Perth Voice Interactive

NESTLING a pint of lager while contemplating the ills of the world might sound a little like drowning your sorrows at the bar, but the Perth Philosophy Circle has a different take on things.

They’ve been running wildly successful Pub Philosophy lectures at Clancy’s Fish Pub in Fremantle.

PhD candidate and event organiser Kyle Gleadell said he and his fellow philosophy students started the circle in 2018 to address, understand and question the contemporary crises of self and society in an accessible environment. 

“The mark of a healthy society is one that can question itself,” he said.

“It is crucial that we leave time to critically question the world we live in.”

Question

“It is this penchant to critically question that makes us human. And it is this questioning that we hope to nurture in our evenings of philosophical engagement.”

Mr Gleadell said he has been overwhelmed by the lectures’ popularity.

“The first lecture saw a line of 150 people trailing out of the front door. The venue was capped at 90 people and so we had to turn people away,” he said.

Mr Gleadell said numbers haven’t reached those initial heights since, but he is still surprised by the consistent turnout at each event.

The upcoming lecture Left-Wing Melancholia is part of a broader series on “Daring to think for oneself”. 

The Circle’s website says it tackles the dangers that “rabbit holes”, “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles” pose to critical thinking, especially in the digital sphere.

Mr Gleadell said this year’s theme was inspired by the contemporary drought in critical thinking.

“Today, more than ever, we are bombarded with an onslaught of information,” he said. 

“While, at the same time, trust in public institutions and media has eroded. The need to critically analyse what we are confronted with is crucial.”

Murdoch University philosophy professor Lubica Ucnik’s gave this year’s first lecture on The Enlightenment and said its emphasis on educating people about the inner workings of their civic state so they could more effectively participate was still valid.

Prof Ucnik said education is new viewed like a business enterprise.

“This needs to be questioned,” she said. 

“It is the problem of consumer culture replacing all other ‘values’ that we have inherited from the tradition, while reducing everything into business transactions.”

Prof Ucnik said it tied into today’s flood of information.

“Information is not knowledge, it is context-less, or context-free, and it is not giving us the ‘general’ and historic understanding of the present. 

Onslaught

“You can have an onslaught of information, without understand anything at all.”

Previous lecture have covered the religiosity towards alien lore and technological prospects in a secular era, the “iron cage” that is Australia’s education system and the futility of how many view the “human self”.

Mr Gleadell said the lectures are given by a range of voices. He said there are great benefits that can be had to understanding complex issues when opposing views bounce off one another.

He said this is also why audience participation is encouraged during question time.

“It is one to thing to have someone who is well versed in their field up on stage providing a lecture, but it is the questions from the public, questions that academics sometimes overlook, that really offer some clarity to the issue.”

by JOEL HALL