History

Adrian told us that people in China seem happy and contented. Women can walk at night with no fear of being molested. Crimes in China are mostly related to fraud and bribery. There are cameras everywhere, usually with face recognition. The taxes people pay are partially worked out by the behaviours detected by these cameras and other interactions with the state. Access to the internet and news is very restricted and tightly controlled. However, on the down side, treatment of animals is very bad, and food markets often have a mixture of live animals including dogs and pangolins. The health service consists of polyclinics and all treatments and medicines cost money. There are not many beggars on the street, but the ones Adrian had seen were mostly old men who had possibly left their families because they felt they were becoming a burden to them.
The discussion which followed covered topics such as the contentedness of populations in other areas of the world, including East Germany before unification, India – despite its extreme poverty in places and so on. It was suggested that East Germans may have seems happy because they never knew if their friends were in the Stasi. The discontent of European and USA populations was mentioned, with riots in France being a symptom. Our political structures tend to make us feel out of control. Few people would say people in the UK are manifestly happy, thought our group did agree that they preferred our lives to those in China!
Dick took us on a tour of the ways Right Wing thinkers and politicians respond to factual or logical attacks on their positions. He identified 10 forms of response:

1. Projection: the commonest, blaming the opponent for what the Rightist has done or is planning to do or wishes someone else will do
2. Motivational: claiming malevolent motivation rather than examining the fact of an accusation
3. Conspiracy theories – some of which come near to delusional
4. Displacement: addressing the wrong question or a question not asked.
5. Diffusion: answering a question or argument by meaningless speculation and sometimes drivel.
6. Dog whistle: providing an answer for a small group of core supporters not the questioner or the wider public
7. Slogans, often meaningless, again for core supporters
8. Repetition: recycling a claim already disproved, giving core supporters something to shout about
9. Personal verbal attack on the questioner
10. Ignorance: lack of knowledge of the subject.

This led to a discussion taking us up to 9.30pm and beyond. Some of us thought many of these responses were not solely the preserve of the right, naming Tony Blair with his support of the Iraq war. We wondered if the problems with our government was down to capitalism. This sparked a debate on whether neo-liberalism would be a better way of controlling our economies. Some forms of capitalism, such as the ones in Scandinavia, were held up as being more socially aware and less nasty than in the rest of Europe. Other threads covered renationalisation of our utilities, the fact that our water companies started off as private operations, subsequently nationalised but underfunded, and now underperforming due to the greed of their private shareholders.
Hopefully, the debate can continue in the Facebook site. I will be away in Cornwall when the next meeting is due on July 27th, but I’m sure the Churchill would be happy to have it without me. If a meeting in August would suit please let me know, otherwise it will be on September 28th.

Philosophers are busy questioning the nature of the relationship between neural states and mental states, above and beyond a mere correlation. Bodies are seen, by and large, as being physical objects, explained by the respective sciences in terms of their chemical, molecular and neuronal features. Minds, on the other hand, are characterized in terms of lived experiences, joys and pains, imaginations and intentions, thoughts and desires. We know from our own experience that, at the very least, bodily and conscious mental events are systematically correlated. He brought up David Chalmer’s distinction between the ‘easy’ and the ‘hard’ problems of consciousness. The understanding of the physical aspects of the brain or behaviour, or cognitive processes such as learning and reasoning is ‘easy’, but understanding the qualitative aspects of the conscious mind is the ‘hard’ problem.
Dualists claim that both body and mind can exist apart from one another. However, it may seem irrational to hold that humans have acquired a non-physical mind over the period of their evolution from simple organisms to homo sapiens.
The following discussion wandered over a variety of themes. The group mentioned a variety of theories to explain consciousness. Pam mentioned physicalism, which holds that everything is physical, with no mental substance needed. The philosopher Daniel Dennett held that consciousness is really just an illusion. He said we evolved from uncomprehending bacteria. Our minds, with all their remarkable talents, are the result of endless biological experiments. Charles brought up the notion that there was a difference between the inner life and external reality. The external reality was a result of believing that other people were conscious since they looked and behaved in the same way as oneself, and referred to objects both parties could see.
One theme was free will. Paul mentioned that in Japan the notion of freedom carries the connotation of irresponsibility, implying behaviour should stick between accepted norms. Adrian said this was also a feature in China. Patrick suggested language was a major feature of consciousness. Most of us accepted that consciousness existed in a spectrum ranging from simple life forms to humans. Environment was also a factor. The vocabulary of whales differed hugely depending on their location. One set of whales hunted in groups, using a rich language to coordinate strategy, but whales in a different area tended to hunt alone and had a much more limited range of ‘words’.
We moved onto AI and the possibility that AI, supercomputers or androids could become sentient and exercise free will. Patrick argued strongly that we gained a purpose in life through a long process experiencing events and concepts from parents, schools and life in general. Consciousness was more than just having a brain; it required the process of living a social life. He thought AI could not be conscious or develop free will since it had been created for specific reasons. Humans have grown up with a range of impulses such as finding food, shelter and companionship. He argued that the notion of an android saying ‘I don’t want to’, implying it had feelings was difficult to imagine. The example of humans being brought up by wolves being unable to show evidence of thought, though John thought they might be able to communicate well in a wolf’s environment. He thought that if an android behaved in all respects as if it were conscious we would come to believe it was conscious. He mentioned the ChatGPT AI program which had recently gained millions of users who were able to get it to perform tasks in a human-like way. The program ‘Eliza’, created in the 1970’s, was regarded by some of its users as a conscious being, and ChatGPT and its successors may well be even more convincing. Michael brought up quantum computers which are expected to revolutionise the speed and complexity of computing in the near future. Certainly, John is in the minority with his strong belief AI is probably the next stage of human development, and as Stephen Hawking has quoted “People asked a computer, ‘Is there a God?’ And the computer said, ‘There is now,’ and fused the plug.”
We certainly didn’t end up with a consensus of opinions, apart from rejecting the notion of a mental substance. We all agreed that the mind is in principle a bodily function, though how it works is still up for debate.

Consciousness is a huge topic so we may return to it with other presenters. Dick and Dominic have shown interest in this so perhaps we can arrange a symposium, with different aspects being addressed.

The next meeting will be on March 30th and suggestions for topics will be most welcome. The Facebook page is open for further discussion, additions and amendments.

She thought that possibly in our past we would prioritize things which posed us a threat, such as the information that there were killer insects on a tree which had tasty mushrooms we would have liked to eat. She quoted Prof Serota of UCLA who said “We all have increased attentiveness to negative information as opposed to positive information.  Now technology has changed and there is an unremitting volume of news available. So, we can look for and consume negative information 24hrs a day”. He suggested this could lead to depression. Probably the pandemic made doomscrolling even more prevalent, with people at home with their phones for company and a constant feed of bad news. The Guardian wrote that 96% of media headlines are negative and sensational, reported as being blown out of proportion to manipulate the readers’ emotions. Pam said journalists recognize that negative headlines outperform positive headlines and because negativity attracts attention naturally the media repeatedly serves it up in spades.   Mainstream news is overwhelming people with negative stories. It seems reasonable to assume that the ease with which we can get our bad news, through online news and social media, the more bad news we will receive.

Pam asked us if we thought this phenomenon would get better or worse. The group was divided on this. Some thought it would get much worse as the use of digital media increases, with different age groups catching up. Others wondered where people got their news, since kids rarely watch live TV or read newspapers. Perhaps the pandemic brought it to the fore and now normal times are back people may spend less time accessing the news. There were also queries on whether doomscrolling caused depression or perhaps depressed people accessed digital media more often. Pam wondered if Facebook could be sued for causing depression if it were caused by their distribution of bad news. Some of us thought it would be a hard case to prove, even if it were true. She also thought media outlets should be forced to cover good news in equal amounts to bad. We agreed controlling the media in that way would never work, given the desirability of free speech in countries with supported it. This led to a brief discussion of the freedom of the press, with most of the big media companies being controlled by magnates, often from different countries, with very definite agendas. Social media is also dominated by influencers who earn money by getting millions of people to read their contentious views. It was also true that one person’s bad news may well be good news to someone else. Pam pointed out that there were a few examples of media giving good and positive news, such as the magazine Positive News[1], and she gave us some examples of feelgood stories.

•Putin’s war has caused the energy paradigm to shift. The West is weaning itself off Russian gas while ramping up the renewables, the smart money has moved towards wind and solar and in a Californian laboratory, scientists have cracked one of nuclear fusions biggest mysteries bringing the near-limitless low carbon energy a step closer.

•Beavers, bison and pelicans were among the species identified as having bounced back from extinction. Tigers have clawed their way back from the abyss and rhinos have returned to Mozambique.

•The United Nations reported its latest findings g on January 10th that the Earth’s Ozone layer is on track to fully recover within 40years thanks to global efforts to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. 

•New drug found to slow Alzheimer’s disease, Lecanemab hailed as momentous breakthrough. Currently people are given other drugs to help manage the symptoms, but this changes the course of the disease. Licensed for UK later this year.

After a 90 minute session we moved on to the topic for the next meeting. We have been intending to have ‘consciousness’ for some time now so February will concentrate on this. Hopefully several of us will have some thoughts to share then. Some ideas to consider are:

• Is the new theory of quantum consciousness[2] credible?
• Is the mind biological or part of mind/body dualism[3]?
• Are humans the only conscious beings[4], or is consciousness a spectrum of faculties?
• Are some animals (or androids in the future) conscious and self-aware[5]?

Next meeting is at 7.30pm on Thursday 23^rd February in the Churchill Tavern.

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[1] https://www.positive.news/

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism

[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-humans-the-only-conscious-animal/

[5] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/artificial-you/201910/could-robot-ever-be-conscious

He kicked off by listing some of the many objections to human space travel. These included the lack of places to go, the cost in energy and pollution to get into space, robots do it better and cheaper, we should fix the earth rather than waste money on space and the universe shouldn’t be infected with our callous disregard for the environment. Dominic rejected all these objections and posed the question “Not will we go extinct, but when will we go extinct? Reason for extinction include asteroid collisions, volcanoes or a change in the earth’s axis.
He quoted Malthus’ observation that creatures tend to over exploit their habitats by breeding faster than they can increase their means of subsistence. This doesn’t just mean humans will run out of food, rather the aspirations of the billions of people living near or under the poverty line are fueled by social media and TV programs, and they want what we’ve got. We would need 1,8 Earths to satisfy the needs of our expanding population and its demand for a good standard of living, and 6 Earths for everyone to have what the USA has. He told us about an Equinox program in 1995 which concentrated on alternative energy technology. It looked at over 300 papers on global warming from around the world which concluded “We have till about 2025 to find a solution to Global Warming and till about 2050 to fix the problem”.
Dominic then moved on to the solutions. At the top of our atmosphere the Sun continuously gives us about 1.4kw of energy per square meter (the so called Solar Constant). The energy from the Sun hitting Earth is 10,000 times more than humans generate. The Earth only traps about one ten-millionth of the available energy of the Sun in our neighbourhood. So, if we can get out there with our collectors there is plenty more clean energy to harvest. It is technically feasible to collect this solar energy in space and add it to the Earths energy income from the Sun by using SBSP (Space Based Solar Power). You collect high powered sunlight above the atmosphere (in space) and beam it down as low intensity microwaves to be collected and distributed to us with no carbon release. The consultants Fraser Nash, forecast that a thin ribbon of such power stations around the Earth could produce 100 times the global demand for energy in 2050.
Next came thoughts on humans living in space. Imagine a cylinder three miles wide and ten miles long orbiting round the sun near us. Fill it full of air and a bit of soil, spin it up along its major axis and you have 90 square miles of living space on the inner surface with its own gravity and its own access to abundant 24 hour solar energy. Fifteen of them would give you an area the size of Kent. The problem with large engineering projects in space is the cost in energy and pollution getting the materials into space, but mining the materials and manufacturing the parts on the moon and sending them into space would be much easier due to the lower gravity there. However, the costs of even this solution are huge with the NASA budget for getting to the moon by 2025 is over $53 billion, but the cost to the Earth of not doing it would be much greater. It’s the only technology that gives us a credible insurance policy against global catastrophe, such that killed the dinosaurs. It will have a direct benefit in delivering more clean energy to the Earth.
Finally, he addressed the moral question of whether a race which has messed up its planet so disastrously should do the same for the rest of the universe. He did not consider all humans to be so flawed that we shouldn’t even attempts to save our species. He questioned whether governments are so obsessed with short term problems that making the necessary decisions to invest the technology needed won’t happen. However, the ambitions of large corporations and billionaires may well fill that gap. He concluded with the statement “The Earth for us now is either an egg or a tomb”.
After the warm reception came some questions and points. Dick asked about the possibility of the space elevator being used to transfer things into Earth’s orbit. Dominic said that there were major technical problems with it, despite it looking an attractive solution. The makeup of the cable is problematic, and currently we do not have materials suitable for its construction . Dick also reminded us of the problem posed in the film Elysium where rich people enjoyed a great life on a space station whereas the rest of humanity suffered on a deteriorating Earth. Others agreed that the occupants of the space stations would probably be from the richer parts of the Earth and this would cause more resentment from the rest of the world. The book Stark by Ben Elton pictured such a scenario.
The problem of corporations and billionaires being the generous donors of the technology to achieve the Earth saving solutions was also discussed. Some thought the oil corporations would hold onto their hold on producing polluting energy as long as they could, even if we went past critical climate checkpoints. John Hawting thought the whole notion of space exploration was a distraction from the problems the world was facing and we should concentrate on solving injustice and climate problems, rather than trusting repellant billionaires to solve our planet’s issues. Patrick thought ignoring the role of nation states was dangerous, as current events are showing.
Stephen challenged the Malthusian conjectures, pointing out that the world population was estimated to peak at 9 billion or so and then decline, largely due to women having fewer children because of more education and better living environments. Dominic accepted this but reemphasized the greater demand for the living standards of the developed world.
Julian strongly approved of the Moon being used as a staging post for production of space stations and also possibly as a place to live. Dominic thought terraforming other moons and planets was a feasible but very lengthy process.
We finished off with a brief discussion on consciousness, but decided it deserved a meeting on its own.
The meeting broke up around 9.30. Elaine was very helpful in maintaining order and preventing speakers from dominating the proceedings. We were pleased to welcome new faces, especially some from the Spencer Square community. It would be good if some continue to come along to our meetings, which are on the last Thursday of each month.
The next meeting will be on 26th October at 7.30pm in the Churchill Tavern. These notes will be on the website and the Facebook page where you can suggest amendments, new thoughts or arguments. The letter Dominic wrote to Elon Musk and an article are attached.

First off Patrick offered to talk about race theory. He countered the widespread belief that non-white people are regularly discriminated against in the UK. When we pointed out that black men driving cars are stopped much more often than white men, he demanded evidence that they were not be pulled over for valid policing reasons. Pam, who was in the Met, said that in her experience the Met was very racist when she joined but she felt it had improved to a great degree now, though obviously there were the odd officers with racist attitudes. F then spoke in very racist terms about immigrants – statements which caused our three observers to leave in disgust[1].

Frederic then gave us a brief history of the Cervia tug which is in Ramsgate Harbour, probably due for sale as scrap. He thought it was worth preserving since it was a unique example of its kind. In the resulting discussion it emerged that it was unclear who owned the tug and who would be responsible for repairing it. Frederic thought it should be made seaworthy so it could be sailed to somewhere it could be looked after, though agreed this was probably unlikely.

Pam brought up the statue honouring Mary Wollstonecraft. Wikipedia describes it as “The work is a representation of a naked female figure, emerging out of organic matter which the BBC described as “a swirling mingle of female forms”.[4] Wollstonecraft’s most famous quotation, “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves”, is inscribed on the plinth.[3] The sculpture is inspired by Wollstonecraft’s claim to be “the first of a new genus”. The sculpture is sited opposite the Newington Green Unitarian Church that Wollstonecraft attended.[2] A phone photo of the statue was passed round to remind us of what the statue looked like. Pam pointed out that it seemed strange to have such a statue to commemorate an 18^th century feminist, and wondered if the males in the group shared that opinion, which they did.

We moved on to discuss the timing and format of our meetings. John said he had received several messages saying afternoon meetings would be a good idea, especially for dark winter days when people are wary of going out to a pub. Such afternoon meetings could be in addition to or a replacement for the evening meetings. Chris wondered if it was an idea to return to zoom meetings, though this particular group felt they had watched to many Zoom screens to want to go back to it.

There is a side room in the Boating Pool café which could be used for afternoon meetings, and parking is very easy on the Royal Esplanade. This is just one possible meeting place. If people who would like such meetings, please let me know your preferences for times and locations, and if there is enough response, I’ll get it organized. One person has ruled out Thursdays.

Next meeting 29^th September at 7.30pm at the Churchill Tavern

Would Wednesday 14^th September at 2pm at the boating pool suit anyone for a trial afternoon session?

Patrick emailed a comment on the notes:

“As it was rather impromptu I perhaps did not explain my meaning very well, although I specifically commented on critical race theory and differentiated it from other approaches, such as one that sees race as being socially constructed when the reality is that there is only one human race. I expressed a concern that critical race theory effectively seeks to reconstruct racism in a new form, one that teaches students and school children that they will, if they are Black, inevitably face discrimination for the whole of their lives (because institutions originally created by White people and White people themselves are racist). I believe this is extremely damaging for society and for the future of young people, especially as there is little or no evidence that such racism exists in the UK (some anecdotal comments where made at the meeting but they did not stand up to scrutiny). Had the discussion continued I would have asked whether race is being used by those with privileged lives to divert attention away from the real problem, which is life chances and who we are born to. An understanding that White working class boys from low income households are, by quite a distance, the most underprivileged group in the UK, seems to support such a view.”

Another member, not at the meeting, emailed:

“Sounds highly offensive and inappropriate. There is plenty of evidence of systemic police racism if Patrick cares to research the matter further. I am glad we were not there to hear both Patrick and F espouse their bigotry.

In light of Black Lives Matter movement and reaction to George Floyd’s murder I did some of my own research of UK Police Record in 2020. We are withdrawing from the group forthwith for giving a platform to such ideology. “

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[1] Interesting that this tested our previous thoughts on no-platforming. We carried on despite our feelings!

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sculpture_for_Mary_Wollstonecraft

Some scientists asserted there is a wide spectrum of gender from male to female with various gradations along the way. Some people have a different arrangement of chromosomes, XYY, XXY, XXX and so on, and this leads to some medical and psychiatric conditions. There are different routes for people to feel they are in the ‘wrong’ body. Some feel they have a different gender from an early age, while others arrive there after some time, even in middle and old age. Cross dressing may well be a step on the way to changing gender. Identical twins are more likely to share their gender identity than non-identical twins, implying there can be a genetic influence.
With the increasing awareness of transgender issues over the recent decades societal problems have arisen. Dick told us about lecturers being sacked for expressing views believed to be anti-trans, though later being compensated in court. Others have been hounded out of their jobs after losing support from their peers, bosses and trade unions. Sports bodies are beginning to take the view that trans athletes are barred from mainstream events. Scotland has made the decision that trans people can self-identify as an alternative gender very easily, and Ireland is likely to follow suit. Opponents of these moves mention the issue of gym changing rooms, toilets and prisons, where biological females may feel uncomfortable or worse. It was pointed out that the UK is unlike many other countries in having separate toilets for men and women, with unisex toilets being common in many European countries. However, many institutions in the UK are moving to mixed facilities. The group thought the pro-trans movement was very powerful considering the number of people involved.
We moved onto more general issues, trying to work out what topics we could have for the future. The Churchill Tavern was generally approved of, especially in the back room which is much quieter. We could revert to the original meeting procedure when people came along with topics which were then chosen for discussion. Chris thought that post-pandemic we were all less able to concentrate on issues in the way we used to – a sad development if true! At one time we had two meetings a month, one in the afternoon and the other in a pub in the evening. Would there be any support for an afternoon meeting? Boating pool in the summer and a pub in the autumn and winter? Let me know your thoughts.
Next meeting 25th August at 7.30pm at the Churchill Tavern

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Rob gave us an introduction to the topic of Justice, analyzing the statement ‘Justice should be based on discrimination’. He gave us dictionary definitions of each of the words in the statement.
• Justice – the quality of being fair and reasonable, or the administration of the law or authority in maintaining this.
• Should – indicating a desirable or expected state.
• Based on – a fundamental platform.
• Discrimination – 1. the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on grounds of race, age, sec or disability. 2. Recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another. 3. The ability to judge what is of high quality, goof judgement or taste.
Michael kicked off the discussion by saying that the first definition of discrimination was very apparent in the application of Justice in the UK, where old mostly white men law down the law discriminating against minorities. This led to a debate on how laws in different environments may be fair to people there but seem anomalous to others. Killing old people in tribes in the Amazon region because they have outgrown their value would not be seen as just in other areas. Patrick asked us how it was fair for the EU on the UK to close its borders preventing people coming in, whereas we are able to settle almost anywhere in the world. Isn’t it unfair that we enjoy a high standard of living due to the accident of being born in a rich country? A fair world would have no borders. Adrian suggested that it would be better for us to make the rest of the world richer rather than allowing us all to reduce our standard to a world low.
There was criticism of the UK constitution on the grounds that it was not written down. However, it is judges who determine what is constitutional or not, as is the case in countries which do have written constitutions, as we have seen in the USA at the moment. It always comes down to a few ‘wise’ judges, even those who have been accused of serious crimes themselves. Both the USA and England have supreme courts appointed by politicians.
We moved on to wonder what would be needed to create a fair and just society. Sharon thought everyone should be able to achieve their wants. John thought it might be better to address people’s needs rather than wants, since what people want could be very extravagant, whereas basic needs could be readily defined.
Any further memories, thoughts and topics are welcome and will be included in the posting on the Thanet Thinkers website and Facebook page.
Next meeting 28th July at 7.30pm at the Churchill Tavern

The subject was inspired by Steph’s comments at a previous meeting where she suggested the philosopher Ivan Ilyin may have influenced Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, A move many commentators have described as fascist. John pointed out that fascism is difficult to define, with George Orwell saying “the word fascism is almost entirely meaningless. almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.” Fascist doesn’t have a coherent philosophy unlike socialism or communism. Zeen Sternhill traced the roots of fascism to the writings of Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky and Bergson and the doctrine of Social Darwinism which viewed the human condition as an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest. The historian Stanley Payne defined fascism in three concepts:

1. Fascist negations – anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism
2. Fascist goals – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture and the expansion of the nation into an empire.
3. Fascist style – a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilisation, a positive view of violence and a promotion of masculinity, your=th and charismatic authoritarian leadership.

Nations currently matching these concepts would include Putin’s Russia, Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and China. Donald Trump could be seen as a hopeful fascist leader with his attempts to overturn a legitimate election.

A wide-ranging discussion ensued. John Hall took issue with the implication of Nietzsche as an influence on fascists. He held that Nietzsche, was describing the world as he saw it, not making proposals for action. It was also noted that Lord Reith, BBC’s first chief executive, suggested that the ideal form of government was ‘Dictatorship tempered by assassination”. Many European countries were fascist or at risk of becoming fascist states in the early 20^th century, including the UK. The discussion moved on to examine good forms of government. Rob, who had some experience of Switzerland, told us that they had referenda on almost everything, often creating policies which were accepted and then rejected as different cantons voted, for example on the issue of smoking in public places. Most democracies were plagued by short term decision making because of the vagaries of public opinion. Rob and Chris told us of the difficulties in running allotment committees, with even getting a quorum being a problem.

We moved on to think about the consequences of the collapse of civilisation, through rising sea levels, food and water shortages, oxygen depletion die to the death of the sea creatures who provide 50% of the world’s oxygen and war. We noted that even people living off-grid are still highly dependent on industrial products, such as matches and solar panels.

Most of us kept the discussion going to around 10pm. If anyone would like to comment and add to the notes, please send an email and the text on the website will be amended.

Attendees were John Hawting, Michael, Chris, Adrian, Sharon, Brian, Julian, Rob and John.

Next meeting will be on June 30^th, possibly at the Boating Pool which now has a bar and inside seating.

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Chris started us off with a description of the philosophy event at Herne Bay which he had attended earlier in the week. Apparently, it has started off and finished with the audience singing a song, but the body of the session was led by Simon Kirchin, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kent. The discussion centred around markets and their appearance in unlikely places, such as queues. In the USA there is a website where people can look for someone to take their place in a queue, for anything, for a fee, and of course where people can sign up offering their services. We discussed the pros and cons of this for a while, some of us telling of times we had been subject to this sort of behaviour. John had queued for over an hour at a gallery in Florence, only for the person just in front to be replaced by two women just as the queue got to the entry! Others recalled the queues at Wimbledon and shop sales where the lines started hours before entrance time.

This led to a discussion on temptation and dishonesty, very topical considering the shenanigans currently displayed in parliament. One of us related how he had been sorely tempted when he had the opportunity to use bank payment cards to make untraceable purchases, but he had resisted the chance and wondered what it was that caused him to stay honest. Another told of being sent on a six-month contract to evaluate computer hardware capabilities for a large project, drawing up a list in order of preference and the customer chose the least capable on the grounds of cost alone. Corruption was suspected but unproven, and the project folded soon after.

We moved onto the climate. Adrian related that James Lovelock in 2004 caused a media sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that “only nuclear power can now halt global warming”. The Green Party still regards nuclear power which they consider to be ‘expensive and dangerous. The technology is not carbon neutral, and being reliant on uranium it is not renewable’. We talked about mini nuclear power stations and the problems with solar and wind power when the weather is unfavourable. One advantage of local nuclear power in Thanet would be to power a desalination plant since the aquifer is producing less water than it receives.

All in all, we had the sort of meeting a random group of people might have when meeting over a drink in a pub. With a bit of luck, the next meetup on 26th of May will be more philosophical and with more attendees.

