-24-2026 A quantum biological neural correlate of consciousness (NCC)

Speaker: Chris Rourk, patent attorney, formerly a scientific researcher at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NCCs are powerful tools for understanding how neural process are associated with the human experience of consciousness, but they do not provide an answer to all of the questions that relate to that experience. For example, why do we choose a specific action (free will), and why is there an integrated conscious experience from many different cognitive and sensory processes (the binding problem)?
 
Quantum biology is the study of biological processes that cannot be explained classically, and which can only be explained with quantum mechanics. It has been applied to the mitochondrial electron transport chain and to photosynthesis, among other things, and has provided useful and falsifiable hypotheses about those biological processes. However, in the realm of consciousness, quantum mechanics has failed to provide such hypotheses. A common objection from neuroscientists to the various quantum consciousness ideas that have been proposed is that quantum mechanics is not needed to explain anything related to how the brain functions, and that classical processes can fully explain its function.  
 
This presentation will first discuss neural correlates of consciousness and then apply the quantum biology of ferritin to neural correlates of consciousness.  Ferritin is an iron storage protein that has been extensively studied and found to support electron tunneling and to have other bioelectric and biomagnetic properties that can be explained using quantum mechanics. The consistent expression of those properties throughout plant and animal species has also manifested itself in the basal ganglia, a biological system that has been conserved in animals for over 500 million years. The presentation will also discuss evidence that supports the presence of a neural signaling mechanism in dopamine and norepinephrine neurons that uses electron tunneling associated with ferritin, and which can also explain why specific actions are selected and how diverse neural and sensory signals are integrated into a singular experience. Unlike well-known quantum consciousness ideas that have been rejected by numerous neuroscientists, this hypothesized signaling mechanism has predicted subsequent discoveries in neuroscience and provides explanations for biological functions. 

3-10-2026  Why Language is Significant for Justice in Augustine’s Political Thought

Speaker:  Miriam McElvain

In his early dialogue On Order, Augustine argues that human association is rationally ordered because it arises from individuals sharing knowledge of intelligible realities with others through language. Consequently, for Augustine, although expressions of justice in political order are partial and limited by the particular circumstances of the political community, because language is a means by which human beings communicate intelligible truths, political order is subordinate to universal standards of justice.

3-24-2026  The Scientific Search for Self, Mind, and Will

Speaker: Paul Tobolowski, MD

Through most of human history, it has been assumed that we exist as individual selves with independent minds that make willful decisions. Current technology offers the opportunity to do brain scanning as people perform mental tasks such as reading, speaking, making decisions, perceiving the world through our sensory systems, and thinking abstractly. The brain can even be tested in its baseline state when it is not actively thinking. This talk is a summary of current scientific investigations into deep philosophical issues. 

4-14-2026  In Defense of Clear-Sighted Hypocrisy

Speaker:  Alida Liberman, Ph.D.

Moral hypocrisy—understood as a lack of consistency between what you believe you ought to do and what you actually do—is routinely condemned. However, the presenter argues that openly embracing our own hypocrisy—and being more accepting of hypocrisy in others—has both instrumental and non-instrumental moral benefits. Many people resolve the dissonance caused by a gap between their values and their actions by engaging in self-deception, wishful thinking, or standard-lowering. Instead, a more productive response is to be more open and honest about your failures. Sometimes, moral improvement only occurs if one is willing to pass through a transitional hypocritical phase that involves opening one’s mind to the prospect of change, even while your behavior remains stubbornly fixed. And even when such clear-sighted hypocrisy does not lead to moral improvement, it is valuable for its own sake: it is morally better to grapple with the uncomfortable self-knowledge of your own shortcomings than to avoid discomfort by refusing to engage in real self-reflection. 

4-28-2026  TBD

Speaker:  TBD

5-12-2026  TBD

Speaker:  TBD