We were founded in 2004, and have been publishing a journal annually since!
All officers are voted for by the general body. During the first semester of each year (Fall semester), the club operates as an open discussion club with weekly meetings. During the second semester, we put together an editorial board and focus on our annual publication during each weekly meeting.
The faculty advisor servers a more or less administrative role – operating as a liaison between the department and the club and a point of communication for situations like these, but the club is de facto run entirely by students.
Our two main annual events are the Apocalypse Debate in the Fall and the Kretzmann Lecture in the Spring. The Apocalypse Debate is a debate between five Cornell professors, each of a different discipline, with the premise that the world has ended and only one of their disciplines can be preserved in a time capsule. Each of them tries to convince the audience that their discipline is the one that should be saved.
Our annual Kretzmann Lecture, named after Cornell’s late Professor Norman Kretzmann, is an annual guest lecture where we host a philosopher from another department in the country. The 2021 Kretzmann Lecture was Feb 17th (last week), and David Chalmers was our guest.
Our primary aim is simply to promote philosophical inquiry and discussion, and to have fun and learn from each other along the way. We pride ourselves on being an open discussion club (that is, when we are a discussion club), with some of our members being 4th-year philosophy majors and others having never been exposed to philosophical concepts. It’s a great mix of personalities and levels of knowledge, and it allows everyone to learn quite a bit (even advanced philosophy students find that they learn a lot by explaining concepts, navigating the discussion, being introduced to original objections, etc.)
Website: https://logos.philosophy.cornell.edu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/logoscornell/
Submitted by Liam Galey, Cornell Undergraduate Philosophy Club President
Scott MacDonald
Scott MacDonald is the Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies at Cornell University. Scott's research interests include medieval philosophy (especially Augustine and Aquinas), philosophical theology, and issues in philosophy of mind, moral psychology, and the philosophy of action — especially those concerned with free will, moral responsibility, and practical reasoning. He is currently working on themes in the later works of Augustine: the Confessions, De trinitate, and the Genesis commentaries.
