I am president of the Philosophy Club at my school. Every other week we meet to discuss a paper. Both students and full time faculty attend. I am in charge of finding these papers. I am looking for something that is about the length of a standard journal article, or maybe a shorter book chapter, accessable enough that novices can participate, but (more importantly) complex enough that professional PhD philosophers can be entertained by an hour discussion on the topic. These pieces need to be controvercial, and it would help if they weren't extremely well known in that subsection of the field. Maybe a spurious argument for something that seems at face value to be false, but might require some work to pin down what the actual problem was. If you all knew of anything like this, it would be extremely helpful. The more the better!
2006-10-01
10:19:00
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4 answers
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asked by
Jason H
2
in
Arts & Humanities
➔ Philosophy
Here's an example of the sort of thing that I mean.
There is an article by David Benetar, called "Why it is better to have never come into existence", in which he argues for that very thesis. It is something which at face value seems untrue, but his argument isn't straightforwardly wrong. Its not wrong because of an emiprical claim; instead, it takes a little bit of philosphical digging to find a problem with it. And the subject matter is open to newbies, while the paper is advanced enough to keep old pros interested. Anything like this, or that would fulfill those criterion? Come on, someone has to have the name of a single paper! :)
2006-10-03
11:25:55 ·
update #1