What we’re about
Welcome to the Toronto Philosophy Meetup! This is a community (online and in-person) for anyone interested in philosophy, including newcomers to the subject. We host discussions, talks, reading groups, pub nights, debates, and other events on an inclusive range of topics and perspectives in philosophy, drawing from an array of materials (e.g. philosophical writings, for the most part, but also movies, literature, history, science, art, podcasts, poetry, current events, ethnographies, and whatever else seems good.)
Anyone is welcomed to host philosophy-related events here. We also welcome speakers and collaborations with other groups.
Join us at an event soon for friendship, cooperative discourse, and mental exercise!
You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Bluesky and join our new Discord for extended discussion and to stay in touch with other members.
Feel free to propose meetup topics (you can do this on the Message Boards), and please contact us if you would like to be a speaker or host an event.
(NOTE: Most of our events are currently online because of the pandemic.)
"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
— from "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", Wittgenstein
"Discourse cheers us to companionable
reflection. Such reflection neither
parades polemical opinions nor does it
tolerate complaisant agreement. The sail
of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the
wind of the matter."
— from "On the Experience of Thinking", Heidegger
See here for an extensive list of podcasts and resources on the internet about philosophy.
See here for the standards of conduct that our members are expected to abide by. Members should also familiarize themselves with Meetup's Terms of Service Agreement, especially the section on Usage and Content Policies.
See here for a list of other philosophy-related groups to check out in the Toronto area.
Please note that no advertising of external events, products, businesses, or organizations is allowed on this site without permission from the main organizer.
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Make a Donation
Since 2016, the Toronto Philosophy Meetup has been holding regular events that are free, open to the public, and help to foster community and a culture of philosophy in Toronto and beyond. To help us continue to do so into the future, please consider supporting us with a donation! Any amount is most welcome.
You can make a donation here.
See here for more information and to meet our donors.
Supporters will be listed on our donors page unless they wish to remain anonymous. We thank them for their generosity!
If you would like to help out or support us in other ways (such as with any skills or expertise you may have), please contact us.
Note: You can also use the donation link to tip individual hosts. Let us know who you want to tip in the notes section. You can also contact hosts directly for ways to tip them.
Featured event
Foucault: The Genesis of The History of Sexuality (Ch 6: Pleasures of Antiquity)
On 26 August 1974, Michel Foucault completed work on Discipline and Punish, and on that very same day began writing the first volume of The History of Sexuality. A little under ten years later, on 25 June 1984, shortly after the second and third volumes were published, he was dead.
This decade is one of the most fascinating of his career. It begins with the initiation of the sexuality project, and ends with its enforced and premature closure. Yet in 1974 he had something very different in mind for The History of Sexuality than the way things were left in 1984. Foucault originally planned a thematically organised series of six volumes, but wrote little of what he promised and published none of them. Instead over the course of the next decade he took his work in very different directions, studying, lecturing and writing about historical periods stretching back to antiquity.
This book offers a detailed intellectual history of both the abandoned thematic project and the more properly historical version left incomplete at his death. It draws on all Foucault’s writings in this period, his courses at the Collège de France and lectures elsewhere, as well as material archived in France and California to provide a comprehensive overview and synthetic account of Foucault’s last decade.
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Hello everyone and welcome to this series on Foucault. Please note that there is a technology related issue that you should know about. Please be sure to read to the end of this blurb for details.
In this series, we will read the four volume biography of Foucault written by Stuart Elden. The first volume on the genesis of The History of Sexuality is called Foucault's Last Decade (2016, Polity Press).
Elden wrote the biography in reverse chronological order, so Volume One actually covers Foucault's later years. The description from the back of this book is reproduced at the bottom of this page. 👇👇👇
When we are finished with Volume One, we will read something short by Foucault himself, starting with his essay "What Is Enlightenment"? Then we will move on to reading Volume Two of the biography and so on until we have finished all four volumes of the biography and read three short writings by Foucault himself.
The format will be my (Philip's) usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 25-30 pages before each session. (This is a biography after all so it should not be too onerous to read that many pages). Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading. When you are choosing your passages, please try to lean in the direction of picking passages with philosophical content rather than mere historical interest. But I can be flexible about this.
People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. I mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not do the reading. You probably are brilliant and wonderful — no argument there. But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.
Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is partly for philosophical reasons: I want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that I can explain if required.
THE READING SCHEDULE (pdf here)
- Sept 10: Read up to page 26
- Sept 17: Read up to page 44
- Sept 24: Meeting cancelled
- Oct 1: Read up to page 81
- Oct 15: Ch. 4 (read up to page 111)
- Oct 29: Ch. 5 (read up to page 133)
- Session after that: Ch. 6 (read up to page 163)
- Session after that: Ch. 7 (read up to page 190)
- Session after that: Ch. 8 (read up to page 209 and the footnotes)
After that the group will read Foucault's essay "What is Enlightenment".