She thought it could be said that Ilyin’s philosophy may well have led to Putin’s views on Ukraine and its people, and ultimately to his invasion. John was a little uncertain about the notion that the philosophy caused the invasion, rather Putin’s belief that the west would not interfere with him if he took Ukraine since it allowed his takeover of the Crimea in 2014, and his army was much bigger and better equipped than Ukraine’s. Steph also suggested Viktor Frankl, the neurologist and holocaust survivor, who believed that human nature is motivated by the search for a life purpose and logotherapy³ is the pursuit of that meaning for one’s life. Patrick suggested Keynes, and asked if we would consider him a philosopher. Most of us agreed that since he had theories on how society could be improved, especially through economic policies, and the implementation of these policies by, for example, Roosevelt with his New Deal showed his philosophy had a marked influence on the world. We then had a discussion on what makes a philosopher a philosopher, and came to the conclusion that the people studied in philosophy courses in universities are a very small subset of the thinkers who have influenced world events. Adam Smith is not typically part of many philosophy syllabuses but his theories have been used widely by right wing political parties around the world⁴.
We moved on to a discussion on what made England and Scotland the major power it became, eventually ruling a large part of the world. It was suggested that the introduction of Protestantism and its rejection of authority allowed the unfettered thinking which led to the invention boom leading to the industrial revolution. Interesting that Martin Luthor kicked off protestantism and Germany did not develop at the same rate. It could be we didn’t delve far enough into this topic to do it justice!
We then went to the topic of Cancel Culture. Some of us were unsure what it meant. We tended to agree that it was not a good direction for our, and others’, culture to go in. However, it seemed that it is spreading through the world’s institutions. University lecturers have been forced out of their jobs for holding the ‘wrong’ opinion about trans people. A Dutch interview⁵ about cancel culture was taken off the air because it was deemed to be too sympathetic to its targets.
We ended up with a brief chat about what would happen if women were in charge of world affairs. Would there be more or fewer wars? Would life be better or worse. Views were more or less split on gender lines, though there was a proposal to find a chemical which would reduce the proportion of men to women to 10/90%.
A bout of long-covid brain fog has prevented me remembering more of the night’s proceedings but any more detailed memories are welcome and will be added to the notes on the website.
Next meeting will be on April 28th in the Churchill Tavern at 7.30pm. Please bring along some possible topics or even better a presentation or paper!

Footnotes
[1] Steph made a correction “I did not mean to imply Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a direct consequence of his admiration for Ivan Ilyin – but that as a nationalist and father of Russian fascism, llyin’s views made in early 20th century had been cited by Putin as in accordance with his current vision for Russia. Yes, he probably would have invaded Ukraine anyway without Ilyin’s help but I found it interesting that a relatively obscure philosopher had been used in Putin’s rationale“
[2] https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-philosopher-of-russian-fascism/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy  and  ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ & ‘Yes to Life’
[4] Patrick replied “I am not sure it is accurate to say that the theories of Adam Smith have been ‘used widely by right wing political parties around the world.’ They may have been misused by some politicians but there are fundamental reasons why they cannot be applied in the modern world. If the reference is to an alignment of his work with neoliberalism, I would point out that Smith’s theories are in many respects the antithesis of that economic and political dogma.”
[5] https://quillette.com/2020/07/02/america-exports-cancel-culture-to-the-world/

We kicked off with Chris’s topic “Molly Mae (an influencer!) said ‘You’re given one life and it’s down to you what you do with it. You can literally go in any direction.’”. Initially we thought this was just a reflection of the American dream, but we found examples of people who seemed to have done just that. Some people have arrived by dinghy on the Kent coast and have ended up owning a string of shops. Some of the Ugandan Asian arrived with nothing and became successful entrepreneurs. Patrick suggested it was much easier to achieve your dreams if your home environment is favourable. Middle class people can start with an advantage of more books, tutors for the 11 plus where this is possible, stable home environment and so on. This was agreed though many examples of people from disadvantaged backgrounds made good, and in some cases their situation made them even more determined to succeed. Several of us shared their early experiences of being forced by parents and economics into unsuitable life choices.

We moved on to talk about Russia, Ukraine and NATO’s responses. Patrick wondered if we had any sympathy for Russia, given that the US and NATO had taken advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union and moved their armies and missiles close to Russia’s borders. Rosalind took the view that it was unreasonable for Ukraine, a sovereign country, not to be able to make alliances with who they wished, and this also applied to the eastern European countries who joined Nato. Most of us admitted to some understanding of Russia’s position but were still worried about the prospects of a war. Johnpaddy admitted that he had a more favourable view of Russia and European countries in general than the USA which was very experienced in bullying states they didn’t approve of.

The next topic was the role of the establishment in UK politics. We tried to define who the establishment consisted of. The BBC, the press, senior civil servants, top business people, Eton alumni were all suggested. Although we didn’t all agree on its composition, there was a general feeling that its role in controlling politics in the UK was malign. The money handed out to the friends of ministers in the early days of the pandemic was breathtakingly high.

We ended up with some thoughts on veganism and its role in climate change. Some vegans hold that if the world stopped eating meat the levels of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced, partly because the rain forests would not be cut down for cattle ranching. Pam wondered what would happen to all the workers in the jobs related to meat production. Patrick said the number of people in the industry was fairly small and he gave the example of the miners who mostly were re-employed not long after the mines were closed. He went on to suggest the UK and Europe should give up on its food production altogether and allow Africa to become the bread basket, since it had loads of space and a good climate for food production. Pam and Rosalind thought not having control of our food production was very dangerous, and John H suggested growing our own food in allotments and gardens was the way forward. Johnpaddy thought climate change would soon make the climate in Africa unsuitable for crop growing anyway.

Welcome to new member Lati and returning member Rosalind.

Next meeting will be on February 24^th in the Churchill Tavern at 7.30pm, though the back room won’t be available so we’ll probably be in the round room at the front of the pub.

Where my memory has fallen short or you would like to add something please reply to johnpaddy@gmail.com or follow up on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/610760986202293/

We kicked off with a discussion on ‘Is Panpsychism completely ridiculous?’. John offered the definition ‘Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous in nature’. In particular everything is conscious to a certain extent, ranging from humans down to stones! There was some consensus that animals could be said to be conscious, though the line was drawn at simple organisms such as amoebas. John offered the idea that vision is not a simple receipt of data from the outside world – we process the information we get and build a picture out of it, so there are at least two partners in any visual experience. This could be interpreted as meaning that even a rock is part of the conscious experience. The great Ramsgate philosopher A.N. Whitehead developed ‘Process philosophy’ which is essentially an expression of panpsychism, though philosophers from Plato to Spinoza could be said to holding the same thoughts to some degree. The attraction of panpsychism to some thinkers is that it removes the need for a dualist philosophy since all matter has consciousness so a separate ‘mind’ is not required. Needless to say, most of the meeting consigned it as nonsense!

We moved on to the question ‘Are parents morally responsible for bequeathing all or part of their estate to their children?’. This brought on a lot of anecdotes by most of those present, relating harsh treatment by their parents leading to significant life developments. Some were thrown out of the family home at 16, or asked to pay unacceptable contributions to the family income. Others were pressured to take up employment in areas they would have preferred not to be in. Even though most disagreed there was no moral duty to bequeath money to their offspring, many were already helping in various ways, from funding education to assisting with mortgages and so on.

We ended up with ‘Can the current political environment in the UK ever produce good government?’. Patrick queried the use of the word environment in the question, thinking it should relate to the current political system. John thought environment was right since we have had essentially the same system for a long time, but at the moment the level of corruption in government is so high we are practically in a banana republic, citing the massive gifts given to friends and colleagues to pay for pandemic equipment, which often was useless and not fit for purpose. Pam pointed out that in an emergency it was natural for the politicians to turn to the people they knew to get the results more quickly. Adrian reminded us that some factories were ready to go but were turned down in favour of cronies with limited or no experience of producing the equipment needed. There was a discussion on whether the UK was equally corrupt over the last century, with politicians from all parties being involved.

Next meeting will be in January, on the last Thursday of the month. Whether it is in the pub or via Zoom remains to be seen.

We looked at a few proposed topics and ended up with the prospects and consequences of the COP26 summit in Glasgow. Pam mentioned a report made by one of the major oil companies which concluded that the 1.5-degree target was unachievable and humanity was effectively living out a death sentence. Ben said things weren’t that bad, since 500,000 people would probably survive and they would probably have a good life, especially if they lived far from the sea. Sheffield was possibly a good place in the UK to choose to live! Patrick then aired the view that there were lots of climate scientists who did not agree with the prevailing climate disaster scenario but they were being prevented from publishing their views by the scientific establishment. Ben rejected this on the grounds that such scientists were unable to get their papers peer reviewed because their methods and conclusions didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Ryan also took the view that the climate crisis was being a bit overblown.

We moved on to possible ways to mitigate the damage global warming would make. The big generators of global warming gases were China, USA, India and Brazil. Ben suggested that accountancy was the key weapon. If, say, the UK chose to impose a tax on imports linked to the carbon footprint of the products being imported, then countries with high carbon footprints would become uncompetitive. For example, an iPhone made in China would become more expensive to buy in the UK, and the same device made in India would become more affordable since India would have the incentive to lower their footprint. Patrick thought China would be well able to survive this by selling to their internal market and still generating climate warming gases. Adrian, whose son works in China, said people in his city were very rich and lived in expensive flats and drive posh cars. Ben was able to put the cost of these flats at around £700,000 and suggested that the average income of a citizen in China was around $11,000 and it would take a very long time, if ever, to bring them up to the living standards in the large technological cities.

We moved onto the topic of Populism. Patrick asserted that populist political leaders were often safer than democratic ones. For example, JFK almost plunged us into a nuclear war, Bush and Blair practically destroyed Iraq for no sensible reason, Biden caused chaos by withdrawing too speedily from Afghanistan, but Trump held back for carrying out his various threats against North Korea and China. Some in the meeting offered Hitler and Stalin as examples of the opposite.

The meeting broke up around 9.30pm, and the next one will be at the same time and place on November 25^th. Any comments on the meeting and the summary are most welcome and will be circulated to the emailing list. The second pint of cider may well have suppressed some of my recollections.

We kicked off with a diagram listing emotions or putative emotions; Joy, Trust, Guilt, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Anticipation to name a few. Taking guilt as an example – it seems it is not a simple emotion since it is possibly tied in with social constraints and retribution, and many of the other examples are tied in with other phenomena. Dick introduced the five areas of experiences identified by John Williams: Cognition, Emotion, Behaviour, Bodily sensations and Outside Events. Cognition refers to some experience which can be written down. Emotion is much more difficult to pin down, it’s often introduced with the words “It’s like …”. Behaviour are experiences which can be videoed. Bodily Sensations are experiences like pain and nausea. Outside are external effects affecting a person.

Dick defined thought as having at least 2 processes: Algorithmic and Heuristic, with Heuristic being more akin to emotion. Ekman identified six basic emotions: Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger and Surprise. Dick used Google’s Ngram viewer to check out the usage of the word ‘feelings’ in written works through the ages, showing a high usage in the 1840s.

There are various models of Emotion. William James and Lange (1884) defined Emotion as the perception of an external event plus bodily change, with specific emotions having their own visceral response. In the 1920s Cannon held the bodily response was not necessary. In the 1960s Schachter said on visceral arousal matters! In 1998 Panskepp described 7 anatomical and functional systems in mammals: Seeking, Rage, Lust, Care, Play, Panic and Fear. Dick thought the list has several non-emotions.

Dick went on to describe some of brain areas playing a part in the feeling of emotions, including the role of the autonomic nervous system. He described botched research trying to show facial expressions showed emotions were worldwide to a large extent. He refuted the polygraph as a poor indicator of lying, together with Emotional Recognition Technology which uses computers to scan faces to detect emotions – it detects dark skinned people as angry!

Patrick brought up the notion that some events determine how we are expected to feel emotions. For example, at a funeral we should express sadness, even if we don’t feel it. Often the context will suggest that a facial expression which could be angry may well be joy, as in the photo of Serena Williams winning a game. Dick suggested hate is often aimed at a specific person and therefore could be cognitive rather than a pure emotion. He thought most ‘emotions’ are largely cognitive. Pam pointed out that psychopaths often have fewer mood swings and do not feel emotion. ADHD sufferers calm down when their brains are made more active with drugs like Ritalin.

We finished off with a discussion on whether we were likely to be back to physical meetings in May and onwards. The jury remains out on this but we agreed to try to identify locations where it might be possible.

The reason Adrian wanted to talk about veganism and vegetarianism was that Greenpeace had urged its supporters to stop eating meat since its production was having a deleterious effect on forests, especially in South America. However, vegetarians were big consumers of palm oil the production of which was also destroying great swathes of forest all over the world, so just switching to plant-based diets would not be enough to save the climate. He also pointed out that vegans in particular were often fanatical about not using animal products and would use plastic shoes rather than leather, even though the use of plastics is a major problem, especially when it ends up in the oceans.

Rob queried that animals being killed in abattoirs were necessarily being harmed. Their lives were shortened but they may well not have existed at all if they weren’t being grown for meat. Patrick said getting rid of meat eating and growing plant-based food would feed more people at less cost to the environment. Dick told us about sylvano-culture or agroforestry where crops are grown under trees. Patrick defended the right of developing countries to be less concerned with the harm to the climate since they needed to catch up with the developed countries who ruined the planet with no thought of the consequences, and it was a bit rich of the developed countries telling other what to do.

Pam pointed out meat was being grown in laboratories and would probably be widespread in the future. John suggested that vegans he knew didn’t favour artificially grown meats, though most of us thought it would be a good solution to the animal welfare problem. Dick mentioned Yotam Ottolenghi’s vegan recipes in the Guardian Feast pamphlet which had very little protein, so supplements were needed.

