Pleasure

If any of you would like to get an orientation to pleasure, beyond
what Roxanne has provided in the Philosophy of Sex and Love course, by
the sound of the discussion, I found a few things that might be of
interest.

Easiest because it is an audio file is this audio-talk (about 15
minutes) by Hurka: http://cdn2.libsyn.com/philosophybites/Thomas_Hurka_on_Pleasure.MP3?nvb=20090418105025&nva=20090419110025&t=00bfb25f8b633dccad804

Some of you may recall Kim Setton - he has attended a couple of CHIPS,
our man in Confucian studies. He also runs a website:
http://pursuit-of-happiness.org/default.aspx

For the industrious, there is an exhaustive survey, invoking a good
deal of psychological work, in SEP:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pleasure

I'd be glad of Roxanne's ideas. Beyond that, I shall simply
contemplate the next few bottles of wine.

Ed

Second Meeting

Hi

For two major reasons (Felicia's point about choosing a day near pay day, and the fact that Fred will be leaving the island mid-June) we are proposing to shift the day for PhIG to the FIRST Saturday of the month. That means that we will try to meet again on JUNE 6th - and hope to cash in on the interest shown at the first session. We hope that is not too soon for you; thereafter we will meet just once a month.

At the last meeting the topic suggested for next time was pleasure. We'll post a few thoughts about that very soon.

Yours
Ed Brandon

first thoughts on Fisher?

Quite unfortunately I prematurely left the theatre lastnight ignorant of the fact that the Fisher film was the second, and not the first film! Anyways, for those of you who actually got to watch, any initial thoughts before tomorrow's session?

By way of on-line background for the first topic

Makinde has a book (African Philosophy, Culture, and Traditional
Medicine — 1988, Ohio UP) about the topic but I can't find it on the
web. (It is in Questia but you have to subscribe to that.)

There is a very brief discussion of it by Hallden here, pages 43/44:
http://books.google.com/books?id=p2yZveBQhqAC&pg=PA43&dq=Makinde&ei=oaMSSuacBojQkAT2rqjiCQ#PPA43,M1

Hallden says a lot of it is about divination. There is most of the
chapter on Yoruba divination in the Companion to African Philosophy at
Google books too:
http://books.google.com/books?id=xIVS1hUrknwC&pg=PA22&dq=Taiwo+ifa&ei=46USSrT0Jo3wkQTjnaWZBw#PPA23,M1
- Google books is a pain - you have to go to the ToC and click on
chapter 22 to reach it.

PBS has this discussion:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/altmed/clash/philosophy.html.

A brief guide to Chinese medicine:
http://www.traditionalmedicine.net.au/chinsynd.htm.

Brief blog contribution on Chinese stuff:
http://hcssh.blogspot.com/2008/10/philosophy-in-traditional-chinese.html.

Skeptical Inquirer online articles are here:
http://www.csicop.org/si/online.html.

First meeting

Dear All:

Further to our circular about getting together informally to talk philosophy, we are proposing to meet on Saturday, May 23rd, at 4 p.m. at Weiser's (along Spring Garden Highway, on the beach).

Before then, Anthony Fisher is launching his recent documentary film, "Day of the Sangoma", on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 pm at the Errol Barrow Center for Creative Imagination, at the Cave Hill Campus of the UWI (admission is free to all). It is about the role of traditional medicine in the context of South Africa's HIV-AIDS epidemic. We thought that it might provide a spring-board into questions about traditional medical practices generally - do they count as some sort of knowledge? If so, how should one deal with their variety? etc. etc. We are hoping Dr Fisher will be able to join us for the discussion, but we certainly don't intend it to be restricted to people who have seen the film.

We sent this and the previous message to a large number of people. If you are interested in remaining in touch with this project, please reply if you haven't already - even if you won't be coming on the 23rd. Ideas for topics for future meetings are always welcome.

Welcome!

Dear All:

Welcome to Philosophy in Action! We hope this blog will promote fruitful interaction amongst us all, and a serve as a base for more extended dialogue on the topics offered for discussion.

Happy blogging!
Nicole