I have enjoyed meeting people at venues like the ICA. I think we can continue to attract good caliber speakers and would prefer that we don't take the risk that the content of discussion boards hinders this. I joined the group to "meet up" face to face with others interested in philosophy and would not be saddened to see the boards disappear; I merely want to know when someone has been booked so I can RSVP. The beauty of meet up is there is plenty of scope for a breakaway/alternative group for those people more inclined to discuss online. If there were to be club guidelines I would suggest discussions remain within the topic of the meet ups that have taken place in the calendar.

I never read any of the posts made in the thread on 'How shall we protect ourselves from Islam'. But I do know that being offended by what someone says isn’t grounds for censoring what they say, at least not in the context of a forum on philosophy. When you engage in philosophical discussions, you’re going to have people who disagree with you, challenge your positions, and criticize the quality of your reasoning. You can sometimes find what they say offensive. If this, by itself, were grounds for censoring what they say, then there would be little room for disagreement in philosophical discussions. And if there’s little room for disagreement, then the discussion is not a genuine philosophical discussion. It’s just a matter of expressing our shared points of view, of talking about what we mostly agree on.


What about the issue of “safety”? For one thing, it’s not a matter of safety. The fact that other people might find out that you belong to a forum on philosophy where some of its members express controversial viewpoints does not undermine your safety. It just means that other people might erroneously conclude that because you’re a member of that forum, you share the viewpoints of all of its members. That might damage your reputation in their eyes, but it doesn’t undermine your safety. And it would only be the result of their erroneous judgment. Is this, by itself, grounds for censoring controversial viewpoints on the forum? Certainly not. Many views in philosophy have, at one time or another, been considered to be controversial. And some people were worried about associating with philosophers who hold a controversial view, just because other people might erroneously judge that they too share the controversial view. But that’s not grounds for censoring the controversial view. What you ought to do is not worry so much about your reputation in the eyes of faulty reasoning people, or correct their faulty reasoning, or join as an anonymous member.

Also, it seems that a lot of people do hold the view that we should protect ourselves from Islam. So, we ought to be able to, at least, try to have a philosophical discussion about the matter. It will probably raise a whole lot of issues in philosophy of religion, social and political philosophy, ethics, and identity politics.

I never read any of the posts made in the thread on 'How shall we protect ourselves from Islam'. But I do know that being offended by what someone says isn’t grounds for censoring what they say, at least not in the context of a forum on philosophy. When you engage in philosophical discussions, you’re going to have people who disagree with you, challenge your positions, and criticize the quality of your reasoning. You can sometimes find what they say offensive. If this, by itself, were grounds for censoring what they say, then there would be little room for disagreement in philosophical discussions. And if there’s little room for disagreement, then the discussion is not a genuine philosophical discussion. It’s just a matter of expressing our shared points of view, of talking about what we mostly agree on.


What about the issue of “safety”? For one thing, it’s not a matter of safety. The fact that other people might find out that you belong to a forum on philosophy where some of its members express controversial viewpoints does not undermine your safety. It just means that other people might erroneously conclude that because you’re a member of that forum, you share the viewpoints of all of its members. That might damage your reputation in their eyes, but it doesn’t undermine your safety. And it would only be the result of their erroneous judgment. Is this, by itself, grounds for censoring controversial viewpoints on the forum? Certainly not. Many views in philosophy have, at one time or another, been considered to be controversial. And some people were worried about associating with philosophers who hold a controversial view, just because other people might erroneously judge that they too share the controversial view. But that’s not grounds for censoring the controversial view. What you ought to do is not worry so much about your reputation in the eyes of faulty reasoning people, or correct their faulty reasoning, or join as an anonymous member.

Also, it seems that a lot of people do hold the view that we should protect ourselves from Islam. So, we ought to be able to, at least, try to have a philosophical discussion about the matter. It will probably raise a whole lot of issues in philosophy of religion, social and political philosophy, ethics, and identity politics.

Hi James.

I would tend to agree with you about censorship if this site's main purpose was to be a forum. However it is not.

Also I strongly disagree with you saying it is not about safety. It absolutely is.

Why? This is the London Philosophy Club. London - location, Philosophy - subject, Club - private group of people. You are from SanFran and thus very unlikely to become a part of our face to face community, thus actual people that speak to us organisers inside the club face to face are who we listen to. I know that sounds harsh but that's the the community we serve as organisers - we cannot please everyone nor do we want to.