Richard joined the meeting and reiterated the deficiencies in organic and free-range production. Adrian pointed out that the soil association had strict criteria for its certification. Richard said he was a vegan and would not use animal products at all. Adrian suggested veganism contributes to the destruction of the environment since vegans think more about not eating meat than climate change. Richard rejected this as a non sequitur, pointing out than the amount of land used to produce meat, which is processed vegetable food, is much greater than the amount needed to create equally nutritious plant-based food. Dick recommended a book by Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, describing the meat industry in America in the early 1900s. Chris pointed out the amount of adulteration of foodstuffs in the past in the UK. John recalled the chicken tasting of fish in the 1950s. Charles remembered that creameries in Ireland had a problem with unregulated antibiotics given to cows leading to milk being infected with them.

We finished off discussing the production of artificial meat using stem cells, and whether the extraction of stem cells hurt the animal it was taken from, or even if it could be any animal, even humans. Dick_S thought the cells had to be taken from bone marrow which sounded very intrusive.

Rob suggested

http://ginkgoes.co.uk/florilegium/on-nature/On%20Vegetarianism%20%5BKFL%2306%5D.pdf

Next meeting will be 2 pm 31^st March via Zoom. Don’t forget our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/610760986202293/

Patrick’s argument was that our environment dictates our perceptions of reality and influences what we hold to be the truth, biasing us so we think our “reality” is better and more real than other people’s reality. He called our socially constructed worlds “silos”. He gave the example of an organisations which implemented changes to its operation which had been resisted by its employees. The organisation made a deep level investigation into the local culture and environment of its employees and also the preconceptions of the management team which caused it to try to implement a policy doomed to failure.

The following discussion mainly focussed on how rigid the boundaries of these “silos” were. Some of us felt that to some extent we lived in a variety of forms of life, with language and protocols differing depending on workplaces, home life and personal histories. But this did not mean that we could not have strong views on other cultures, sometimes admiring them and sometimes being very critical of their actions.  Some thought they could understand the behaviour of other people from very different backgrounds without necessarily condoning that behaviour. The example of a Ku Klux Klan devotee lynching a black man was brought up. We could understand that the KKK person was brought up in an environment where hatred of black people was the norm, so their actions were understandable and predictable but yet reprehensible. Comparisons were drawn with the Chinese treatment of their Muslim minorities. We noted that Chinese history and culture was historically inward looking so it would follow that it could treat members of different cultures differently from its own. But understanding how such treatment came about did not mean that we could not deplore it, even though we lived in a completely different environment.

The discussion then moved on to the notion that truth should be seen as relative, differing depending on the different environments of the people looking for answers, and our insistence that what we held to be true could be and accurate reflection of reality is misguided. Needless to say this thought generated much debate without any final agreement.

In the ‘Allegory of the cave’ Plato suggests that what we experience is only a poor reflection of reality, which consisted of eternal unchanging Forms which we cannot reach. St Augustine of Hippo held that we can trust our perceptions because of God, a position Descartes arrived at after deducing that he existed because he could think, however he did allow there could be an undetectable “evil demon” shaping our perceptions. Berkeley rejected matter altogether and held that only ideas exist.  He rejected the views of John Locke, who held that objects in the world were reflected by ideas in the mind, since it was impossible to explain how the link worked. He suggested that if we imagine something and then stop thinking about it is ceases to exist, however if other people see something and we compare our perceptions then we are seeing something real, and since God exists and sees everything, he defines what is real!

Kant moved on from these thoughts by proposing that we effectively create the world ourselves through our perceptions, including input from others in our experience. He is still holding that only phenomena are accessible and that is the only reality we can be certain of, though noumena are the real world of things-in-themselves. Hegel is much more definite. He was an absolute idealist claiming objects only existed as the objects of consciousness, and the sum of multiple consciousnesses made up the ‘Idea’, which is evolving via a dialectic process. Marx, initially a Hegelian, rejected this and maintained that the Idea is nothing more than the material world reflected by the human mind and reflected into forms of thought.

Schopenhauer rejected the idea that we don’t have any experience of external bodies since we do have knowledge of our own bodies which give us an understanding of other objects in the real world, nevertheless he regarded himself as an idealist.. Wittgenstein addresses this when he says it is impossible to verify that different people have the exact same sensation when they talk about pain. He claims that it is not possible to match the subjective world of what we perceive to any kind of objective truth.

Many historical idealist philosophers have fallen back on a God to guarantee that what we experience is ‘real’. It has been a problem to link what we experience to a material world, especially since the route for us to know the world is through our senses, which can see things differently depending on many factors. But what if we didn’t need God?

The 1980’s manga and the 1995 animation ‘Ghost in the Shell’ portrayed a character who is a brain inside a robotic shell and this was a major influence on the creators of the Matrix series of films, as was the 1984 sci-fi novel ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson, who was in turn influenced by Baudrillard. Philosophers have also worked on the ideas expressed there. Nick Bostrum[i], from the Oxford philosophy faculty, published a paper in 2003 titled ‘Are you living in a computer simulation?’. He examines the notion that computing is on the way to being able to simulate real life, with elements within the simulation being able to behave as humans, and who would also be conscious. He suggests “Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.”

Max Tegmark[ii], a cosmologist at MIT, said “the more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws. Perhaps that is not a given, but a function of the nature of the universe we are living in. If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical. That just reflects the computer code in which it was written.” He also said “My advice is to go out and do really interesting things so the simulators don’t shut you down.”

Technologically advanced civilizations will eventually make simulations that are indistinguishable from reality. If that can happen, odds are it has. And if it has, there are probably billions of simulations making their own simulations. Work out that math, and “the odds are nearly infinity to one that we are all living in a computer simulation,” writes Ed Grabianowski[iii].

If one were a God (or programmer) tasked with creating a universe, how much easier and economical it would be to create a computer program populated by entities who experienced a universe, rather than going to the trouble of creating elements, galaxies, solar systems and planets on a massive scale. Occam’s razor applies!

Below is a link to a video of humanoids created in a simulation where movements are dictated by rules derived from observations of human interactions.

http://bihc.fc.ul.pt/index.php#summary

There is a multitude of papers and websites considering simulation, so I would recommend suspending disbelief for a short while and follow the trail.[iv]

A spirited discussion followed in the Zoom meeting when this was read out. The attempts to understand the nature of reality and our place in it by the giants of Western Philosophy from Plato to Wittgenstein were described as foolish rubbish, debunked many centuries ago by Occam and Duns Scotus! We wondered whether current technology was likely to advance far enough to be able to generate simulations such as the ones described above. Recent advances in super-conductivity and quantum computing suggested such technology might well arrive. We moved on to consciousness. The question was raised whether beings created by us, either as simulations or supercomputers or AI robots could become self-aware and conscious. Most of the group felt it was unlikely, given the length of time it took for humans to develop self-awareness. It was mentioned that even in the middle ages the notion of self was not widespread in the general population. John pointed out that babies developed self-awareness over time and intelligent machines would have access to far more input than any child. The group mostly accepted that it was not inconceivable that simulations or androids could behave in the same way as humans, and even say that they were conscious and self-aware, but most held back from considering that they actually had consciousness.

---

[i] https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

[ii] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/

[iii] https://io9.gizmodo.com/youre-living-in-a-computer-simulation-and-math-proves-5799396

[iv] https://now.northropgrumman.com/is-our-entire-universe-just-a-simulated-reality/  https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/  http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/writing/PCW/life.htm 

https://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/what-are-the-odds-we-are-living-in-a-computer-simulation/amp

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/weve-put-worms-mind-lego-robot-body-180953399/?no-ist

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/life-computer-simulation-video-game-good-evil-philosophy-a9648306.html

https://io9.gizmodo.com/youre-living-in-a-computer-simulation-and-math-proves-5799396

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35870.Ghost_in_the_Shell

We moved on to the effect the current pandemic would have on our civilization. Would we live more and more of our lives on the internet? Mike suggested that the vaccine would be effective longer than might be thought after recent revelations that the number of antibodies diminished quite quickly. John mentioned an article in New Scientist which held that the virus might mutate more quickly once the vaccine was widespread since it would find it was spreading less easily. We went on to berate the politicians worldwide for being too ignorant to understand their scientists, leading to many changes of direction in public policy.

Dick mentioned a book by Kim Stanley Robinson, a polemic novel, the Ministry of the Future. This Sci-Fi novel is set in a future where climate change has proceeded to create an earth suffering from very high temperatures leading the UN to set up an agency to deal with it. It created a currency called a carbon coin intended to police institutions and companies emitting earth warming gases. Dick thought it might be possible for earth’s population to survive in self help communities, growing their own food, similar to the Basque Mondragon community. John was a little dubious this approach would work for the current and projected billions of the earth’s population. Chris pointed out a electro-magnetic pulse, natural or man-made, could bring the current world order to a halt very quickly, reducing us to a more primitive, and maybe better, way of life. John reminded us of the possible effect of a mountainside in the Canaries slipping into the Atlantic Ocean and wiping out the east coast of the USA, causing a bigger crisis than the virus.

We finished off with a chat on the US elections and their curious approach to democracy, with votes taking ages to count and weird electoral college system.

Next zoom meeting will be at 2pm on 25^th November, unless an alternative date and time would be more convenient for the membership. John was invited to introduce a talk on virtual or simulated universes.

Chris thought many young people just didn’t think, even though the consequences of disobeying the rules could be serious for their older relatives and friends. Patrick said young people were very affected by the virus, especially with regard to their future, job prospects and so on. He thought older people were wrong to criticise the young, who were going to have to deal with the consequences of the virus for years to come. John pointed out that it wasn’t suggested that young people were not affected, rather they didn’t act as if they cared. Patrick responded by asking if the older generation had the right to dictate to young people. Adrian brought up the notion that rules had been made in the interest of all people, but the government had muddied the waters by disobeying their own rules, changing the rules often, and acting as if they themselves weren’t subject to the rules.

Patrick pointed out that other countries had different ways of handling the pandemic. Belarus was an example of a country which didn’t lockdown but had far fewer virus patients, and Sweden had a much more relaxed strategy but still had a lower infection and death rate than the UK. Mike suggested that the data on Sweden didn’t paint such a good picture.

John thought the rules were seen as a bit random, since the same scientific facts were the base of different rules, which may possibly excuse people who don’t think the rules have a good basis. Why should there be differing rules covering indoor meetings with 6 people. 6 people with children under 12, 6 people with children under 11 and such like. Charles said rule breakers were often the sort who rose to the top in our societies. Chris thought it was likely the restrictions on our freedom would probably last beyond the pandemic. Charles brought up the example of Google and Amazon keeping tabs on our movements and conversations. Adrian told us that China’s face recognition system allowed the authorities to alter people’s tax rates as a result of misdemeanours spotted on the cameras!

After these random and rambling thoughts Charles brought up the subject of Mind. He had been reading a book by John Searle, ‘A Short introduction to Mind’, which held that the Mind is a biological phenomenon. He acknowledged that it is difficult for us to accept that our actions are purely the result of physical interactions. John brought up the thought that if an android were to examine life on earth it may not have to invent the notion of consciousness to explain our behaviour, since observing us in detail would be sufficient to predict our actions. Charles wondered if consciousness gave us any survival advantage. John pointed out that knowing how to plant seeds to provide crops in the future suggests consciousness has a useful function. He thought the fact that things were caused didn’t mean that they were predetermined. We agreed to pursue the notion on Mind in future meetings.

Next meeting will be Wed 28^th October at 2pm via Zoom.

We looked at the theories of Darwin and Spencer, and concluded that the term social Darwinism is a little unfair to Darwin since his theories were descriptive rather than prescriptive. Malthus’ worries about the earth running out of resources due to overpopulation were dismissed since current predictions are pointing to a lowering of estimates of world population, possibly because as people get better off they have fewer children. This led to the thought that as people gain the ability to genetically alter their babies might well be seen as social engineering, and of course many cultures discard babies of the wrong sex. In the UK it was common, in the past, to take away for adoption or social care the babies of unmarried mothers, and even to lock away such mothers in asylums.

The Chinese attempt to change Chinese Muslims into ideal Chinese citizens is one example of social engineering, as was the Serb attempted genocide in the Balkans and the Nazi policy of eliminating the Jews. The Burmese government’s attacks on the Rohingya is also a current example.

We moved on to discussion on what the economy is for. We mostly agreed that the idea that the old should be encouraged to die for the good of the economy, though Patrick brought up the notion that young people had a greater potential to be useful to an economy than old people who had been through their life. The question is who has the greater right to life, the young with years ahead of them or the old who have had the benefit of experience of a full life. Pam posed the conundrum of who to throw out of a balloon falling to earth, the 90-year-old brain surgeon or the 25-year-old habitual criminal. John suggested the heavier person should be ejected.

Next meeting is scheduled for 23rd September at 2pm via Zoom.

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Is social Darwinism now the only way out of pandemics and generally of survival, whether or not of the fittest, as some are suggesting, if only sotto voce at present? 

BACKGROUND –   FAMILIAR I AM SURE TO EVERYONE

Social Darwinism –  

An adoption of Darwin’s theory of evolution as expounded in  his On the Origin of Species.1859 by way, as we know,  of natural selection of life forms best able to adapt to environmental challenge by which those unable to adapt perish or perhaps mutate to a sustainable form- a scientific theory now accepted without peer challenge as evidence based. 