It is a shame it has to come to this, but:
I am Canadian and like many Canadians my relationship with America has changed drastically in the last 10 months or so. In this meetup, no discussion of the current US political situation will be allowed. This is unfortunate, but that is how it must be. When talking about Foucault there will no doubt be a strong desire to talk about politics. No problem! It is a big old world and the political situations of literally every other country on planet earth (including their right wing populist movements) are fair game for discussion in this meetup. Just not that of the US. The political situation in the USA is now a topic for Canadians to think about in a very practical, strategic manner as we fight to prevent our democracy from being destroyed, and our land and resources stolen. The time may come when a Canadian like me can talk about this topic in an abstract philosophical way, but I suspect that time is at least 6 years away.
Now the technology point: Scott will be in the meetup for a few minutes at the start to set things up. But then he will leave. (He's not into Foucault! Unfathomable!) Someone in the meetup will have to volunteer to tell me who has their hand up and whose turn it is to speak. I am disabled in a way that makes it impossible for me to both manage the philosophy content and also monitor whose turn it is to speak. With any luck one or more regulars in the meetup will make it a habit to step up and volunteer each time.
Upcoming events
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•OnlineArt in Walled Gardens: Generative A.I. and the Law
OnlineIn this talk, Sonia Katyal will examine the growing tension between generative A.I. and the legal regimes that govern art and creativity. Drawing from her recent work, she argues that while generative AI holds promise for expanding creative possibilities, restrictive licensing and private contracts risk confining artistic production and shrinking the public domain. Katyal will explore how copyright and trademark law might respond to these changes — and what’s at stake for the future of culture, ownership, and creative freedom.
As generative AI bolsters digital creativity, we argue that putting such creativity in the hands of art licensors risks contracting not only the pool of available raw materials from which artists draw upon, but also the capabilities of generative AI that empower artists to turn those materials into transformative artworks. This tendency risks shrinking innovation and creativity in the public domain, rendering culture something accessible only by digital key. In this talk, we argue that these privately ordered worlds, facilitated by restrictive licenses, risk producing a world where creativity is conformed — and thus transformed — not by intellectual property principles, but by contractual control.
About the Speaker:
Sonia Katyal is Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. A leading scholar on the intersection of technology, intellectual property, and civil rights, Katyal’s work explores how emerging legal frameworks shape access, expression, and innovation. Katyal’s current projects focus on artificial intelligence and intellectual property; trademark law, branding and advertising; the intersection between the right to information and human rights; and a variety of projects on the intersection between art law, cultural heritage and new media.
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This is an online talk and audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. It is open to the public and held on Zoom.
The featured speaker will present for 45 minutes, followed by an open discussion with participants.
About the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society:
The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is a research institute at the University of Toronto that explores the ethical and societal implications of technology. Our mission is to deepen our understanding of technologies, societies, and what it means to be human by integrating research across traditional boundaries and building practical, human-centred solutions that really make a difference.
We believe humanity still has the power to shape the technological revolution in positive ways, and we’re here to connect and collaborate with the brightest minds in the world to make that belief a reality. The integrative research we conduct rethinks technology’s role in society, the contemporary needs of human communities, and the systems that govern them. We’re investigating how best to align technology with human values and deploy it accordingly.
The human-centred solutions we build are actionable and practical, highlighting the potential of emerging technologies to serve the public good while protecting citizens and societies from their misuse.
The institute will be housed in the new $100 million Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre currently under construction at the University of Toronto.
21 attendees
Ethics in Translation: A.I. Ethics Across Borders
Larkin Building, Room 200, 15 Devonshire Place, University of Toronto, Toronto, on, CAThe Ethics of Artificial Intelligence is often framed in universal terms, yet such framings obscure how cultural and material practices shape fundamentally different relationships with data. In many parts of the Global South, communities interact with A.I. not only as users but also as repairers, annotators, and mediators of fragile infrastructures, producing forms of engagement that Western discourses on A.I. ethics frequently miss. Based on my long-term ethnographic and design work across Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Canada, and other contexts, I will show how AI systems extend colonial legacies by imposing Western neoliberal values, how epistemic injustices emerge when local ways of knowing are rendered unintelligible, and how community practices such as informal data repair in Dhaka or immigrant struggles over data legitimacy in Canada reveal alternative ethical concerns. I will also highlight the growing data annotation industries in countries such as Bangladesh, India, and China, where labeling labor is promoted as a path to development but raises distinct worries around exploitation, recognition, and long-term sustainability.
These accounts demonstrate that A.I. ethics cannot be disentangled from situated practices of data and labor, and that any attempt to globalize A.I. ethics must bring these lived realities to the fore in order to avoid reproducing the very exclusions it claims to resist.
