The Community of Philosophical Inquiry
A Public Philosophical Discussion Group
What is it?
Every week, we meet to discuss philosophical questions. These are not empirical questions—for which we have broadly agreed-upon methods to fathom answers. An example of the difference between a philosophical question and an empirical one is “What time is it?” versus “What is time?” We can know what time it is through examining one of the many methods and means for calculating such, as we all share the agreement that a clock or a watch is such an effective means. Answering “What is time?” requires more personal and ontologically deeper and more epistemologically complex consideration of a different non-methodical and non-standardized means. Philosophy requires personal care, attention, willingness to look, refined and refining ability to see, and most importantly, courage to self-correct upon bearing intimate and rigorous witness to truth.
How it works
Our modality is simple. Anyone may contribute a question. The facilitator writes down all questions, and we vote to decide on which question to explore. The facilitator’s role is to keep close to the leading edge of the inquiry, to follow the question where it leads, while regulating the traffic of voices. While the question may develop and evolve and deepen, we keep from wandering too far from the original question and its understood intent. The facilitator role can change from week to week, as the group matures.
What’s the Point?
Philosophical inquiry is work. We do not debate; argue and defend. Winning and losing is not cultured. This is not sport. We look—and we see what is actually so—together. This looking and seeing TOGETHER requires us to work with and reduce the undue influence of unexamined beliefs, conditioned attitudes, habituated ideas, knee-jerk theories, treasured and preferred concepts, emotional attachments, instituted triggers, and the like which interfere with the fullest development, flourish, growth, depth and strength of our natural perception, our irreducible and inherent capacity to see what is actually so in this very living moment, our irreplaceable and unconditioned intelligence, our deeply innate moral character, and our indivisible and unfragmented and unbroken sanity, which is our aim. We seek to recover, restore, and re-connect with who and what and how we actually truly and naturally ARE, and to free ourselves and each other from the mental (and sometimes emotional) habits, conditioning, triggers, reactions, defenses, and other interferants, deliriants, obscurants, bewilderments, fogs, hazes, blind spots, cognitive numb-nesses, and other such deleterious cultural and societal and technological and historical and biographical influences over who and what and how we have BECOME. Freedom, after all is not FOR these automatic triggers and conditioned associations with which we have amassed, accumulated and assembled our cultural or personal IDENTITY. Freedom–true and deep and natural freedom–is FROM such influences.
Who can come?
This group is open to all people; students and adults of every conceivable sort. Everyone is welcome. The only limitations will be those of the physical space, and the capacity of group dynamics. One person alone is not a community. More than thirty people are challenged to operate functional inquiry effectively, unless we are grounded and matured through enough consistent process. Ideally, group size is more than two, and less than too many to hold a single question over a span of time without breaking into divided smaller groups.
Who is the facilitator?
Jim McStay is presently a substitute teacher with FUSD. This group has no affiliation whatsoever with the district. Jim’s education includes a BA in Contemplative Psychology from Naropa University in Boulder Colorado, and an M.A.T. from the Institute for Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair University in New Jersey.
Jim finds meaning in unlocking and opening natural intelligence from calcified and mal-adaptive conditioning, and has worked professionally with people in extreme states of mind, including Alzheimer’s patients, chronic psychotics, severely emotionally disturbed children, and high school students addicted to their phones, all of his adult life. Jim finds no greater meaning than in be-ing where words like peace, beauty, truth, and freedom all mean the same thing.
Jim looks forward to bringing about significant momentum and skillfulness in this community such that, after a few weeks, he can gladly hand over the reigns of the facilitator role to other participants who can continue the democratic nature and spirit of this role in the community.
As any such group matures, the facilitator role can be offered to anyone who has attended enough group discussions to have the capacity to effectively do so.
Location
TBD
Date and Time
TBD
Note: We are responsible to set up and then return the room to its original condition. Volunteers are welcome. We will sit in a circle. Start time of the discussion begins when we are seated in attendance. A short break will be offered half-way through.