Roundtable for Philosophical Naturalism

On October 21st, the "Roundtable for Philosophical Naturalism" (RPN) held it's first meeting with eight of our nine members in attendance. We reviewed five articles representing some of the most interesting science news from the previous month: 1) "Popular plastics chemical poses further threat" , 2) "How One’s “Number Sense” Helps With Mathematics", 3) "Water's role in Martian chemistry becoming clearer ", 4) "Not-So-Permafrost: Big Thaw of Arctic Soil May Unleash Runaway Warming", and 5) "Could an Inner Zombie Be Controlling Your Brain?" . All of these articles brought up issues that have significant implications to our lives and society as a whole.

While ordinarily in the second half of the meeting we would hold a discussion focused upon applied critical thinking (CT), we spent this time instead talking a bit about critical thinking and working out procedural issues for future meetings. CT discussion was centered upon the idea of Robert Ennis. After we spend about a year refining these meetings to get the most out of them, we will be considering expansion of this activity to include new groups (of up to about 10 people each), hoping to make it a network of people who share a secular, naturalistic philosophy with a focus on science, critical thinking, and humanistic ethics. Stay tuned.