In popular exposition Darwin adopted social concepts then in general circulation – “survival of the fittest,” from sociologist Herbert Spencer and “struggle for existence” from economist Thomas Malthus. He did not however seek to or propose any wider political or social application of the theory. It was and remains a scientific explanation of biological diversity and development. 

Others did and adopted the theory as a scientific explanation of the racial social and demographic characteristics and differences and developments within human societies and beyond that as a guidance and blue print for transformative social engineering. 

Invoked in support of  

• Laissez-faire capitalism – Herbert Spencer people could genetically pass learned qualities, such as frugality and morality, on to their children. (Not a Darwinian theory) Therefore the fit inherited qualities such as industriousness and the ability to accumulate wealth, while the unfit were innately lazy and stupid. Laws that helped workers, the poor, and those he deemed genetically weak, would go against the evolution of civilization by delaying the extinction of the “unfit.”  

William Graham Sumner. American economist identified individual competition for property and social status as a tool for eliminating the weak and immoral of the population which a welfare state, which he opposed, sought to prevent and which therefore inhibited human progressive “evolution”  

•  Eugenics propounded in the late 1800s by , British scholar Sir Francis Galton (a half-cousin of Darwin) –  intervention   upon    a claimed scientific analysis   of the  natural ordering of human society to assist and accelerate the strengthening of the gene pool by eradication of the “weak and feeble minded”. Its aim was above all the preservation and strengthening of an elite at that time supremely the British Elite.  social institutions such as welfare and mental asylums allowed inferior humans to survive and reproduce at higher levels than their superior counterparts and should be disbanded in favour of targeted sterilisation of the lower or weaker classes. Never applied in the UK but taken up in USA During the first part of the twentieth century, 32 U.S. states passed laws that resulted in the forced sterilization of more than 64,000 Americans including immigrants, people of colour, unmarried mothers and the mentally ill.  For Hitler California’s programme of forced sterilizations of the “feeble-minded” was an influence in designing Nazi Germany’s racially based policies. 
• Welfare  paternalism applied over a period certainly in 19^th and 20th centuries in particular by conservative or right leaning regimes  as a pragmatic adoption of certain principles of social Darwinism to ensure the maintenance of a working or underclass to supply a work force and at times of crisis a military force of sufficient mental and physical capacity for a strictly stratified and focused function. Derived also in varying degrees from the enduring notion of the state as organism adopted later by fascism. Thus targeted welfare and strictly limited educational reforms were developed to   a base level of support and service but policed by reference to a notion of desert whereby those deemed unresponsive or unfit to benefit would be removed from the system and placed at  level of basic or sub basic subsistence such as would winnow or naturally reduce their number and propagation. Winston Churchill was a proponent in many ways (he also was a supporter of the principles of eugenics but was never able to apply them) 

DEVELOPMENT 

Post war the theory fell away in the western democracies recovering from Nazi and later, as discovered, communist atrocities and upon a rigorous challenge to and rejection of its scientific basis and credibility 

PRESENT DAY APPLICATION AND RESURGENCE  

The Covid pandemic has seen the emergence by reference at least to social Darwinism and has triggered some farther reaching discussion or re awakenings 

In particular 

• To what extent can the old and vulnerable be protected by lock down and application of resources at the expense of the economy?
• In further application of above must the older and even frailer members of society cede place and thus even length of life to the young and economically dynamic to sustain economic growth and in times of future crisis even survival?  
• In the light of the growing power and challenge of the control state of China which some analysts see as an enduring practitioner of the principles of social Darwinism how long can the western democracies’ social model hold out? 
• Some perhaps Jonathan Sumption (lawyer and historian of the 100 years war) and Luke Johnson of Risk Capital and journalist appear to be saying that what is in effect social Darwinism is in fact our default process as attested by history. 

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[1] https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/advocating-eugenics-uk-department-education

He wondered if cultural revolutions always bring about tyranny and domination by dictatorial governments. He suggested that the Broadstairs statue of Uncle Mack attracting so much hate is an example of misplaced political correctness, since he may well have been unaware of the connotations of blacking up in the USA. Adrian moved on to the cultural revolution in China, when millions of people were killed and the lives of many upturned to no benefit. He thought cultural revolutions all over the world disrupted live for a while but then returned to normality after a while. He bemoaned the fact that statues representing parts of our history are being destroyed, thus eliminating the past.

John thought comparing the Black Lives Matter movement with the cultural revolution in China was a very big leap. Adrian responded with an anecdote on a protest in a café which honoured Winston Churchill. The protesters regarded Churchill’s life was full of evil decisions which were ignored in most depictions of him. Dick suggested that the statues we keep should have the full details of the person, warts and all. Pam thought this would probably lead to more statues being damaged once people know what all these heroes did. We moved on to the English popular revolution, reined in by Cromwell and fellow landowners, and the French revolution with a time of terror followed by the return of monarchy and conquest.

Patrick asked where was the evidence for all this discrimination. He thought there was a lot of anecdotal evidence of mistreatment by police, government and councils but non-black people also complained of these things. Dick pointed out that loads of white people weren’t marching in the streets complaining that they were discriminated against because of their colour. Richard pointed out that there was lots of data showing black people were singled out for stop and search far more often than their numbers warranted. Patrick brought up the concept of social capital, pointing out that people with low social capital are discriminated against irrespective of their colour. Dick pointed out that in the USA, where the movement originated, there was very strong evidence of discrimination against black people, especially because of the history of slavery. Chris mentioned the attitude of the Japanese to strangers, highlighting the idea that monocultures are potentially more racist than integrated communities. Richard brought up the non-racist attitudes of Cliftonville West which is racially mixed and the intolerant population of Cliftonville East.

We tailed off into a discussion on whether the aboriginals in Australia were cannibals. Patrick recalled a meeting where aboriginals were lauded for living a vegetarian lifestyle and looking after their land responsibly. He pointed out that there was evidence that in fact they were cannibals and were so well into the 19th century. Dick suggested much of this evidence comes around by anthropologists getting the answers they wanted when interviewing native cultures, whereas the physical evidence doesn’t bear it out, with skulls not showing the marks of cooking etc. They agreed to carry on this debate with evidence in the Facebook group!
We ended with the decision to hold another Zoom meeting in July, time and date to be decided. Please carry on the discussion in the Facebook Group.

The recent TV drama DEVS also subscribed to this thought when it postulated that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could predict the future and discover the past by working out everything from its analysis of the state of the world in the present.

John held the starting position of these theories was sound, but rejected the consequence that we are not responsible for our behaviour. What we do and think is caused by a multitude of causes, and we are able to influence the behaviour of others, so by extension we are able to influence our own behaviour as well.

The group moved on to discuss the mind and whether it could be thought of as separate from the brain. Dick held that the mind should be thought of as a verb rather than a noun signifying a thing. John held that we know a person’s mind by their behaviour, so perhaps the mind is nothing more than how we behave. This raised the question of consciousness. We feel or ‘know’ that we are conscious and can initiate actions, and since other people are like us, we assume they are also conscious. However the scientific study published in Nature in April 2008 showed that, for example, the moving of a hand was initiated by the brain before the person moving it had made the decision to do so, suggesting that what we call consciousness may be merely viewing what the body had already actioned.
Needless to say, we did not consider we had solved the problem which had foxed the minds of thinkers from Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and many other philosophers.

Dick has written a paper on the Mind which is worth a read. It is available in the discussions area of the Thanet Thinker’s website at http://thanetlife.uk. These notes are also available in the History section at the same site. We hope to have another Zoom meeting in June, with the hope we may be able to meet in person in July.

Nature article https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html

He mentioned a few notable subjects, the Holocaust, Roswell, the moon landings, JFK’s assassination, Princess Diana’s death, 911 and now the Covid19 pandemic. Each of these are believed by a small minority and mentioned disproportionately by the press. Most of their explanations are fantastic and impossible. But these theories are not new. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which posited a Jewish plot to murder gentiles, was created by a French anti-semite in the 19th century. Many theories are health related claiming harm from pylons, mobile masts, vaccines and radiation and many catastrophic events will generate conspiracy theories.
Dick also mentioned that religion can also be considered a conspiracy theory. “Similar fantastic narratives and beliefs, defined biological and physical reality are created in a cultural phenomenon which we usually call religion”. It could be that belief in a theory allows people to handle events otherwise beyond their understanding, such as their own death. He thought conspiracy theorists were similar to paranoid schizophrenics with their complex, rigid, organised delusions, though schizophrenia does not require an external event to create the delusion. He wondered if the left brain and right brain functionality had an impact on such beliefs, with men being more prone to them.
He thought the USA had more than its fair share of irrational beliefs; the American dream, the invulnerability of the USA and the creationist myths. Such beliefs made it more likely that Americans will produce conspiracy theories, and it is always very difficult to confront them. It is usually easier to nibble away at the false belief rather than reject it outright. So analysing the cost of creating the conspiracy can be a way to introduce an element of doubt. For example, it would have cost more to simulate the moon landings and involve so many conspirators than to actually do it.
The discussion started with a suggestion that the Covid19 conspiracy theory, holding that the virus was created deliberately or accidentally in a laboratory near Wuhan in China, might rather be a possible explanation. A lab analysing viruses could accidentally infect a worker who then spread the disease, and deliberately releasing a new virus could have been an attempt to change the world economic structure. Time will tell which country benefits more from the virus in the long run, whether it was deliberate or not. The UK did accidentally release smallpox in recent times and one person died. One of us suggested that often workers in China are given jobs for reasons other that their expertise; loyalty to the party or bribery or connections, so lab security may have been laxer than it should be. Dick pointed out that other epidemics have been shown to have started with animals. He had started a petition to get the Chinese to ban the sale of live animals for food in food markets, but the Chinese Embassy told him at it was actually already illegal to do that in China!
We moved onto fake news and the recent suggestion by President Trump that injecting or drinking disinfectant might cure Covid19. We wondered why newspapers and the media publicise such ‘news’ even though it is palpably false. This led us to thoughts about UFOs, with some of us narrating events that required that sort of explanation, such as rapid movements of lights in the sky.
Dick has sent in an addendum which I reproduce in full.
The 5G panmemic
The belief that the rollout of 5G by the telecommunications companies worldwide , is spreading the Corona virus, is a meme that is approaching a global panmemic. Similar memes were noticed in the past, relating to 4G. The meme infects a small highly susceptible population of conspiracy theorists who are co-morbid for other memes, such as 9-11 and EMR. The nucleus of those infected by the meme, are people with unusual personalities and a child’s level of scientific education, who confuse computer viruses with actual biological viruses. Their other characteristic is the conspiracy belief, that a malignant agency is promoting this spread, and they, the theorists, have arcane knowledge not possessed by the common herd. This small nucleus has a larger penumbra of those who are influenced by the meme and thereby pass it on to others. This is a serious outbreak of a meme, which has already caused damage to property and may yet result in deaths. Public health information is important, which to some extent immunises the more susceptible. There is no specific treatment, but determined and resistant spreaders should be isolated, and prosecuted where indicated. He also recommends the http://TheConversation.com/uk website, particularly https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/expert-guide-to-conspiracy-theories-83678 which is an article on conspiracy theories.

Hopefully we will get another meeting going in May. One suggested topic is on Nietzsche, determinism and free will. Watch this space. Please send an email to johnpaddy@gmail.com with corrections and extra comments if my memory has failed me.
NB. The meetup.com subscription ends at the end of May and unless someone else wants to pick it up the Thanet Thinker group will cease to exist. The group will continue via the email distribution list which contains all the members who usually attend the meetings anyway, but if you are not on that list and want to continue getting the meeting notes or participate in meetings via videoconferencing please send me your details.

We agreed that very few people managed to exist in isolation from society, especially in the past. C1 brought up the view that ‘New Age travellers’ and the ‘back to nature brigade’ were parasites, taking from society but not contributing to it. J suggested that with increasing automation it was likely that most of the population would be unproductive and would need to be supplied with the essentials for living by the state to keep the economy going. K brought up the aboriginal people of Australia who were perfectly capable of living ‘on the land’ until invading westerners took it away from them, and people elsewhere wanting a similar lifestyle were held in contempt.
This led us into discussion of the notion of progress. J thought that Hegel’s championing of Law was a major indicator of human progress, and C2 agreed that pretty well everything we did in society was under pinned by a legal structure. We could buy items by clicking on a screen in the sure knowledge the goods would arrive the next day. C1 then revealed he had been boycotting Amazon for years and suggested that if we all took similar action, we could stop the dominance of supranational corporations in our affairs. The rest of us felt this was a doomed enterprise, and it might be difficult to find squeaky clean businesses in the modern world.
Still in the area of human progress we moved onto Stoicism. Epictetus held that ‘Our desires should only be directed towards what’s possible, because desiring what’s impossible will inevitably produce frustration and unhappiness. We should not seek happiness in things we want but which are impossible to control, even good things: our health, wealth, reputation, relationships, or even whether we continue to live or die’. We considered that the definition of what is possible is central here, since if we took a very restricted view of the possible, we might stagnate and allow others to control our lives. P felt that GB Shaw’s quote “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man” was a reasonable position to take. We ended up considering whether we thought things were better in the old days, and decided that we tended to view the past in rose tinted glasses, only remembering the good times and ignoring elements of the past we would find intolerable today. Next evening meetup will be at 7.30pm in the Falstaff on 26th March 2020.

