Announcement List for the Virginia Atheists & Agnostics

[Scott Newton <>]

Howdy all,

CORRECTION: We will be meeting tonight at the chapel bus stop at 6:40pm and 7:10pm to head downtown, rather than the previous location and times because the trolley leaves the chapel on the 15s (props to Alexa for pointing this out). Again, feel free to call me (804-350-6307) if you are late or can't find the group. See you tonight!

Message from Rolph:

Hey VAAers,

This is your trusty VAA secretary, Rolph! I am also the president of the UVa undergraduate philosophy club here, and I would like to extend an invitation to our meeting tomorrow to anyone in VAA who is interested. I've attached the email I've sent to the phil-club listserv below for more details. If you want to sign up for the phil-club listserv, please email me at .

Hope to see some of you all there!

-------

Philosophers,

If you could plug yourself into a machine that you give you any pleasurable experience, would you do it? For our meeting this week, we'll be reading an excerpt from Robert Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia about just this very prospect. Nozick thinks that people value something over and above pleasure, and he shows that one's reaction to his hypothetical "Experience Machine" provides argument against hedonism.

Read the excerpt here: http://www.hhimwich.com/files/exper_machine_nozick.pdf

This thought experiment might remind you of a scene from The Matrix where one of the characters disagrees with Nozick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvdsbQ3VxLA

As usual, our meeting will be this Friday (Sept 19) at Balz Library in Cocke Hall, 6pm. See you all there!

Philosophy quote of the week:
So probably the soul and the brain are one and the same. Can we still talk about a great-souled person and not mean a great-brained person?...Sure, why not? We know what we mean, because these are conventional expressions. We may still say that the sun is setting, even when we know full well that Earth is turning.

-- Patricia Churchland, Touching a Nerve