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The USU Catholic Newman Center will hold its annual Newman lecture on Tuesday, October 20 from 4:30-6:00pm.  The speaker this year is Maureen Condic, professor of neuro-biology at the University of Utah.  Her lecture is titled, “The Beginning of Life”.  Eccles Science Learning Center, Room 046.

It should be a very interesting talk.  Reminder that later the same evening, the Philosophy Club will gather at the Bullshead at 8pm to discuss chapter 1 of Jean-Luc Marion’s God Without Being.  For the reading, see the usuphilosophy.com blog announcement.  (I think the only connection between the two events is that both Dr Condic and Marion are Catholic).

(from Existential Comics): http://existentialcomics.com/comic/51

(h/t Mike Howsden)

A week from today we’ll have another “Philosophy on Tap” discussion at 8 p.m. at the Bull’s Head Grill (west of the football stadium, in the “Blue Square” complex). This time we’ll discuss chapter 1 from Jean-Luc Marion’s God Without Being, and Millie Tullis will lead discussion. Again, feel free to attend even if you don’t get the chance to read the selection!

Marion God Without Being

2016 Southern Utah University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

Call for Papers
Please address any questions to Dr. Kristopher Phillips (kristopherphillips@suu.edu)
The Southern Utah University Philosophy Program is pleased to announce our 2016 Undergraduate Philosophy Conference!
The conference will be held on Saturday, February 6th.

Dr. Brian Collins (California Lutheran) will provide the keynote address (title TBA). We invite high quality papers from undergraduate students in all areas of analytic philosophy (broadly construed). Papers should be between 2000-3000 words, should include an abstract of about 200 words, and should be prepared for blind review (please include full contact and affiliation information in your submission email only).

Please submit your papers as a word or .pdf file to
SUUPhilosophy@gmail.com by December 20th 2015.

We know how the heart works, and what to do when something goes wrong. Why can’t we do the same thing with the brain when mental illness strikes? Good article here, which is a more applied version of the mind-body problem:

Even so, suppose that we knew at each instant what each neuron was doing – what chemical it was releasing and where. Suppose further that we could relate this to something the brain was doing at that moment (say, making you hungry, or seeing someone you knew) – a circumstance way beyond contemporary neuroscience. Would we really ‘understand’ what we were observing? Would we ‘know’ why this pattern represented a thought, a perception, a motivational or emotional state? Could we then predict what a different state of mind (say, thirst, or recognising a banknote) might require? There is no theory of neural function that would allow us to do this, beyond a vague generalisation that the particular activity of a neuronal assembly or network was responsible (and even this might vary in different parts of the brain). We don’t actually know what to look for.