June 5   Joffre Balce  Economics & the Crisis of Philosophy.

Underlying the crisis of the global economy  is the fundamental crisis – that moral philosophy & economics do not mix. This discussion attempts to resolve that crisis by returning to the fundamentals – What is economics? What purpose does its textbook definition – the allocation of resources to satisfy human wants – serve?

July 3, John Scanlon  Are we ever allowed to kill?

For each occasion that life is taken, the reaction of each of us will depend on whether we identify, culturally or ideologically, with the "killer" or with the "victim".  This paper explores differences in degree of acceptance of various types of killing, from virtually universal [e.g. self defence] to very limited [e.g. honour killing].  Reasons for apparently inconsistent attitudes are also discussed.

John is a science graduate from Sydney University who spent his working life in a consumer products multinational company.  His main fields of activity were R&D management, Technology Transfer and Team Building for Innovation.