Five Seats Infinite Questions – 20th June 2026
An intentionally small weekly online meetup for relaxed, thoughtful philosophical conversation.
Each event is built around 1-3 questions, suggested by attendees or chosen by the host. We’ll explore the question until boredom or irritation intervenes.
The question list will be posted in the event comments on the Thursday before the meetup, so everyone has time to think it over.
The group is intentionally small: around five open attendee places, plus a small core group. The aim is to create a friendly space where everyone can take part, rather than disappear into a sea of muted rectangles.
No expertise is needed. You do not need fully formed opinions, prior reading, or a working relationship with Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger. Half-formed thoughts, tentative objections, and “I’m not sure, but…” are very welcome.
This is not a lecture, debate club, or name-dropping contest. Just bring curiosity, kindness, and a willingness to think out loud.
The goal is a good conversation, not a final answer.
Online Meetup Link:
See https://www.meetup.com/exeter-philosophy-meetup-group/events/314596133/
The topics for the week are:
When we say that a country, government, or institution has made a choice, are we treating a complex system as though it were a single person?
Imagine two tourists asking to be shown Oxford University. A taxi driver takes them past the colleges, libraries, museums, gardens, and academic buildings. At the end of the tour, they complain that he has shown them all the parts, but not the university itself.
Their mistake is to assume that the university must be one more object, hidden somewhere beyond its colleges and libraries. But the university is not an extra building. It is the organised institution made up of those places, people, rules, relationships, traditions, and activities.
Baggini uses this example to introduce what Gilbert Ryle called a category mistake: treating something as if it belongs to one kind of category when it belongs to another.
The same problem may arise when we say that “a nation chose war” or “the government wanted revenge”. A country does not possess a single mind. Its actions emerge from leaders, advisers, soldiers, institutions, economic interests, public opinion, historical narratives, and systems of authority.
If no individual completely controls the whole, where does collective intention reside? And if an atrocity is produced by thousands of people each performing one small role, who is morally responsible for the final result?
“A purchaser who has inspected all the instruments may still ask to be shown ‘the team-spirit’; but he would be voicing a category-mistake.”
Gilbert Ryle – The Concept of Mind
Can reason lead us towards evil, or does evil begin when reason is separated from human feeling?
Imagine a highly rational person who is persuaded by an apparently flawless argument that she should detonate a bomb and kill innocent people. She feels that the conclusion must be wrong, but she cannot identify any mistake in the reasoning.
She has always believed that rational arguments should be followed rather than rejected because of instinct, discomfort, or emotion. Yet now reason appears to demand something monstrous. Should she trust the argument, or trust the moral horror she feels towards its conclusion?
The thought experiment challenges the reassuring belief that rationality must always lead us towards what is good. Intelligent people have repeatedly constructed elaborate arguments for war, persecution, repression, and sacrifice. Their reasoning may be internally coherent while beginning from distorted assumptions, false information, or values that treat human beings as instruments.
Perhaps reason does not decide what we should ultimately value. It may only show us how to achieve the goals supplied by fear, loyalty, ambition, ideology, or compassion.
When reason and conscience point in different directions, which should we trust? Is moral feeling an unreliable obstacle to rational judgement, or an essential safeguard against rationally organised cruelty?
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-bets-air-war-it-stumbles-battlefield-2026-06-03/
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”
David Hume – A Treatise of Human Nature
When people believe every peaceful option has failed, can violence begin to look not only understandable, but necessary?
Imagine Britain has been occupied by a brutal foreign regime. Conventional resistance has failed. The army has been defeated, outside help is not coming, and the occupying power appears secure.
A small resistance movement concludes that it cannot win a direct military struggle. Its only hope is to make occupation so costly, disruptive, and frightening that the regime eventually withdraws. The fighters are willing to die, but ordinary attacks seem ineffective. They begin considering suicide missions designed to cause maximum disruption and terror.
The scenario is disturbing because it asks us to imagine people like ourselves arriving at conclusions we usually associate with fanaticism or barbarity. Baggini’s point is not that such violence becomes morally right, but that people may reach it through fear, humiliation, loyalty, desperation, and the belief that no other means remain.
Once a person sees themselves primarily as a defender of a people, a nation, or a cause, acts that once seemed unthinkable may begin to appear courageous or necessary. The phrase “last resort” can explain how violence becomes imaginable — but it can also become a dangerous way of excusing anything.
Does understanding why people resort to terror risk justifying it, or is understanding essential if we are to judge it honestly?
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.”
Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil