Curiosity Café (Revisited): Personal Identity and Transformation

Being and Becoming has just introduced a new Curiosity Café series, which isn’t actually new at all: Every four(ish) weeks, we will be revisiting a previous Café. In this series, we will be repeating topics, sometimes with a slight twist, sometimes with the same questions (but rest assured, even if you went to the first iteration and the questions were exactly the same, the discussion will change based on who is in attendance. Maybe you’ve even changed too…).

We will be hosting our second Revisited Curiosity Café on Wednesday, October 29th from 6:00-8:30 pm at the Madison Avenue Pub (14 Madison Ave, Toronto, ON M5R 2S1). Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Looking for Halloween plans? Well, we heard CHANGE is scary, and arguing with a vampire might be too. Come and talk about it. In this revisited café, we will be exploring what makes us who we are, with reference to a few philosophical thought experiments. That is: Who are we, really? What is at the core of our identity? Is it our preferences? Our values? Our life narrative? Whom or what we love? Or something else entirely?

Beyond exploring what makes up our essence (or whether a fundamental essence even exists), we will also explore the implications of incremental personal change and transformative experiences. To help us navigate these questions, we’ll discuss the following thought experiments:

• The Ship of Theseus (a boat slowly gets all of its parts replaced. Is it still the same boat? If not, when does it stop being the same boat?)
• Arguing with the Vampire (you’ve been presented with the opportunity to become a vampire…)
• Advanced Directives and Dementia (someone has Alzheimer’s but it doesn’t go like she predicted it would. Should we respect her advanced directive?)

Join moderator Sophia Whicher on Wednesday, October 29th for a spooky, collaborative exploration of these questions and more. Absolutely no pre-reading is required, but if you’re curious about the vampire, we recommend you check out Paul Bloom’s Arguing with the Vampire (~10 minute read).

*Psst: hey community! Sophia here, Director of Community Programming. Right now, we are working towards the goal of providing those who contribute to making the cafés happen equitable financial compensation for the work they do, so that we can feasibly and sustainably develop as an organization and provide more programming for all of you. We also want to keep our cafés as accessible as possible, so we are keeping the pay-what-you-can model in place for tickets. We ask that you consider that our ideal recommended amount for a ticket is now $15, and as you choose what to donate within the bounds of your own financial means, we ask that you keep in mind that your donation will go directly towards compensating those involved in making Curiosity Cafés happen so that we can keep doing this for you.

Please note that we also still have 5 free tickets available for our attendees. If paying anything at all is not financially feasible for you, or our ticketing system presents some other barrier for you, please contact our Director of Community Programming at [email protected]. These tickets will be first come, first served, no questions asked! You can expect to hear back from her within 72 hours.

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.

Some accessibility-related information* about our event and the venue:

• This event involves a verbal discussion, with a handout to guide the discussion
• There will be a large-print version of the handout available
• We ask the staff at the Maddy to turn off the speakers playing music in the room we are in. Unless we end up in their “VIP” room upstairs (very unlikely!), this keeps background noise to a minimum.
• There will be earplugs available to tamper background noise
• There are about five steps up to the entrance of the Madison, and another to get in the door. In order to get upstairs, where we sometimes hold our events, there is another set of stairs that are quite steep. While we hope to be in the downstairs room, we cannot guarantee this until closer to the event date.
• There are two single stall bathrooms located downstairs that we will have access to. The other bathrooms, located on the main and upper floor, are gendered.
• Should you be accompanied by a support person, please contact us in advance so that we can add them to our guest list. Their ticket will be included, for free, as part of your pay-what-you-can ticket.

*We recognize that this list provides a far-from comprehensive picture of accessibility-related concerns you might have. Please feel free to contact our team at [email protected], or the Madison Avenue Pub (416-927-1722) with any other questions or concerns you might have.

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