Recently, we have created an official list of all responsibilities for each officer. If you are an officer and would like to view the list, there will be several copies available at Dr. Leach's office by Monday afternoon. Also, Aporia has a new e-mail address: aporiapanam@gmail.com. A meeting will be held this upcoming week, please attend. Thursday at Noon in the SBS building, room 111.

We would like to thank everyone who attended the event for their support and interest. As the pictures will attest, there was a good turn out. We would also like to thank Dr. Adriel M. Trott for delivering a very interesting and relevant lecture, since the 2008 elections are right around the corner.
She correctly asserts that, in our present day, general attitudes toward politics tend to be apathetic and impertinent. Politics happen somewhere miles away, in Washington D.C or Austin, but not where the individual lives. Part of her goal during this lecture was to challenge those attitudes and change the general view on present day politics through Aristotle's understanding of what it meant to be political and why "human being" already implies a political life.
Overall, she engagingly delivered her lecture, and she successfully addressed insightful questions from the audience. We give her two thumbs up!
If you were present at the event, feel free to comment about it in this blog. In fact, I encourage people to elaborate on Dr. Trott's lecture. Remember that our organization exists to develop and further the philosophical life of our university and our community, so we need your mindful voice. Thank you again for your support.

A new year for Aporia has begun, and it is only fair that we announce the new officers that will lead this club (with everyone's help) into a brighter future. Your new president is Kirk, vice president Nicole, secretary Blanca, treasurer George, and parliamentarian Raye. This year, we look forward to increase club activities, get involved with other campus organizations, and enjoy plenty of good films! Don't be shy and join us every Thursday at 1 PM in SBS 111, or at our Friday events in SBS 101 at 4:00 PM. If you have any questions, or would like more information, GO TO THE MEETINGS! Just kidding... e-mail: Dr. Leach at sleach@utpa.edu or Blanca at gurunoriega@gmail.com.

The UN has declared Tuesday the first International Day Commemorating Non- Violence, in honor of Gandhi's birthday. I suggest we each consider honoring this day by contemplating ways in which we can pursue the vision of a non- violent world in our own lives--- perhaps by speaking to people you happen to meet about the futility of our current wars, and the ways we might avoid the next one (Iran is already on the books, obviously.) We might even wish to consider, if only for a day, the plight of the animals with whom we share this Earth, and the cruelties we practice regularly upon them without much thought... one day of veganism, perhaps, is not too much to ask of ourselves, is it?

Submitted by Peaches.

The new cases for the 2007 Regionals are out!  As usual, there are some very interesting scenarios which raise important issues.  You can find these posted on the web by searching "Ethics Bowl regional Cases," or you can email Drs. Cole or Leach for a copy.  Please don't forget that both Aporia and the Ethics Bowl club will have an important joint meeting Thursday, September so, at noon in room SBS 111.  We will be electing officers and voting in a new constituion, as well as scheduling auditions for the team(-s) which will represent UTPA at the Regionals in San Antonio. Please make every effort to be there, if you wish to participate in these events.

I thought Jesse Bailey gave us a very nice treat in today's reading from the Meno. It's always hard, at least for me, to take in all that someone says when they're reading a paper-- I mostly get waylaid by something suggestive in what they say, and lose track of the argument while lost in my little reveries; by the time I tune back in, I'm starting a new argument, as it were, in the middle and have to play catch up, until it happpens again (as it always will...)

Still, I thought I'd share my recollection, albeit patchy, if anyone's interested in comparing my pastiche with their own.  I heard something like this (broadly reconstructed, and omitting, doubtless, many salient details--)

Meno represents something we probably all fall prey to: acquisitiveness, the desire to own some-thing (accent on the "thing", as we objectify in our very aquisitiveness.) When he asks Socrates for insight, he actually expects, as it were, to be handed wisdom, as if it were a piece of pizza or  a check to be cashed at a later date. If I may offer an analogy, he wants to own that wisdom in the way one owns a work of art one has purchased-- not that there is anything wrong with owning art per se, but it would be wrong in many ways to claim thereby that one is also an artist (much less the artist) simply for owning the work in question.  Obviously, making the art is what the artist does, and it is only her artistry which can be called evident, here.

Without making his own way to virtue, in short, there is no other way for Meno to become virtuous, only he doesn't know that because, on the one hand, he's a creature of habits formed unconsciously by simply being a part of the almagamation known so glibly to the college freshman as "society"-- that loose mass of undifferentiated, and ultimately inconsistent, principles or narratives which are the spotty result of our accidental human history, an inheritance bequeathed upon each of us by comittee, as it were. On the other hand, he carries the taint of groupthink with him in his search (or has when we first meet him, at any rate.) He insists that the thoughts ("philosophy") which might free him from that mass become thought-objects, ownable items, as above. Thus, if he has any hope of getting out of the charachter (unfree) which he has (but from which he is alienated), but has only by virtue of having found himself with it ( he is trapped in his "facticity", perhaps), it can only be by letting go of the grasping attitude which is the mass's only way of approaching ideas (the mass is fundamentally "fundamentalist", I guess.)  It will take more charachter than someone with Meno's charachter to turn that trick, apparrently.  There might be hope for us as readers, though...

Anyway, that's what I seemed to hear, although as I write it sounds further and further from what could really be called "recollection" on my part and more like something merely occassioned by the words I heard. Does anyone else have thoughts on this which they'd like to share?

I'm reading a text called "Religion After Metaphysics," and came across a distinction which might be interesting to some. Mark Wrathall, in writing about Heidegger, distinguishes between things which are "Instrumentally" important, versus those which are "Existentially" important. In the first class, I'd include my Zippo-- I need it to light a cigarette (sometimes REALLY need it,) but it's value is of the "instrumental" variety.  Something has "Existential" value, according to this author, if it is "necessary for our self-realization."  What sorts of things might fall into this class, do you think?

This is the web site for Aporia, the Philosophy Club at UTPA.  Beginning in the Fall semester, 2007, this will provide information about club activities (e.g., elections, fundraising, etc.) as well as announcements for lectures, film screenings, workshops, and other events of interest to the philosophic community.  Please bookmark this site and check it regularly; we hope to have an exciting year!