UC San Diego’s philosophy club was originally a reading group within the Philosophy department. Led by selected students, the Undergraduate Reading Group quickly broadened its activities and events to better facilitate learning and community within the undergraduate community. It gained its new name of Philosophy Club, and was structured around a President, Vice President, Secretary, and a collection of council members.
UC San Diego’s philosophy club’s officers and members of the council are selected by the faculty. There is no specific distribution of who does what, and to promote leadership, the officers and council members create and divvy up tasks among each other.
At UC San Diego the club officers have the most contact with the Undergraduate Program Coordinator, who is a staff member rather than faculty (and who plays a big role in making the club a success). The faculty advisor works with the Undergraduate Program Coordinator to choose the club’s officers at the beginning of the year, and then meets with the club president to advise on event planning. At the end of the year the faculty advisor also helps coordinate the annual conference at which students present papers published in Intuitions, an undergraduate philosophy journal that the club’s officers work on.
The club does not have a set meeting schedule. Instead, it is up to the officers and council to set up events. Typically, there are 1-2 reading groups occuring weekly throughout the entire school year. This past year, there was a weekly afternoon reading group outdoors on the 5th floor terrace of the Arts & Humanities building, with a splendid ocean view. This reading group was led by the President Bo Miao, who researched and selected notable papers to read beforehand to then be discussed during the 2-hour meeting. The topics included a broad range of papers, from philosophy of physics to biopolitical power to free will & morality. In the past, when there was an additional reading group, it was typically focused on one specific area of philosophy, or one specific work, such as The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness by Sartre.
In addition to the reading group, there will typically be at least two “Coffee with A Professor” events each quarter to give a group of students an opportunity to meet with Professors outside of class to just talk about anything, such as their personal history, their research, and so on. In this past spring quarter, we had it with Professor Craig Callender (who specializes in philosophy of science, with special emphasis on physics, time, and the environment) and Professor Monte Johnson (who specializes in ancient Greek philosophy and its influence on modern philosophy and science).
Outside of the Reading Group and Coffee with a Professor, UC San Diego’s philosophy club hosts social events such as movie nights, board game nights, food socials, etc. to help foster community within the philosophy students.
Additionally, our philosophy club is also a place that allows students to advertise non-philosophy club sponsored events such as hikes near the beach, beach bonfires, and so to further create lasting bonds among its members. Examples inclue a beach bonfire, a spring break day trip (which never happened due to last minute cancellations but was planned) to explore the mud caves in the Anza Borrego desert, and an upcoming event in week 1 of fall quarter is a beach day involving swimming with sharks— nursing leopard sharks (completely safe!). We really benefit from our location next to the ocean that is also close to the mountains and desert.
One important special event is the end of the year Intuitions Conference which the philosophy club helps hold, which is a conference presenting the papers published in the undergraduate Intuitions journal (also created by philosophy club officers).
A unique feature of the philosophy club is that it is open to all students at UC San Diego, not just philosophy majors and minors so it allows anyone to join and enrich themselves in philosophy as most members hold a broad range of views and knowledge that can be quite interesting during lively discussions.
Within the club, additional benefits to “members” (there is no official roster…we simply have events and people show up, often those who have been to past events) is that they can reach out to other members for help with philosophy. Some officers in the past have even hosted specific events just for helping people work through problems they have in philosophy.
UC San Diego’s philosophy club also assists the department by acting as a voice to help broadcast speaker events, gather volunteers for helping with tasks, or even helping professors with their classes (such as officers helping a professor run a political philosophy role-immersion game called Justice).
Two of our graduates this year are about to begin their masters in philosophy, and the previous year’s president is about to begin their PhD in philosophy. However, members do a variety of things after graduation, such as law school, medical school, real estate, and so on.
In addition to the philosophy club itself, for the last three years UC San Diego has been fielding an Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Team. Ethics Bowl involves a series of regional tournaments that take place in early December, with the top teams at each regional invited to participate in a national tournament in February of the following year. In December 2021, the UC San Diego team placed second in the California regional; and in February 2022, the team reached the quarter-finals of the national tournament.
The members of the team participating in the California regional were Sarah Kang, Rishabh Raj, Anthony Ruiz, Maximilian Zekowski, and Eva Zhuang. Anthony Ruiz was unable to participate in the national tournament and was replaced by Alexandra Michael. This was the first ethics bowl experience for all these students except for Max, who had participated in the 2019 regional.
The aim of Ethics Bowl is to encourage thoughtful and respectful exchanges on important topics of ethical significance. Teams of undergraduates compete by providing extended answers to moral questions based on case descriptions that are provided ahead of time. At the national tournament, cases discussed included the use of artificial intelligence in military applications, the regulation of gene editing, arguments for and against the banning of fireworks, the moral purpose of the Doomsday Clock, the moral permissibility of maintaining a market in non-fungible tokens, and the moral permissibility of space exploration.
