Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club

rdf:langString Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club

rdf:langString Moral Sciences Club

rdf:langString Moral Sciences Club

rdf:langString center

rdf:langString #FFFFF0

rdf:langString The club has met at Newnham College since 2014.

rdf:langString Philosophy

rdf:langString Second meeting Oct 26th, 1946 :::Dr K.R. Popper, Methods in Philosophy :::In Mr. Braithwaite's Rooms at King's In the first part of his paper Dr Popper explained how he chose this topic as a consequence of his astonishment and surprise at the Secretary's letter of invitation*, which made use of such expressions as "a short paper," "open a discussion," "state a philosophical puzzle" etc, which reflected a different view from his own as to what philosophy is. He went on to describe this philosophy and its origins, giving it the label "Linguistic Philosophy" . He considers the advent of this school an epoch in philosophy, but he would criticize it very strongly on several points. Thus while it occupies itself with "preliminaries" it claims exclusiveness to the title of "philosophy" and never goes beyond these "preliminaries" to the more important problems of philosophy. After all, one knows what he means by his philosophical question and the important thing is to provide the "true answer" for it. It also cultivates "esotericism." In discussion, however, it turned out that to give an example of the "beyond the preliminaries" problem is a difficult task which calls for both labour and time. The examples which Dr Popper eventually suggested seemed to some of the audience to be no more than problems in pure maths or Sociology. The meeting was charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy. Prof. Wittgenstein was in the chair. *It is the Club's form of invitation. Wasfi Hijab, Secretary

rdf:langString right

rdf:langString The Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, founded in October 1878, is a philosophy discussion group that meets weekly at the University of Cambridge during term time. Speakers are invited to present a paper with a strict upper time limit of 45 minutes, after which there is discussion for an hour. Several Colleges have hosted the Club: Trinity College, King's College, Clare College, Darwin College, St John's College, and from 2014 Newnham College. The club has been highly influential in analytic philosophy because of the concentration of philosophers at Cambridge. Members have included many of British philosophy's top names, such as Henry Sidgwick, J.M.E. McTaggart, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and several papers regarded as founding documents of various schools of thoughts had their first airing at a club meeting. Moore's "The Nature of Judgment" was first read to the club on 21 October 1898. "Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description" was presented to a meeting in 1911, and in 1926 what became Frank Ramsey’s Truth and Probability. Russell's "Limits of Empiricism" was read in the Michaelmas term of 1935, Friedrich Hayek's "The Facts of the Social Sciences" was read in the Michaelmas term of 1942, and Moore's paradox was first read in Michaelmas 1944. Almost every major anglophone philosopher since the Second World War has delivered a paper to the club. It was during a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club in October 1946 that Wittgenstein famously waved a poker at Sir Karl Popper during a heated discussion about whether philosophical problems are real or just linguistic games.