Philosophy
U3A Philosophy Group held its first ever meeting on 9th July 2010. There were six of us present, and we explored some of our own attitudes towards beliefs, and had a fairly informal chat about how to move forward.
We usually meet on the second Thursday of the month, at 10:30 am in the morning at one of our members' houses. This is not a taught class; it is an open discussion group, and we select philosophical topics somewhat randomly from month to month. Philosophical knowledge is neither required nor expected.
We last met on 12th March to discuss What is truth?
We discussed various theories of truth, such as the correspondence and coherence theories, and mathematical truth. We dealt with God, the Big Bang, and whether or not truth is the end of enquiry, noting that the word end has at least two different meanings. We also talked of truth to power, power as the source of truth, and whether or not doctors should be truthful. I think our consensus was that truth is a human and social construct. As usual, we nodded towards Wittgenstein, this time as the source of the truth table and the correspondence theory of truth. This may or not be a truthful record.
Our next meeting would have been on 9th April 2020, to discuss Spinoza. However, this was cancelled because of Covid-19, and no further meetings have been scheduled.