Philosophy Talk

Philosophy Talk: Live at The Marsh San Francisco
For multiple-show tickets, please call our administrative office at (415) 641-0235 between the hours of 10 am and 5 pm, Monday through Friday to pay by credit card and make reservations for specific shows.
Individual Shows: $15 pre-sale/$20 at door
Any 2 shows: $25
Any 4 shows: $45
All 8 shows: $80
All Dates:
Sunday October 9th, 2011 in SF
Sunday January 22nd, 2012 in Berkeley
Sunday April 29th, 2012 in Berkeley
Sunday July 15th, 2012 in SF
In San Francisco:
Sunday, October 9th 2011
12:00pm - Military Service And Public Life with David Kennedy. Is the military draft a natural expression of democratic values, or a challenge to our most basic concepts of individual rights and liberties? Are the values that make for an effective military consistent with the values that make for a free and democratic republic? If the government must have the power to defend the nation, does it follow that it must have the power to control events around the entire world? John and Ken enlist themselves in a discussion of military service and public life with Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Kennedy.
3:00pm - Is Democracy A Universal Value? With Larry Diamond Americans value democracy, and expect others to value it. But is it a universal value? Does God, or rationality, or something very basic about human sensibility, dictate that states should be organized democratically? What if there were empirical evidence that some non-democratic form of government is more likely to produce human happiness, cultural achievement, and sound money? John and Ken consider the universality of democratic values with Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Spirit of Democracy.
Sunday, July 15th 2012
12:00pm - Forbidden Words with Chris Hom Some words are forbidden so forbidden that we won't even spell them out here, like n****r, and ch*nk, and k*k*, and c*nt. Decent people don't use these words to refer to others. They are intrinsically disrespectful. But aren't words just strings of sounds or letters? Words have life because they express ideas. But in a free society, how can we prohibit the expression of ideas? How can we forbid words? Where does the strange power of curses, epithets, and scatological terms come from? The Philosophers keep the conversation clean with their guest, Chris Hom from Texas Tech University.
3:00pm - Turbo-Charging The Mind with Michael Vassar The human mind is one of the most amazing products of evolution. But nature's built-in limits have held our minds back for thousands of years. In more recent decades, the rapid advance of computer technology has produced a vast array of intelligent machines that far outstrip us in speed and capacity, but that know far less than we do about almost everything. Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Can we use new technologies to merge the creator and the created, to break down the barrier between man and machine, and create a hybrid intelligence that seamlessly integrates the vast knowledge and skills embedded in our biological brains with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations? John and Ken examine the prospects for transcending our biological limits and turbo-charging the human mind with Michael Vassar, President of Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
For Berkeley dates, see the other event Philosophy Talk at The Marsh Berkeley
Each show is 90 minutes with no intermission.