Prof. Ted Cohen -- Freedom from Rules: How we find freedom in language, and in humor: the liberating quality of figurative language and of jokes.

When one makes a metaphor, one breaks the rules of language, and when one makes a joke, often one violates various social, moral, or political restrictions. In both cases, one effectively frees oneself from these strictures, with the result that the audience is left to itself “figure out” what has been said. This is a good thing, for the most part, but it inevitably runs a danger, namely of being misunderstood or understood differently from the way in which the metaphor-maker or joke-teller wishes it to be understood. The hope in every case is for the speaker and his hearers to be joined in a community of appreciation, but there are never guarantees, and this is why both enterprises are exhilarating but also risky.

Ted Cohen, a summertime resident of Rockport, Maine, is professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. Besides being the author of essays on a number of topics including baseball, automobile driving, and the philosophy of art, he has written Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, and, more recently, Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor. He is a past president of both the American Society for Aesthetics and of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association.

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 Prof. Jessica Miller -- What is the Good in Bioethics?

 It is a truism that health is a good, but what kind of good is it? And what is health, anyway? This talk will explore different answers to these questions about a human good and the consequences they have for health care ethics. Jessica Miller is tenured associate professor of philosophy at the University of Maine, where she has been on the faculty for nine years. Jessica teaches courses in ethical theory, contemporary moral problems, bioethics, feminist theory, and ethics and literature. She is also clinical ethicist on staff at the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, being the first person to hold that position. She has published several articles, and her main interests are in medical humanities and moral psychology.

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Prof. Michael Anker -- Poetic Becomings: A Sensing of the Good

An investigation of how poetry -- and poetics -- may not only show us a path toward a poetic a way of existing that is tune with the senses and movements of natural existence, but also point us toward the possibility of an ethical becoming which mirrors the movements of poetry, in contrast to following the rigid structures of absolute meaning. The overall intention in this analysis is not to find a clear, complete, or overarching thought which may point us toward the ethical or the good. The attempt here is to show that ethics is an activity, a continuous becoming (analogous to poetics) that can be sensed through a way of being in the world, and "being-with" the world, as compared to abstract knowledge that someone can learn. Michael Anker is a Professor of Philosophy at the College of New Rochelle, School of New Resources, John Cardinal O’Connor Campus in New York City. He also conducts a three-day workshop once a year entitled “Research for Dissertations” at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. In January 2009, his first book, entitled The Ethics of Uncertainty: Aporetic Openings was published by Atropos Press. His current research and writings focus on the ethical possibilities and ontological implications of living in the various inconsistencies -- antinomies of -- the world.

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The Camden Philosophical Society, of Camden Maine, meets as a reading and discussion group on the fourth Thursday of every month at the Camden Public Library and sponsors lectures on the second Thursday of most months. For details on these meetings, as well as on our upcoming Philosophy at the Edge 2010 conference, contact us at Info@PhilosophyEdge.com.