The following is the letter sent to all the potential first members of the Philosophy Association before our first meeting on June 3, 2023.
Hi. Thanks for expressing your interest in the Philosophy Association.
This has been a dream of mine for a long time. I want to find a group of people who enjoy similar things, things that school often fails to give us — like, say, stimulating philosophy seminars. So I figured that was a good place to start, and we could branch out from there into other interests if we have critical mass to pursue them, or potentially become a place for interesting people to find other interesting people.
In my experience, the best way to start a conversation is by beginning from a single common starting point; as time passes, we’ll develop knowledge of each other, and can tailor discussions in that way down the line. I was therefore hoping to start off with something light(ish) that we could get through easily and jump off from in multiple directions. As a first reading, I was thinking we could take Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy — I’ve read it myself, and I feel like it’s a good place to start, both because of Descartes’ prose (much less dense than others’) and also because of his perspective; he’s writing from a relatively lay viewpoint, compared to other philosophers who tend to be writing very much situated and in reference to their intellectual and historical context.
I spent part of my summer in 2022 at St. John’s college doing philosophy seminars with other high schoolers (genuinely the best experience of my life). The most impactful norm we established for these discussions was only speaking with reference to our own ideas, or the text(s): no referencing outside sources. This forced us to take a common point of reference, avoiding problems where someone references a domain, work, writer, or other outside source and derails the group into a conversation few others can participate in. (Related is the idea of “inferential distance” [see https://www.readthesequences.com/Expecting-Short-Inferential-Distances] — hopefully a common reading will help reduce that distance.)
I’ve recruited people for this from a variety of sources; everyone’s in high school near or in the Bay Area, with a majority of people from Sacred Heart Cathedral, my high school. I don’t know everyone personally; some people have been recommended by teachers or have reached out to me based on public posts I’ve made about it. It may be a disaster, or it may be fantastic — please keep an open mind, and if you have a lot of friends in the group avoid creating subgroup dynamics with them as much as possible. (Note that I might be a little less intimate if I know you personally already; it’s not you, I just don’t want to isolate those who I don’t.)
If this is a deal-breaker for you, I understand — if you talk to me I might be able to assuage some of you concerns, otherwise don’t feel bad about saying no! This is highly experimental for all of us anyway.
Also, regarding the logo above: it’s the letter Phi, and the letter A, offset nicely. Don’t look too hard at it. We can also use a combination of p and a —> |o( as an in-text symbol. No particular reason for this, I just thought it would be fun — make it kind of “secret society”-y.
|o(