There are plenty of forums out there that you can use to debate philosophy and I encourage you to do so as forums would surely benefit from your zeal to contribute. This is a club that is about meeting face to face and ensures its club members feel safe, this website is a tool to create and organise events and draw interesting speakers and opportunities. Online reputation is part of safety. And if a members start leaving due to that safety being compromised (which they have), we listen. We will not go the anonymous route as that will not grow a real community - being anonymous is great in forums, but not for this club.

Example on how online safety works: Say a potential employer is looking up a candidates name - they will quickly see them attached to this club, which we feel is a good thing... unless they see that name attached to a questionable thread. It only takes a small thing like this to discredit someones reputation or first impression. I would know as my day job is in online reputation and know how often this happens.

Speakers/authors/philosophers that we ask to speak at our events often have a little time to check the site before agreeing to speak so we want it to confirm that this is a good community to engage with, nothing shady. Also we are partnering with other offline philosophy groups (like the Hay festival this summer) and do not want some discussion to ruin our chances to engage with other exciting intellectual communities. Once face to face, let the opinions and debate flow!

Sorry if this club comes across as a forum and will do our best to work with meetup to make it clear that this is a location based face to face club. A club where the bulk of actual debate and philosophizing takes place off line and in the regular club meets.

Best,
Filip

heh heh

so far as 'rules' go, as a 'philosophy' forum, I would like all posters to...

1 Deconstruct all presumptions contained in a premise before posting. For example, who is this 'We' that so many folks talk about? 'How can we protect ourselves from Islam?' Could folks just own their stuff instead of projecting and universalising it?
2 Substantiate or own premises: 'But I do know that being offended by what someone says isn’t grounds for censoring what they say.' Isn't it? How can you 'know' that, when I could define my own grounds for censorship as precisely my being offended by what is said? This is an unsubstantiated and unacknowledged subjective assertion, not a premise on which to base a thereby valid argument. If you want to argue that in your state, offensiveness would not be grounds for censorship, fine, go ahead.
2 Define terms. What are your criteria for your 'knowing' something? Whatever they are, I don't care, I really don't! I'm interested - just so long as your following statements are coherent to them. A lot of terms are bandied about - in apparent consequence - without folks first having said what they mean by them and subsequently sticking to that.
3 Study symbolic logic, convert your argument to symbols and see if it works before posting, else you're only gonna give me a tortuous headache.

So, yeah, I like discussions and people [should we meet ;] that are open, pluralising, non-presumptive, relative in their statements - owning where they're coming from - and, most of all, coherent. But I have a pluralising agenda [I admit that!] Diversity is my viewpoint and I therefore feel uncomfortable with people - or structures of argument - that could be characterised as appropriative in projecting what I always experience as relative viewpoints as absolute 'truth' for all people at all times [this is often done under the presumptive/appropriative/ignorant cloak of the 'we'.] I don't believe that there is a universal, abstract 'truth' that can be arrived at by competitive argument; I don't need anyone to tell me how the world 'really' 'is'. I prefer acknowledgedly relative exchanges of experience and insight.

Filip:

What’s the difference between “a club on philosophy” and “a forum on philosophy”? It seems like the only difference is this: in a club, it’s permissible for you to censor viewpoints that you find to be controversial; in a forum it’s not. And when you meet online, it’s a club; and when you meet in person, it’s a forum. The problem here is: your decision to call this online meeting “a club” and not “a forum” does not, by itself, provide justification for your policy of censoring controversial viewpoints in the online meeting. And encouraging me (and, by suggestion, others who question and challenge your policy) to go elsewhere also does not provide justification for it. Well, if your decision alone doesn’t justify it, what about the “safety” issue? Is someone going to bash your head in because they find out that you belong to an online meeting where some member argues for a controversial viewpoint, and they erroneously judge that you too share the controversial viewpoint? No, they’re not. It’s a phony issue. How easy it is for those with the ability to censor to appeal to the issue of safety to justify the use of censorship. Moreover, the chain of reasoning that you use to justify censoring controversial viewpoints in the online meetings also justifies censoring controversial viewpoints in the person-to-person meetings. Someone could find out that you belong to a person-to-person meeting, no less than an online meeting, and, on that basis, erroneously judge that you share the controversial viewpoints of some of its members, and as a result of that, “threaten your safety”. So, that’s a reductio ad absurdum against your position. But if your decision to call the online meeting “a club” and if “safety concerns” don’t justify censorship, what about the prospect of getting a philosopher to speak at the person-to-person meeting? Does censoring controversial viewpoints in the online meeting increase the odds of getting a philosopher to speak in the person-to-person meeting? No, it doesn’t. On the contrary, it does the opposite. Philosophers, in their free time, want to interact with people who bring a variety of intelligent viewpoints. Discussions in the online meetings are an indicator of the variety of intelligent viewpoints that will be present in person-to-person meetings. Censoring controversial viewpoints in the online meetings has the effect of diminishing the variety of intelligent viewpoints expressed. And that, in turn, creates the impression that there will be little variety of intelligent viewpoints present in the person-to-person meetings. Consequently, philosophers will be less likely to want to speak at the person-to-person meetings.