Ishtiaque Ahmed
https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/18628-syed-ishtiaque-ahmed/about
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of TorontoAbout the Speaker:
I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. My current research is focused on the Ethics in AI. I am particularly interested in building responsible AI technologies with the voices of underprivileged communities. My research questions the ethical foundations of AI systems and explores novel ways of community-based participatory development of AI. I draw heavily on political philosophy, critical theory, social science, anthropology, and STS literature in my work. I design, develop, deploy, and evaluate technologies that connect theories from these disciplines to mobile and ubiquitous computing, natural language processing, social media, and machine learning. My research involves both theoretical depth and technical challenges.
I direct the Third Space research group at the DGP Lab. I am also an affiliated faculty at the UofT iSchool, School of Environment, School of Cities, and Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. I co-organize the monthly UofT Critical Computing Seminar that hosts speakers analyzing computer science and its applications from the perspectives of marginalization, bias, and oppression. I co-direct the PRISM program at the CS Department, which trains students from marginalized communities for higher education in computer science. I teach "Computers and Society" and "Ethical Aspects of AI" at the Computer Science Department of UofT. My work is usually published in CHI, CSCW, FaccT, ICTD, DIS, and COMPASS.
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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Free refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here.
About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):
The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.
In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.
The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai
17 attendees![Nietzsche: The Gay Science [Session 61]](https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/e/b/a/highres_521988826.jpeg)
•OnlineNietzsche: The Gay Science [Session 61]
OnlineWhile the Walter Kaufmann translation is preferred, a link to the free Cambridge translation is here. For this Meetup, we will read aphorisms 237-247, and discuss them one at a time and get as far as we get, carrying forward any undiscussed aphorisms to the following week.
It’s 1882, and a friend has just given you a copy and recommendation of a book by a former professor of philology named Friedrich Nietzsche. Your friend says that he seems to be a philosopher of some sort, even though he doesn’t write like one, and in this book he argues, among a lot of other provocative things, that God Is dead!
This Is the beginner’s mind that this Meetup will take with this book. You may know his contemporaries and antecedents, but you’re here to share YOUR thoughts, not those of subsequent critics.
Recordings and AI summaries of previous sessions are available here.
Suggested texts: The Portable Neitzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann and The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter KaufmannSyllabus (titles are linked to free PDF’s, most of which require a free academia.edu account)
The Gay Science (academia.edu)
Beyond Good and Evil (academia.edu)*
On The Genealogy of Morals (academia.edu)*
The Case of Wagner*
Twilight of the Idols** (academia.edu)
The Antichrist**
Ecce Homo*
Nietzsche Contra Wagner***The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann
**Walter Kaufmann’s, The Portable Nietzsche12 attendees
•OnlineKant: Critique of Judgment (Week 7 – The Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment)
OnlineWe continue with Kant's Critiques, now onto the third which examines the beautiful, sublime, and teleology as occasions where our senses are originally related to our understanding (judgment of taste), as well as how the understanding originally relates to reason (teleological judgment).
We'll be covering the Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment (§55 - 61) (213 - 230, 17 pages) at this meetup.
Note: Meetings focus on developing a common language and fostering friendship through the study of Kant. The host will provide an interpretation of Kant; other interpretations will not be discussed until later in the meeting. Additional interpretations, topics, and questions can be addressed through the Jitsi chat feature.
No prior knowledge of Kant is necessary!
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Critique-Power-Judgment-Cambridge-Immanuel/dp/0521348927/ref=sr_1_1
PDF: https://nuevasteoriasdeljuiciopolitico.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/5343412b-47fd-4122-b7e9-b57cbddc1555.pdf
Reading Schedule
(Note - page numbers are from Cambridge edition)
Week 1:
First Introduction (3 - 51, 48 pages)
(NOTE: this is not an editor or translator introduction, it is by Kant. It is sometimes at the end of the book.)Week 2:
Preface and Introduction (55 - 83, 28 pages)Week 3:
Book I - Analytic of the Beautiful (§1 - 23) (89 - 127, 38 pages)Week 4:
Book II - Analytic of the Sublime (§23 - 30) (128 - 159, 31 pages)Week 5:
§30 - 43 (160 - 182, 22 pages)Week 6:
§43 - 55 (182 - 212, 30 pages)Week 7:
The Dialectic of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment (§55 - 61) (213 - 230, 17 pages)Week 8:
Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment (§61 - 69) (233 - 255, 22 pages)Week 9:
Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment (§69 - 79) (257 - 284, 27 pages)Week 10:
Appendix §79 - 87 (285 - 313, 28 pages)Week 11:
Appendix §87 - END (313 - 346, 33 pages)9 attendees
Past events
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