The team was coached by philosophy professor, Sam Rickless, and philosophy PhD students, Aaron Chipp-Miller, Karina Ortiz Villa, and Sam Ridge. Coaching sessions were held twice a week, October-November and January-February. The team was generously sponsored by the UC San Diego Department of Philosophy, the Institute for Practical Ethics, and the Dean of Arts and Humanities.
At the regional tournament in December 2021, over four rounds, UC San Diego compiled a record of four wins and no losses, coming in second out of twenty-eight teams, and earning a place in the national tournament.
At the national tournament in February 2022, over four rounds, UC San Diego compiled a record of three wins and one loss, coming in seventh out of thirty-six teams, reaching the quarter-finals and losing to the second seed and eventual national tournament winner, Macalester College.
We have a facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ucsdphilclub
Our website is: https://ucsdphilclub.wordpress.com/events/ (The site is a bit outdated.)
Monte Johnson
UCSD's Undergraduate Philosophy Club's faculty advisor for 2022-2023 is Professor Monte Johnson. Prof. Johnson researches Greek and Roman Philosophy and is the author of Aristotle on Teleology and is currently working on a reconstruction of a lost work of Aristotle, the Protrepticus. He teaches and advises at all levels, including Freshman seminars, upper and lower-division undergraduate courses, and graduate seminars.
Is this worth a comment from an ‘outsider’?
‘Morality & Decision-Making’
Are our personal feelings about morality, different from what our spiritual and secular law-makers tell us are morally ‘good’ or ‘bad’, with respect to, for example: abortion, bigamy, slavery, ethnic and national identity, euthanasia, homosexuality, taxation, authority, hierarchy, distribution of wealth, power and control, or about what makes for a happy, balanced and contented social life?
Is there a conflict of interests between our sensually-conscious feelings and our conceptually conscious thoughts about morality? Do we know what decisions are good or bad ones before we make them? The Bible says: “Father, forgive them for they no not what they do” but if: “they know not what they do”, then surely, they do not need to be forgiven! Perhaps: “Forgive them, for they do not know what makes them do what they do” would be fairer.
Apparently, there is usually a very small interval of time between our intention to do something, and our becoming consciously aware of being able to approve, or veto that intention [Libet, B, Volitional Brain, 1999]. Moreover, we may think we are free to choose what we do, but we are often ignorant of what makes us choose. The further back in time we look for ‘the cause’, the harder it is to identify, as there are usually many contributory causes.
In fact, the whole ‘decision-making’ process usually involves a mixture of conflicting influences, some of which we may be unaware of, so cannot resolve them rationally, no matter how much time we might spend on trying to do so. ‘Consciousness looks backwards, and serves as a guide for the future’ [Darwin, C The Descent of Man, 1871].
Take the question of: Where to go for our holiday? We may crave the sun because we’re fed-up with the weather at home, or because our body is telling us we need more vitamin D from sunlight; or we’re stressed from pressure at work and need peace and quiet for a break. Most ‘causes’ are subjective, so can’t be solved objectively. Even decisions of a more rational nature, concerning capital investments, for example, usually turn out to be subjective too. We might go for a fixed interest rate, or prefer the thrill of a more speculative venture. Even poverty, or early experiences of insecurity may turn out to have a greater influence on our subsequent levels of risk-taking than we realize. In short, we simply can’t help being subjectively biased about whatever decision we make; no wonder there’s little agreement about what are morally good or bad decisions.
“When a man denominates another his ENEMY, his RIVAL, his ANTAGONIST, his ADVERSARY, he is understood to speak the language of self-love, and to express sentiments, peculiar to himself, and arising from his particular circumstances and situation. But when he bestows on any man the epithets of VICIOUS or ODIOUS or DEPRAVED, he then speaks another language, and expresses sentiments, in which he expects all his audience are to concur with him. He must here, therefore, depart from his private and particular situation, and must choose a point of view, common to him with others; he must move some universal principle of the human frame, and touch a string to which all mankind have an accord and symphony. If he mean, therefore, to express that this man possesses qualities, whose tendency is pernicious to society, he has chosen this common point of view, and has touched the principle of humanity, in which every man, in some degree, concurs. While the human heart is compounded of the same elements as at present, it will never be wholly indifferent to public good, nor entirely unaffected with the tendency of characters and manners. And though this affection of humanity may not generally be esteemed so strong as vanity or ambition, yet, being common to all men, it can alone be the foundation of morals, or of any-general system of blame or praise. One man’s ambition is not another’s ambition, nor will the same event or object satisfy both; but the humanity of one man is the humanity of every one, and the same object touches this passion in all human creatures.”
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, IX, I