A few quick points,
Jules,
(At the risk of sounding argumentative) The board is not unregulated. It is regulated by the 'Meetup' terms and conditions. I think what we are discussion here is whether it's felt necessary to have extra, locally administered, regulation for this group. I'm happy to chip in some time on administering but I'm not prepared to devise a set of rules. Happy to be part of the discussion about those rules.
I'd compare the 'over a thousand members' with the numbers able to attend the meetups. I'd guess that typically maybe 10% of the membership attend any one meetup?? I think the forums offer something for members who, for whatever reason, can't make it to a meetup. There's also a question about whether the groups is all about meetups or more broadly venue (online and offline) for 'London Philosophers' (including welcome guests and visitors from outside the capital). I did take the 'rambling' thing as a bit of a joke (though I felt it worth checking) I'm not offended.

Rob,
Agree that long posts are necessary to help work out sometimes trick ideas and to indicate that we have considered some counterpositions before posting. Short postings can be taken to indicate that we have a strongly partial/one-sided view.
I don't agree that forum-anonymity greatly reduces a sense of community. Uses of aliases/avatars etc is commonplace online. The 'true identity' can be unlocked at face to face meetups 'Hi, I'm 'DrBob' ' without having to revealing information which might help people stalk me etc.

Cliff,
I'd have no compunction in taking down hate speech or something clearly designed to incite violence. The HDWPOFI post, it seemed to me, was (by accident or design) on the edge. I found it offensive but couldn't really find a justification for removing it.

Russell,
There's a risk of rerunning the HDWPOFI if I respond in depth to your post, suffice to say that it didn't say 'lets kill all muslims before they kill us'. If it had done it would have been removed promptly, I'm sure. If it had said that and Jules/Filip hadn't acted, I'd have alerted the meetup administrators. I expect any other reader would have done so too. I do think that the responses challenged the assumptions of the question.

On your later point about 'deconstructing' etc. This group is for "people who enjoy discussing all things intellectual... No background in Philosophy is necessary". I think that people with more experience with philosophy could take some role in helping people do this unpacking, but I feel strongly that novice-thinkers should be encouraged to not hold back from posting. Philosophy is learned through participation as much as by passive reading/listening.

Manu,
I think limiting the discussions to the the topics of the face to face events has a logic to it. It may offer some protection from mischievous postings however I would also anticipate that there may well be some testing of boundaries if this rule was established. (Of course that, in itself, is no reason not to have the rule). Personally, I'd regard the loss of more-wide ranging boards as a a real loss. The discussions might, themselves suggest topics that are of interest within the groups and worthy of consideration for one of the face to face discussions, but that's just my personal position.

James,
I agree with most of what you say.

---
I think if I were to moderate this group I'd want to see the question 'What, outside of what is already forbidden by the meetup forum terms and conditions, would we want to see forbidden as a topic of discussion on these meetup forums?" answered clearly. The suggestion 'Anything not to do with a face to face meetup which has already happened' would be a valid reply and one that I'd expect to see debated. Personally I'd prefer the answer to be much closer to null, the empty set.

I think that the current topic probes what London Philosophy Club' wants to be. If it's simply a meetup group then maybe the message boards aren't essential. If it's a broader community than that, and it clearly is at the moment, the message boards/forums are a place where folk can meet and share ideas irrespective of geography - that seems a welcome resource to me and not one that I have found with such civil tone elsewhere. (Maybe I just need to look harder).

I'm Shocked!

Having been away building my art collection for the past few months, I return to this group and find that an outbreak of petty politicking has resulted in an atmosphere of censorship, encouragement of intolerance, condemnation of people who don't accept the conventional wisdom, and stigmatization of them as "ignorant".

Personally, I would say the willingness to make judgements and to tolerate dissent is the essential precondition for freedom and moral independence. So, I would suggest that the reasons given for the summary removal of the offending thread are flimsy at best, and only go to lower my opinion of Jules, who I had held in quite high regard after hearing his meetup on Stoicism.