He had hoped the article would show that rational argument can in fact change minds, but instead it seemed to concentrate on more emotional events which made people change their perspective. D used his psychiatric experience to suggest a good way to modify beliefs and behaviour is not necessarily to attack the dangerous or false beliefs head on, but rather sow a seed of doubt in the structure of the subject’s belief structure. We speculated whether this approach could ever work with radical extremists, though it might have been the method used by the people who caused these people to change their minds to become extremists in the first place. D brought up the number of people in the USA who will not consider that their gun laws are unfit for purpose, even though they can be regarded as rational people in many other respects.
We had a short interlude when it was suggested that the recent election was significant in that one party campaigned on an openly racist and anti-Semitic platform. This brought concerted demands for evidence for this to be produced, without using headlines from the Daily Mail and its like. We quickly moved on to more philosophical concerns.
F brought up the work of Timothy Williamson, the ‘outstanding philosopher of our time’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Williamson (Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning, Oxford University Press, 2017). F held that Logic and mathematics were fundamental to philosophical work and that all students of philosophy should be well founded in logic before going on to more serious study, and perhaps mathematics should be the basis of philosophy. The group tended to think that mathematicians were notoriously hard to understand, even when they were discussing mathematics. J thought philosophers should be bold thinkers, allowing logicians and scientists to test their theories for consistency.
We moved on to a discussion on history. Supposedly Churchill said history is written by the victors, so a history of India written by the English would be significantly different from history written by Indians. R brought up his experience of being a teacher of history in the Philippines. He said even ‘well educated’ people there were very ignorant of their history. J noted that even in the UK 20% of teenagers think Winston Churchill is a fictional person, (or a dog), and King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes and Eleanor Rigby were real people, according to a UKTV survey in 2015. This brought us back to the opening topic, wondering what could be done to combat ignorance.
The first afternoon meetup will be at 2pm on Friday 13^th March in the Albion Hotel in Broadstairs.
Next evening meetup will be at 7.30pm in the Falstaff on 26^th March 2020.

We kicked off with the topic “Do you think eating meat is immoral? and if so is it because of the effect meat production has on the planet/climate, or because of the treatment of the animals becoming food?”. It turned out that three of us had been vegetarian for most of their lives and not for any particular reasons of morality. The meat eaters tended to think vegans were a particular problem, especially when they were fanatical and militant. The killing of animals for food and maltreatment of cows for milk were generally deplored, and some thought people should only eat what they killed themselves. The effect on the climate was not really touched on, despite attempts to bring it up.
We moved on to Neo-liberalism. P gave a brief summary of economic thinking from Adam Smith to the present day, culminating in what he chose to call Neo-capitalism, since the role of the state in holding back the excesses of private companies and corporations suggested by Smith was not a part of current capitalist economies. He held that various attempts to make socialist or co-operative economies had all ended in failure. D brought up the example of the Mondragon cooperative in Northern Spain which was founded in 1941 and is still prospering today, but accepted that its isolation in a part of the Basque country may well have contributed to its success. D also argued that state control of major infrastructure was a good way to rein in large corporations from exploiting modern economies. C brought up Amazon as an example of a company with too much power and subject to few controls or taxation in the countries where it operated.
We ended up with a discussion on human progress. Did eating meat contribute to the increase in intellectual capacity and result in the Western World producing cars, houses and computers and so on? Why did aboriginal peoples not develop in the same way? Was progress a good thing, or was living in harmony with nature not a better way of living, especially since the way the developed world is going may well lead to the destruction of its way of life and the death of billions of the world’s population.
Comments and corrections to these notes are most welcome.
Next meetup will be at 7.30pm in the Falstaff on 27^th February 2020.

Next we moved onto self-awareness and our feelings that we are somehow separate from our physical bodies. One of us held that she felt she had a soul, not necessarily in a religious sense, but rather something that could exist independently of the body, and which was a specifically human attribute. This lead to comparisons with human and animal behaviour, with the higher apes showing behaviour patterns much like our own. We also speculated that if androids came along with humanlike capabilities would they also feel they had souls. Self-awareness seems to transcend purely physical descriptions of how our bodies work. Even though our actions are quite predictable in general, and will be much more predictable in the future, we hold to the notion that we have free will which in some sense is not bound by the physical workings of the body.
Then we tackled the issue of the French ban on the wearing of the burqa in public, which was held to be legal by the European Court of Human Rights. “The Court is therefore able to accept that the barrier raised against others by a veil concealing the face is perceived by the respondent State as breaching the right of others to live in a space of socialisation which makes living together easier.” We noted that the UK does not have such a ban, though in some places people are requested to remove the veil, for example in court. Jack Straw, when he was holding MP surgeries, refused to talk to a constituent who would not remove her veil. We noted that not allowing people to wear what they wanted was an infringement of their liberty, but some of us took the French view that the population in general are discomfited when we cannot see the face of people we are interacting with. One of us said he found women wearing burqas to be attractive, which of course might seem to contradict the wearer’s intentions.
The next meeting is on the 23rd of January 2020 in the café in the Falstaff Inn on Addington Street in Ramsgate at 7.30pm.

What is original and does it matter?”
This question was posed in Ancient Greece as the Ship of Theseus enigma. The ship Theseus sailed after he killed the minotaur was supposedly placed as a monument which weathered badly and after a while all its wood had been replaced. We tended to agree that there is no final answer to the problem, people may differ but possibly think it doesn’t always matter. Paintings sometimes have a great monetary value and it is important to differentiate the original from a copy and we have created protocols and panels of experts to decide.
Scientists tells us the all the atoms in our body are replaced over time and we still agree on someone being the same person throughout their life. Recently it was proposed that DNA, which is a code rather than something made of atoms, could be used to determine continuity of human beings. The Alzheimer’s sufferer who has lost most of her memory has the same genetic base as she had as an infant without self-awareness, or as an adult during the peak of a successful career. Our DNA remains the same from the first instant of an individual’s existence to his or her last breath.
We moved on to the classic question of Berkeley – “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it still make a sound?”. Here we came up to a split of opinions. Scientists among us held that “When the tree falls in the forest, sound waves are generated that impinge on your eardrum if you are there. … Therefore the sound is the response of the neurons in your auditory cortex. Any creature that has the perception of sound will hear the sound of the crash. There is no sound in the sound waves themselves”, and “No it doesn’t. Sound is the product of our ears. If there are no membranes (ears, microphones etc) to vibrate then there is no sound.”. Others held “Of course it does. The idea that a member of the human race has to be present at any occurrence for it to be true is quite ludicrous”. Again the question comes down to how we use language and some people will hold one opinion and others another. Before we knew the scientific explanation of how we hear it might have seemed much more self evident that the tree made a sound, the sound being an external event whether anyone was there to hear it. Does the moon exist if nobody is looking at it? Wittgenstein toyed with the notion that in some societies pain might be thought of external – so the leaf of a nettle might be said to have pain, which we feel when we touch it.
We next discussed free trade and protectionism. P held that the US and many of the European countries got rich because they operated in a free trade environment, but once they had achieved developed status they then used protectionist measures to prevent other countries doing the same. Policies by the world bank, the international monetary fund, the US and the EU are used to make under-developed countries pay large tariffs to trade with other countries, and this is enforced by making loans with stringent conditions. China was held up as an example where loans and grants were being made without these conditions, therefore enabling faster development by the countries where it was helping. Some of us felt that if we abandoned our protectionist policies the standard of living in the developed world might quickly lower and could lead to violence.
We finished off with a discussion on bias in the media and where it was possible to get an approximation of the true state of affairs. Needless to say there was wide disagreement here, some holding the BBC as a balanced broadcaster (since every side in politics regarded it as biased against them) but others saying the only reliable source of information was RT (Russia Today) and Al Jazeera.
The next meeting is on 28th November at 7.30 pm in the Falstaff Breakfast café.

J held that philosophers should aim to think the unthinkable to see where the ideas led, and let their acolytes work out if their logic was sound. All philosophers are remembered for their theories, not their logic. Early Greek philosophers with their theories of what the world was made of, Plato with his Forms, Berkeley with his trees falling in the woods and so on. Logic was of course essential to see if their theories stood up to scrutiny.
We moved on to consider the recent press announcements that Google had co-developed a quantum computer which solved a mathematical problem in just over three minutes which scientists had worked out would have taken the biggest supercomputer in existence over 10,000 years to do. This held out the possibility of computers being much more powerful in everyday life than currently. We talked a bit about Elon Musk’s theory that we are living in a simulation, a little like the people in the Matrix films or Red Dwarf’s ‘Better than Life’ game.
We noted that this year was the 100^th anniversary of the publication of “An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge” by Ramsgate’s local philosopher, A.N Whitehead, but agreed that his philosophy had not proved accessible to any of us. We gathered he thought everything in existence was to some extent sentient, and our perceptions of ‘external’ objects were actually a process involving the object and ourselves. It was recalled that he gave a series of lectures in 1928 where the first lecture attracted over 600 people, but the second only 6, and only two people stuck out the full 10 talks!
We had a brief discussion on whether philosophy was a male preserve. Not many of us could name many female philosophers, and there was a thought that many of the ones we could name came to their fore in the second world was when the men were off fighting. It could be that women had better things to do.
We moved on to films and the increasing use of CGI and animation to the possible detriment of classical forms of cinema. P thought old films were virtually unwatchable because of their clunky special effects, citing her recent viewing of the 39 steps with Kenneth More. This generated disagreement with some others who held the old films were far superior and the current trend seemed to be tending to possibly eliminate actors altogether. There was some debate about virtual reality and how some of it is already so convincing that it was likely to be almost impossible in the future to tell if something was real or not.
The next meeting is at 7.30pm on October 24^th in the breakfast room at the Falstaff.

Frederic put the question into perspective, pointing out the money given to Oxford was from a right wing American republican and it was unknown whether there were any strings attached to the donation and it was unclear what was going to be done with the funds. Frederic suggested that no undergraduates should be let into a philosophy course without a firm grounding in mathematics and they should be given an intense course in logic as part of their studies. This led to a debate on whether mathematics was particularly relevant for the study of philosophy, and possibly it would tend to dictate the sort of philosophy being studied, tending towards the more analytical rather than the more continental type with emphasis on political and social themes. Returning to the money we wondered if creating a large philosophical faculty with great numbers of lecturers would generate a hothouse of philosophical though or just turn into a battleground of competing ideologies.
Next we took on Patrick’s topic: “The commons, lifeboats and the capsized”. This cryptic set of words refers to Garrett Hardin’s suggestion that in view of the world’s increasing population and diminishing resources food assistance should be denied to less developed countries so their populations would cease to grow. Patrick put forward the view that the West’s creation of large bodies such as the World Bank, the IMF, the EU etc created an environment which exploited under-developed countries and had the effect of keeping them in poverty. Our materialistic lifestyles depended on getting our goods produced by poor countries paying very low wages, and as soon as their wages grew we moved our suppliers to the next poor country. We tended to be sceptical on the inevitable growth of the world’s population beyond its capacity to feed it, and posed the possibility that climate change, pandemics and changes on food habits could also have major effects without us having to become heartless when seeing famines and droughts.
Lastly we took on the issue of consciousness. John posed a few points:
° Am I conscious? Do I have free will? Or is my brain taking the decisions and then I know what they are?
° How do I know you are conscious? Is it because you are like me? How alike does something have to be to be conscious and self-aware?
° Is my cat, dog, elephant or gorilla conscious?
° Could an Android or AI be conscious?
The brain taking the decisions point follows a scientific study which showed that brain scans could show a decision being made before the subject was aware of having made the decision. The test was to move something left or right, and the scan detected the decision 100% of the time. This led to discussion on whether the feeling we have of being in control of our decisions coexists with all these decisions being completely caused.
We wondered if assigning consciousness to beings depended to some extent on how much we knew about them. In the past it was easy to assume that humans were the only self-aware beings, but since Darwin it is much easier to see humans as just another animal, and the closer other animals are to us the more likely we are to assign ‘humanlike’ characteristics to them. People who have pets are likely to hold say their cat is conscious. The fact that it knows how to get us to give it some food can’t be written off as just learned behaviour since the same would be true of humans. Some of us had problems with androids being conscious, since they were a created being and initially programmed for specific purposes.
The next meeting is on 26th September in the café at the Falstaff in Addington Street at 7.30pm.

We kicked around thoughts on what was wrong with Ramsgate (litter, dog mess, closed shops, hooliganism, pubs staying open too late), and also what was good about Ramsgate (many volunteers looking after gardens, the chines, the waterfall, the cafes, clubs for book reading, crochet, walking, riding etc). We wondered if having an organisation to oversee all the volunteering would have a good effect – the Tempo scheme was mentioned where volunteers are rewarded with Time Credits which can be ‘spent’ in many locations and attractions around London, Kent and the rest of the country. The old fire station is being opened up for community use, and people have thought a social bakery/coffee house might serve to bring people together, possibly with tips being used to allow free drinks etc for the homeless and other deserving people.
Margaret Mead said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”., and we thought that this tought could inspire us. We were wary about taking on too large a project, rather defining attainable objectives, costing them, getting the support of local ‘movers and shakers’ and then looking for funding.

