Dear all, Just a reminder: Christina Van Dyke (Calvin College) will be giving a talk at CambERG today, 4-5 in the Faculty Board Room. Abstract below.
Hope to see you there! Best, Paulina "You Can't Handle the Truth: Happiness and Death" In the Phaedo, Plato famously argues that we either don't gain knowledge at all, or we gain it only after we die. Since then, even philosophers who disagree about what we can know in this life have mostly agreed that if we survive death (emphasis on "if"), our afterlife will involve access to knowledge we now lack--and that such knowledge is, in fact, an essential feature of everlasting happiness. In this talk, I challenge the prospect of our attaining the sort of knowledge typically identified as essential for our lasting happiness (viz. true understanding of the first cause). I argue that, on a traditional understanding of the afterlife, such knowledge would either a) transcend our cognitive abilities or b) require us to change in ways that would render us non-human. You can't handle the Truth. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