Re: fear of employers jumping to the wrong conclusion
Everyone I've tried to explain the concept of meetup.com to has had a tendency to say something along the lines of "Oh, you mean Internet dating" – getting completely the wrong idea - but that doesn't deter me from correcting their incorrect view... If I think back to when the internet was black and white, people used to tell me that the whole internet was nothing more than pornography and perversion; so I can certainly imagine that it might be easy for some low I.Q. HR person tasked with Googling a company's employees to get the wrong idea, but are those busybodies really going to do anything more than have a cursory check on Facespace for photographs of the aforesaid employee falling out of bars/clubs drunk, stoned and/or naked?

If there really are totalitarian employers prepared to waste money hiring Private Detectives to investigate what their staff do outside of working hours, then surely the correct response is for the fearful employee to proactively challenge views that they (or by proxy, their employer) feels are incorrect; so that anyone with half a brain can see that the unfortunate employee actively disagrees with the views expressed, and under no circumstances is "agreeing by default" with absolutely everything stated on some website, where someone with the same name as them happens to be registered.

Re: lack of pictures
I don't see the connection here... Who said people with portrait photos ALWAYS turn-up to meetings? Or is the assumption that those WITHOUT portrait photos don't take an active part in meetup? The best way I can see to sum this situation up is: it's YOUR choice to have a portrait photos just as it's OTHER'S choice not to.

Re: deterring guest speakers from giving talks
I attended a fascinating talk given by Frank Furedi at the South Place Ethical Society earlier in the year, in which one of the points he argued was that we all have the right to plan the assassination of the Pope, including inciting others to do the same - since he claims that we only do wrong if we actually carry out the plan or inflict any physical harm upon the Pontiff. Looking at the quantity of future talks on the timetable of that group, they do not seem to have been adversely affected by the rather more controversial views expressed by Professor Furedi.

Further, I would suspect that censorship will actively deter speakers who might wish to talk on a topic that could be taken out of context by the members of this group who no doubt enjoy writing to the newspapers and signing their letters "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".

Re: hate speech
One of the points I recall from the censored thread was that people known to be harbouring terrorist intentions should be reported to the appropriate authorities. Using the same reasoning, if there was anything illegal in the censored thread, I suggest that Jules has colluded to destroy evidence that should have been turned over to meetup HQ and the Police for investigation and possible prosecution.

Re: real life meetups vs. forum discussion
This seems to be the best argument, but then where are all the planned real life meetups? I can't imagine that every potential guest speaker has taken offence to a solitary thread that caused an anonymous member some upset. Certainly all the prior meetups I've been to have been fairly good, and each has been oversubscribed, so usually I've had to join the Waiting List. Thus, I would suggest that the forum functions as an overflow from the real life meetups, and gives an opportunity to those who wish to continue discussions that couldn't be finished after an hour or two of meeting up in person, as well as filling time for members who would like to attend a face-to-face meeting, but find that one isn't currently available for them.

Plus, what's to say that foreign members won't ever come to the UK and attend a real life meetup, suggest topics or give tip-offs about possible guest speakers who may be prepared to talk (Which then get archived until an opportunity to make use of the ideas presents itself)? So, the total value of the meetup group is in the efforts that individual members are prepared to contribute, whether that be simply attending meetups, suggesting ideas for future meetups or giving the talks themselves.

Re: forum discussion vs. real life meetups
One thing I've come to notice from all discussions both real and online is that oftentimes people will retort "I can't believe what you say, therefore it isn't true". In the real life context, this utterance might suit the Organizers, since it abruptly brings any discussion to a close with the agreement to disagree. It's likely the proponent hasn't come prepared with books, videos or other evidence – so, continuing a discussing within the environs of a forum means that links to Books, Youtube or more authoritative online sources will result in more in depth discussion.

As a further downside, at the last meetup I attended, I had several important points to make, but each time I ended up having another less considerate member talking over me. Whilst this is no doubt a limitation of having so many members wanting to attend a face-to-face meetup, I see no reason to protest about the format of face-to-face meetups, and something that would undoubtedly be very difficult for anyone to change.

Finally, I don't think anyone should deride the time and efforts that the Organizers have put into arranging meetups and making sure that everyone is safe; however, the willingness to censor on the flimsiest of evidence only suggests that even with all their combined intellectual might, the 1,000+ Members were unable to put up a cogent counterargument to the contentions set out in the censored thread - so instead the Organizers chose hit the delete key, much like when a child losing at football grabs the ball and shouts "It's my ball and I'm going home".