The Chiemgauer operates with a fixed exchange rate, tied to the value of the euro. It had 561 businesses and a turnover of €7.61 million in 2015. The bank notes have a lifetime of three months to discourage hoarding, a problem which plagues many UK attempts to copy its success. UK local currencies have not had great success – the Lewes and Totnes pounds have failed, the Bristol and Brixton pounds are coasting along, and the Kingston pound acts as a discount or loyalty scheme with local pubs, cafes and small shops offering discounts to people paying with the local currency. There is a connection with LETS schemes which often preceded the formation of local currencies, but these also wax and wane. This discussion then moved on to the problems facing the Euro, with many of the smaller countries in the EU facing problems with their lack of control over their money, when the central bank seems to act in the interests of the big economies, especially Germany. P pointed out the many of the worlds conflicts have really been about the control of money, even if popular history holds otherwise. For example the US civil war was ostensibly about slavery but actually caused by the differences between the agrarian south and the industrialised north.
We moved on to the topic of populism and its connection with popularity. Most of us were sure what we meant by populism though were finding it hard to define it, apart from naming politicians we regarded as populists. P held that really we wanted to call politicians we disagreed with populists, since all politicians wanted to be popular with the voters. S held there was a clear difference between those who appealed to the lowest common denominator and those who gave reasoned arguments in favour of policies not immediately attractive. We hovered around the Brexit topic, naming “obvious” populists like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage and non populists like Philip Hammond.
This led us on to sortition (also known as selection by lot, allotment, or demarchy) which is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. This was essentially operating in ancient Athens, Venice and Florence. In modern times sortition is commonly used in selecting juries in Anglo-Saxon legal systems. After some discussion of how this might work in the UK most of us felt it would be hard to control. Would the possible officials have to have been trained or educated for the role, and if so would this favour the establishment or Old Etonians? We considered the problems with our form of democracy, from voting on Thursdays which closed schools and makes people working away less likely to vote, the non proportional voting systems, the lack of faith in electronic voting, the house of lords, the low turnouts and the low opinion nearly everyone has of politicians.
Next came globalisation, what would the more globalised world look like in 10 to 20 years? The EU and US were considered protectionist islands holding out against the rest of the world, leading to the failure of the developing world to develop their economies, especially since the World Bank forced those economies to keep low tariffs in their trade with the rest of the world, thus holding back internal investment. However many of us thought trade and barriers to movement would be relaxed over the medium to long future, with the developed world attracting more and more people. One thought was that future employment would be mostly IT based so people could work anywhere in the world.
Finally we came to the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam adopted in Cairo in 1990. P held that three of its principles – the supremacy of Sharia Law, the difference in the roles and responsibilites of men and women, and Islam being the only religion should cause us to be worried. Would we be happy to live in a country with an increasing population of Muslims holding to this definition of faith? Most of us held that most muslims don’t feel bound by the decisions made by a bunch of men in 1990 so they do not constitute what being a muslim means. Pi brought up the fact that in the UK women in the 1970s found it difficult to buy a house on their own, and J recalled his wife could not buy a bed in John Lewis without a guarantor, and her sister, a government employee, was not suitable because she was female. So we tend to forget our own freedoms have only been recently achieved, with more still to come. The Arab spring displayed large disatisfaction with Muslim patriarchal rulers. Even though they largely failed the revolts showed change will come.
Next meeting is at the Falstaff Waterloo Room on 25th July at 7.30.

He took us from Homo Habilis with their tool usage which lead to an expansion of the brain and brought us on the journey humanity has taken since then. He noted how various inventions over the years had made people lose their jobs, made them happier, increased leisure time, decreased leisure time and so on. When we get to increasingly clever computers we find they can beat us at chess with brute force, beat us at Go with very clever ‘thinking’ and drive cars and planes. One of the problems he foresaw was whether they could achieve consciousness, and if so would they under our control? Would they adhere to Azimov’s 3 rules of robotics which protected humans from them. Some of us pointed out today’s military had already produced clever fighting machines which broke the rules. The meeting began to relate various science fiction stories on the theme, with some seeing AI devices, androids and robots in a very benign light, while others suspected they might deign to keep us as pets, or even worse they might see their job as looking after the planet rather than us and go into terminator mode.
Next F took us to the topic “Equal opportunities undermine Marxism”. He noted that the precursor to capitalism was feudal society which was very male dominated with the celibate priesthood having a strong role. Marx held that the complexities of feudalism had been replaced by the opposition of two groups, a small capitalistic minority and the oppressed proletarian masses. The introduction of factory systems where long hours with low pay tended to break down family and social life. The more industry become developed the more men’s labours is superseded by those of women. Capitalists knew that surplus value could be increased by making the proletariat work very long hours but also by using women and children to work as well.
The emergence of trades unions allowed men to fight against this. They restricted the higher value jobs for men only; in the railway industry women were allowed to run level crossings but men got to be engine drivers, station porters and track labourers. The world wars saw women come into the male work arena since the men were off fighting, but when the wars ended the men expected to return to their jobs. After the second world war wages became sufficiently high that many women did not have to work, though those that did were paid less than the men. The Labour government passed the Equal Opportunities act in 1976 but even today this is not seen as coming close to working as intended.
The Conservatives from 1979 and 1983 destroyed a quarter of Britain’s industrial capacity and low paid middle class jobs were created, mainly for women. F pointed out that Marx’s fears were realised by women who would not jeopardise their employment by strike action even in the face of reductions in real wages. Throughout the 1980’s wage increases were in practice cuts since they were less than the rate of inflation. Now families need both partners to work 70 hours for the pay which could have been achieved by a man in the 50’s on forty hours a week. F held that Marx had been proved right in his empirical argument that the employment of women will increase inequality and the oppression of the masses.
Needless to say this led to a fair amount of discussion. Some suggested that Marx had very little to say about the role of women in society, others disagreed with the sequence of events and also the concentration on the roles of men and women in the UK rather than taking a more global perspective, huge amounts of work by women taking place in rural economies throughout the world.
We broke up around 10pm. Next meeting is in the Falstaff, hopefully in the Waterloo Room, on Thursday 20th June at 7.30pm.

Immediately we wanted to know which of them was the optimist and which the pessimist. J thought Marx was the optimist, on the grounds he envisaged a future for humanity where “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” was the way of life. P held that Adam Smith held an optimistic view on the benefits of free trade with minimal interference by the state, and also that if we could achieve this in the world today life would be much better and equitable. Some of us thought that the problem with capitalism today was not down to the role of nation states, but rather to the dominance of multinational corporations and financial organisations acting in their interests despite the attempts of countries to rein them in. We moved on to the possible futures of the world given the likelihood of global climate change, pandemics, overpopulation and famine, and other catastrophes. The chance of western countries becoming greener in the face of climate change produced disagreements, some of us denying that human activity was to blame so changing our behaviour would do no good, and even if it could the narrow interests of nation states would prevent any action being taken, though some of us thought a future where the EU and USA went green and forced the rest of the world to follow suit was quite possible.
We moved on to “Now that children are becoming more and more labelled with ‘issues’ what does the future hold for them?”. It was noted that many classrooms are now filled with classroom assistants looking after pupils with a variety of behavioural problems, and many schools trying to exclude some children because of the effect their activities have on the other pupils in the classes. We tried to work out if this was a UK problem (homework suggested to find out!), or if the problem was new, and if it was what could the reasons be – abolition of corporal punishment, more single parent families, austerity policies by governments, lack of good housing. We brought up media reports of primary school children attending in nappies, teachers having to give food to children who were too hungry to learn and so on. We also wondered whether moving disruptive and special needs children to special schools was a good solution either for the other pupils or themselves, and came to no agreed position.
The next meetup is scheduled for 7.30 pm on 9th May in the Waterloo Room at the Falstaff in Addington Street.

The Einstein quote “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it’s comprehensible” brought us to the thought that the Earth is amazingly suitable for life, and human life in particular, to have evolved, given the incredible sequence of evolutionary steps to bring us to the current time. We covered the belief of some people that perhaps humanity was seeded by other beings, posing the thought that the building of the pyramids and Stonehenge was beyond the capabilities of humanity when they were made. This was countered by the fact that the humans of 5 or 6 thousand years ago were just as clever as modern man and if we could build a pyramid they could do it, given the determination.
New scientific theories which claim there are more dimensions than the three we are aware of brought us to the thoughts that what we can see is largely defined by what we know, or think we know, and this can change over time. When electron microscopes revealed to us that solid tables are mostly empty space we were still able to talk about solidity, but with the knowledge that there are many different ways of talking about the world. The fact that most animals don’t see colours but they often have other senses which we lack, or perhaps have lost.
We considered utopias and the dearth of idealist thinking. Socialist “utopias” were criticised for always leading to totalitarian states which abused the ideals they were created to achieve. Plato’s Republic was noted as one of the first utopias to be proposed, and it was noted that when Plato was given the opportunity to create his utopia he failed miserably. It was observed that many attempts at creating a model society depended on one or two men whose power led to authoritarian policies, examples being Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and so on. Lord Reith’s proposal that the ideal form of society was dictatorship tempered by assassination was not regarded as sensible! It must be said that as a group we were divided on whether we were pessimistic or optimistic about the future of the human race, Brexit and politicians in general.
We touched on the Gaia principle which considers the Earth to be a self regulating body and wondered if the destruction of humanity would be the sensible route for the Earth to follow to guarantee its future.
We moved on to religion and its pernicious effect of human relations. One of us proposed that societies without religion were happier and more harmonious than religious ones. This was countered by the view that Russia and China, largely non religious, were not great examples of societies without misery and poverty. Scandinavia was held up as a largely atheist set of countries with less poverty and better social cohesion that many others, but it was pointed out that most people in Norway belong to the protestant Church of Norway, and in fact the government collects taxes on behalf of religious organisations, and Scandinavia in general is relatively homogeneous and regards outsiders with great suspicion, especially when they have different religions.
Next meetup is on 21st March at 7:30 pm in the Waterloo Room of the Falstaff Inn, Addington Street, Ramsgate.

This showed that Einstein’s theories arose from a long body of work on the problems he addressed and were not just random speculations. In spite of a fair few equations we all held our concentration and are better informed than we were at the beginning.
Steve spoke for a good 90 minutes and the members came up with questions, starting with queries on the paradoxes of trips to distant places travelling very fast and the effects of the travel on the ageing of the traveller and the different length of perceived time for the people at the start location. We also discussed why the ellipse was less perfect than the circle – apparently Kepler spent ages trying to make sense of Tyco Brahe’s celestial observations in order to show the planets moved in circles, eventually giving up and accepting they were moving in elliptical orbits. Even then the orbits turned out to be more complicated due to the gravitational pull of the other planets and asteroids.
We moved on to discuss the role of philosophy in a world where many of its historical areas of interest had been taken up by mainstream science. Paul held the view that philosophy was still as relevant as it had ever been, especially in the realm of analytical philosophy. This started a debate on the difference between Continental Philosophy and the mainly English speaking area of analytical thought. Some in the room held that the big ideas, especially in the areas of political and social thought, were ill served by the analytical stream, but others thought that the Continental thinkers were mainly fluffy idealists.
Our next meeting is at 7.30pm on Thursday 21st February 2019 in the Waterloo Room of The Falstaff. Please bring topics to discuss, or even a paper or presentation!

This led to a discussion on whether the justness of a war depended on there being a legal treaty., and of course whether the crossing of a corner of Belgium was enough justification to wage war on such a scale. He considered World War 2 was essentially an attempt by Germany to conquer Eastern Europe and Russia to create a German Empire and that they wouldn’t have invaded France if it and the UK had not declared war on Germany. This view was disputed by many of us, who considered there was a treaty binding the UK to support Poland if it were invaded. F put forward the view that the treaty was invalid since there was no prospect of the UK and its allies being able to free Poland, so the UK’s premise for entering the war was false. The discussion moved on to consider the views that no wars could be considered justified since in general the winners of a war would always hold their victory was just and the losers would hold that it was unjust. The second Iraq war was held up as an example, since it was justified on the false premise that Iraq was involved with the destruction of the Twin Towers.
We then moved on to discuss Brexit, amid the prospects that the likelihood of a no deal Brexit had been increased by the tensions within the Conservative government. It became clear that the majority of those present would have preferred to remain in the EU and would support another referendum on the issue. D said a major local reason for not having Brexit was that it would turn the M20 into a lorry park and the only Stroke Unit in the area would be in Ashford on the M20 making it unlikely stroke victims in East Kent would ever get to hospital in time to be treated. P took the view that the EU artificially kept food prices high due to the common agricultural policy and that leaving the EU would allow us to import cheaper products from around the world. He also thought the freedom of movement in the EU should be replaced by freedom of movement for the whole world, since the prosperity of the world in the nineteenth century was due to the free movement of everyone to go where the work was. T pointed out that the EU gave the 25 poorest countries in the world tariff free trading so their economies would prosper. Trading outside the EU would involve the UK dealing with countries on the basis of the lowest costs and consequently the lowest standards. The lower food and employment standards prevailing outside the EU were given as strong reasons to stay in. Chlorinated chicken was mentioned with remainers pointing out the USA grew chickens in conditions the EU wouldn’t tolerate and were pumped full of drugs. Needless to say no minds were changed by our discussions and we packed up around 10:15.
The next meetup will be in January 2019 at 7:30 on the 17th in the Waterloo Room at the Falstaff in Addington Street, Ramsgate.

