Faversham Stoa is a pub philosophy discussion group. We meet the 3rd Tuesday of every month from 7.30 to 9.30pm in the The Bull in Tanners Street. There's no charge for membership and everyone is welcome to drop in. Just bring your brain and some beer money!

Next Meeting – “Bullshit!”

Tues 17 January, 7.30 — 9.30pm, at the Bull

In general conversation bullshit refers to anything that one judges is nonsense, stupid, worthless or deceptive. However, the Princeton philosopher, Harry Frankfurt, was not satisfied with this rather loose use of the term and wanted to pin down the essence of bullshit a bit more scientifically and wrote about it in his 1986 paper entitled 'On Bullshit'.

The essence of bullshit, Frankfurt decides, is that it is produced without any concern for the truth. Bullshit needn't be false: "The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong." The bullshitter's fakery consists not in misrepresenting a state of affairs but in concealing his own indifference to the truth of what he says.

The questions that we will be setting out to answer in our session are:

  • Is there more bullshit around now than in previous generations?
  • If the is an increase in bullshit, how do we account for it?
  • Why are we more forgiving of the bullshitter than the liar, given that the bullshitter has less respect for the truth than the liar?
  • Is bullshit having a morally corrosive effect on society today?

We will also looking at various examples of bullshit in a number of domains which will be illustrated by video clips which, if they fail to illuminate, at least will give you a laugh!

More...

Stoa

All about the Stoa

What is the Stoa?

The Stoa is a philosophy discussion group which meets every month in the The Bull pub in Tanners Street, Faverham to talk about serious issues but without being too solemn about it. None of us are professional, academic philosophers and although it's "popular" philosophy we're interested it's never dumbed-down!

When do you meet?

We meet on the 3rd Tuesday of every month from 7.30 — 9.30pm although many members continue informal discussion in the bar after the meeting finishes.

Where do you meet?

We meet in the back bar of The Bull pub in Tanners Street, Faversham, ME13 7JL. Directions...

How much does it cost?

There is no charge for membership but we do have a whip-round of £1 each just to cover the cost of the room.

What kinds of things do you discuss?

Browse through our Topics page to see what we've discussed at previous meetings.

What do you do?

Each meeting is led by a member or a visting speaker and is generally based one or more articles we have all read (althought it's not critical that you read the articles beforehand). Links to all the articles can be found on the Topics page and the dates of meetings can be found on the Schedule page (which includes a link back to the relevant reading).

Who can attend?

Everybody is welcome!

How can I get on your mailing list?

Drop us a line via the Contact form and you will be recieve our monthly bulletin "News from the Stoa".

Why 'Stoa'?

In classical Greek architecture the stoa was the covered promenade attached to the marketplace which became the place where philosophers frequently met to dialogue and debate. In fact it was this habit of regularly meeting in the stoa that earned the 'Stoic' school their epithet: it simply meant "guys who hang out at the stoa and chew the fat!". I like to think that the title of our group suggests an open marketplace where ideas can be traded and critical thinking is our currency.

You might also like to compare the ancient Greek stoa with our marketplace at the centre of Faversham. There are some very close similarities and so that gives us another association with the title.

What is Marginalia?

Marginalia is a blog containing random notes, scribbles, comments, jottings and drolleries on a variety of philosophical topics, including those discussed at the Faversham Stoa. While the notes in the topics section of this site are intended to be fairly impartial, the ideas and polemics in Marginalia are unapologetically my own. You are welcome, indeed encouraged, to append your comments to the entries and start a conversation.

Acknowledgements

The site design is based on a template provided by Free CSS Templates.

All images and cartoons that appear on this site are, to the best of our knowledge, in the public domain or distributed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you are the owner of the copyright of any material that appears on this site and either do not wish it to be published here or would like the attribution ammended, please contact the webmaster.

Articles reproduced on this site have frequently been sourced from other sites. If so, a link is always provided back to the source site and full attribution given.

Get the free Acrobat reader Print-friendly versions of articles on this site are in PDF format and require Acrobat Reader