We took this as a reference to the possibility that the #MeToo movement would not be enough to ensure the ending of the power imbalance between the sexes. Some of us wondered if this was a call to a violent campaign, similar to that carried out by some suffragists at the end of the 19th century and onwards. This was regarded as counter productive since it involved women using the same behaviour as the men. Some of us thought there was no longer a problem, but though most held the view things were getting better the fact that men were dominant in so many fields showed there was still an issue. An example was cited where a conference was recorded and the ratio of women speaking to men was 4 to 1, but the men interviewed afterwards held that the discussions were dominated by women! The recent Google AI problem in recruitment was held up as example – the software analysed all the job applications which had succeeded in getting jobs at Google and applied the criteria to new applications, resulting in most women being left out, because historically the human ways of recruitment was biassed against women and this was reflected in the AI!
We moved on to: “What ethics should be built into driverless cars? Should a car decide to kill its passenger instead of ploughing into 5 innocent bystanders?”. An up to date version of the trolley conundrum. Recent news reports have claimed urban areas will probably be dominated by driverless cars within the next 5 years, with Uber and Addison Lee already mapping London for this at the moment. Some of us thought this was unlikely but others agreed economics might well make it likely, with the cost of running a car and parking it increasing. The ethical problem was dismissed since it was very unlikely to occur and driverless cars, if introduced, would be much safer than ones driven by humans.
This led on to “Alexa, Should We Trust You? The voice revolution has only just begun. Today, Alexa is a humble servant. Very soon, she could be much more – a teacher, a therapist, a confidant, an informant.” Another example of technology becoming a force in our lives. We discussed the possibility that lonely people could get solace talking to Alexa and her like, but worried whether such servants would know an increasing amount about all of us, and where did this information go and who would be using it. We recounted examples of things being discussed in living rooms being followed by relevant adverts coming in on social media and emails.
Steve volunteered to give us a discussion of Einstein’s theories of relativity and its subsequent history in scientific thought, together with alternative theories involving the ether which used the same mathematical principles, possibly involving dark matter as the medium holding the universe together. With a bit of luck this will be the topic at the 15th of November meeting at 7.30pm in the Waterloo Room, The Falstaff, Addington Street, Ramsgate.

We moved on to the recent news that a senior policeman had been suspended for using the phrase “whiter than white” when he was emphasising the need to be very careful to perform certain matters in a way to be seen to be above board. We tended to feel that there were no racist overtones in the phrase and that the objection to the phrase was probably an attempt by a colleague to undermine him. We moved on to talk about the allegations of sexual assault being made by a female psychology professor against Trump’s proposed member of the US Supreme Court. The nature of the Supreme Court and its political composition was compared to similar institutions in other countries.
We took on the question “Does Putin have a strategic plan for the future?”, with particular reference to the killing and attempted murders of former spies from Russia and the Soviet Union. We covered the change in circumstances of Russia since the fall of the communist government and the need to provide the Russian people with the strong leadership they seem to prefer. Some of us pointed out that the performance of the West in bumping off their enemies was not much better, with the USA engaging in politically inspired interventions.
Another topic covered the role of the Ego and the belief in the afterlife. Was our belief in ourselves as a special being lead to the thought that we must survive death and live on in a heaven (or hell)? As a group we did not own up to believing in the afterlife, and questioned whether most religions currently emphasise this teaching. Robert Anton Wilson in the preface to Cosmic Trigger said “My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
We contemplated
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction, and we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind, and brought up the extremely quiet room which people can barely be in for longer than a few minutes.
The next meeting is in the Waterloo room of the Falstaff Hotel in Addington Street, Ramsgate on the 18th October at 7.30pm.

We briefly addressed the topic “Should sexual and racial equality take precedence over religious equality” especially with regard to the way religions treat women. It was noted that virtually all religions tend to treat women as second class humans, with Roman Catholics refusing to allow them to be priests, Islam and Judaism discourgaing the mixing of the sexes in worship and so on. It was also considered that onr abuse scandals in some religions these days may well be partially caused by the insistence on celibacy for priests and nuns.
We moved on to debate whether the topical scandals of Boris Johnson (Burka Letter Boxes) and Jeremy Corbyn (Zionism) are overblown. The Labour supporters amongst us tended to argue that the attacks on Corbyn were a plot by the right and Johnson should be brought to trial. Others argued that both scandals were not worth discussing.
We turned to the question of Intelligent Design. Tim Peake, the astronaut, said after his view of the world from space that he “considered that the universe could have been created by intelligent design”. The more scientifically minded of us held this was highly unlikely. The possibility that we are living in a simulation created by our descendants and therefore our world was designed by them was also not regarded as plausible, by most of us.
We talked a while about the effects the likes of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica etc are having on our democracies and considered whether democracy is possible at all in the future. Some thought it hadn’t ever been possible at all, except perhaps in ancient Athens! This led on to the inevitable Brexit topic where we discussed whether another referendum was possible or desirable, and if it happened what would the questions be. A suggestion that there should be three options (No deal exit, Mrs May’s deal, or stay in) was rejected on the grounds that people would not be able to understand it.
Next meetup is at the Waterloo Room in the Falstaff in Addington Street on September 20th at 7.30pm.

The capitalist economies in some parts of the world, such as Scandinavia, seemed to run on better lines, with more resources used to support the whole population rather than just the rich. However we felt getting other world economies to take that route was unlikely. An article in the Guardian on the 20th of April sums up what some of us considered. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-communist-manifesto
We moved on to discuss whether “if the earth were conscious would it get rid of humanity to save itself?”. We surmised that it didn’t need consciousness to end the human experiment, since AI, floods, global warming, plagues, diminishing resources and overpopulation would all possibly lead to much of the world’s people being wiped out.
We finished off with a discussion on the poisoning of the Skripals; whether it was Russia and if not to whose advantage would it have been, and whether the “post Truth” environment meant that we could never be certain of anything. The American far right claiming the Portland school shootings were a staged fake event and the Russians claiming Britain was responsible for the Salisbury poisonings were brought up to highlight the way our facts are increasingly hard to collect.
Our next meetup is on May 17th at the Churchill Tavern on Paragon in Ramsgate.

This led on to discussions on possible forms of government, or none, and a consensus was reached on the view that giving more responsibility to the lowest levels of government would be a good idea, reducing central government to ths big decisions like wasting money on nuclear power stations and building bigger roads. It was pointed out that giving power to small areas was a central policy of the EU and the subsidiarity principle. This brought on a sometimes heated discussion of Brexit with the group being more or less equally split between remainers and leavers. Needless to say no consensus was arrived at here!
After a break we moved onto the proposition that the world might be a better place if men were reduced to the role of breeding stock for the population and otherwise play no part in the ongoing development of the human race. Doris Lessing suggested a mechanism where this could be triggered when she postulated that birth control pills chemicals could be distributed round the world via the sewage system leading to a severe reduction in human reproduction, leaving women in a very strong position for human survival. Needless to say the proposal did not meet universal acceptance, with counter claims that domination by women might not be any better than the current state. Somehow or other this led to a discussion on Germaine Greer’s views on transgender women and the prevention of her speaking at various universities. Then onto some views on whether transgender women should be allowed on Labour Party female shortlists, or use female toilets, changing rooms and swimming areas. Unisex facilities were generally not supported, with females not wanting men around with their dirty unwashed hands, and males not wanting to queue!
The next meeting will be at the Churchill Tavern on 19th April at 7.30 pm. More than likely we will be returning to more philosophical topics, hopefully with a talk on neoliberalism.

A set of slides took us through Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Hume and others till we got to Frege, Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein who corresponded and collaborated on logical thinking, laying the basis for the analytical philosophy favoured by the current English speaking world. We were introduced to the thoughts of the Vienna Circle, AJ Ayer, WV Quine, the later Wittgenstein, JL Austen, Elizabeth Anscombe (the first female to appear!) and others.
Needless to say this started us off on a debate covering many areas. Some of us wondered why Eastern, Chinese, and Indian philosophers were not regarded as significant, nor the “continental” thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Sartre and Heidegger. Paul pointed out that their thinking lacked the connection with reality analytical philosophy provided in its search for truth. This led to discussions on the nature of truth. Some of us thought philosophy should be about the search for wisdom rather than truth, since truth was a bit of an elusive concept, and the greek words ‘philo’ and ‘sophos’ do mean ‘love of wisdom’. An example was suggested of an isolated society where a wise man used his authority to resolve local disputes, perhaps using statements an outside observer considered to be false, but which had the effect of maintaining harmony in that society. Would we call it reasonable to encourage the ‘wise’ man to discard his untrue statements and thereby cause the breakup of the society?
The connection of analytical philosophy with contemporary scientific theories such as relativity and quantum theory was discussed, with the emphasis on verifiability. Theories with no capacity for verifiability should be regarded as meaningless.
A very interesting evening with a great interchange of views.
The next meetup is on 15th February at 7.30pm in the Churchill Tavern.

This raised the point that we don’t know enough about genes and DNA to be able to say definitively that the cause of specific actions could be attributed to specific genes, and of course not everyone with these sort of genes, even if they were identified, would start murdering people. The question initially centred around children who commit violent crimes, but later on expanded to cover people like Hitler and Stalin. We also wondered if people who are violent for religious or political beliefs could be said to be that way because of their genes rather than cultural influences later in life.
The nature of genetic influence of human actions and life choices was also discussed when we considered the recent news items concerning identical twins with differing sexual preferences, one being a lesbian and the other a heterosexual, with these traits being evident from an early age. We brought in the evidence that a large proportion of ancient Greek men seemed to be homosexual while maintaining a home lifestyle with wives and children, and other societies throughout history where homosexuality, or least our knowledge of it, seemed to vary in popularity.
We moved on to morality and in particular the influence of religion on it. Some thought that it was more moral to do good if the action was done without receiving a reward, with Christians in particular expecting an afterlife in heaven if they acted well. We had a mixture of members who had different exposures to religion and this made for a lively discussion.
We also had debates on the nature of reality (as usual!), the Elon Musk view that we are probably existing in a simulated universe (again!), and the prospect of SuperIntelligence and whether it will replace or supersede mankind and even develop empathy and consciousness.
The next meetup will be in January, hopefully back in the Churchill Tavern if they can guarantee a less noisy environment than we have experienced lately.

Steve Howell kicked off with a very well presented talk on the “Mach-Zehnder Interferometer” as an illustration of quantum mechanics, illustrated with diagrams, a program on a little PC and some visual aids. The topic sought to address the problem highlighted in quantum physics where attempting to see what happens in a light experiment prevents the experiment happening in the same way as when nobody is looking to see what happens. This presented the possibility that observation of events changes the nature of those events, ultimately leading to the thought that the universe may only exist when being observed. This led to comparisons with the philosophical query as to whether a tree falling in a forest when nobody is there to observe it creates a sound. Discussions led to critiques of physicists claiming that their descriptions of the world are more valid than higher level descriptions. An event such as a person walking up to a cashpoint and withdrawing money may well be better described by a psychologist or anthropologist than a physicist, since it would probably involve discussions about the spending of money, the banking system and so on. The meeting was split to a certain degree on whether the sort of explanations and problems encountered by physicists are relevant to explanations of events in other areas.
We then had a very brief discussion on whether time existed before the big bang. The consensus was that the way we talk about the big bang almost requires that we presume there must have been time before and after the universe existed. Perhaps the time mentioned int he concept of space-time is different from the concept of time as used in normal life.
We moved on to the topical subject of driverless cars and the responsibility for their actions and misdemeanours. Some of us expressed distaste for the concept of driverless cars altogether, while others thought they would eventually be a much safer mode of transport. The recent development of a computer program which learnt to play GO just by starting with the rules of the game and not looking at the games played by previous human and machine players presented the thought that cars with that sort of artificial intelligence would be operating in ways not necessarily predictable by its creators – presenting problems of who would be to blame for accidents. A possible scenario was that when we hire a car in the future we may be able to choose the ethics of the car as well as the number of seats and engine size.
Next meetup is on 14th December, probably at another location in CT11 9PB – more details to follow.

We thought it may well be inevitable in the long run and it would probably have unwelcome changes in our society, with some people just sitting in front of screens all day, and the problem of how to get people to do jobs not amenable to automation but which were essential – like emptying cess pits and so on.
We moved on to “Can the Welfare State survive”. This was a bit of a hot potato! We tended to agree that the current direction of the government would end up with erosion of what we now expect from the welfare state, with increasing reliance on private companies providing services, probably at a cost to the users. But we viewed other systems of healthcare and employment over Europe which tend to have a mixture of insurance based benefits and whose citizens are not all demanding to go to the British system. This led to discussion of the upcoming election and the distinction between the manifestos of the main parties. A lot of debate on the character of Jeremy Corbyn, trade union reforms, student loans and fees and so on.
Next came a discussion of democracy, bringing in the USA constitution and its separation of powers and its checks and balances. Events of the last few months seemed to have surprised people on what a president can do alone if they choose. We moved on to voting systems and how other European countries manage with their versions of proportional representation. We tended to agree our system was the most unfair and had no chance of representing the views of the population.
Lastly we addressed the proposal that large companies in the UK should be forced to have at least 40% women on their boards. We disagreed on the current percentages, and noted the success of Norway in implementing this policy over the last few years. We thought the UK would stand back from making it compulsory and would continue to make higher women representation an aim, though there were views that 40% was too low and 60% would be better!