Welcome to PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED

Philosophy Unleashed is about breaking free from the limits of syllabi and exam boards and allowing students and teachers to cast a philosophical eye on issues that interest them beyond the topics of an exam paper. If you want to write for Philosophy Unleashed click HERE.

All views expressed on the blog are those of the author of each post, and are not a reflection of, or affiliated with, any institution to which they may belong. In some cases, being philosophical inquiries, they may not even be the views of the author, but rather a “devil’s advocate” position they are trying on for size and kicking about, ultimately to reject. Consider this place an intellectual gymnasium where we “work out” our thoughts. And enjoy!

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263. BANGING THE DRUM FOR PHILOSOPHY - How Music Can Reveal What Is Hidden

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“It is one of the oldest questions in philosophy — to ask if the world we perceive is the world as it really is. If what we think we know about the world from our experiences is the truth about the world. In many ways the drums are a perfect instrument for showing us this. After all, their job in a song is to make explicit hidden time signature(s) the music is following. Reveal the ticking of an internal clock that has always been pulsing just beneath the perceptual surface.”

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262. WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER - On Not Wanting To Win

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“Winning is important to people only because capitalism has made it so. Winning is a means, in our rigged and unfair system, for some of our intentionally limited resources or opportunities to be granted to the victor(s). Winning means access to prizes previously forbidden or inaccessible. But it’s important to acknowledge that prizes are a social construct made meaningful only because of their manufactured scarceness or the inequalities we’ve chosen to allow in the distribution of the resources from which the prize comes.“

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261. ABNORMAL NORMS - On Philosophy’s Futility In Our Continuing Decline

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“To say there are things of philosophical interest about Donald Trump’s unilateral kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and takeover of the country’s economic resources by force, is to, perhaps, show the failings of philosophy.”

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260. CHRISTMAS SHOPPING - In Defence of Chainstores

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“This is not a defence of capitalism, nor a defence of the current order, but it is a defence of the notion that perhaps the proliferation of corporate chain-stores everywhere, which once made me mourn the quirky individuality of the independent high street, is not necessarily a bad thing.“

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259. WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING? - My Social Media Avoidance Project

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“Why is there something rather than nothing?” Because the desire to make something can make us redefine the original “nothing” and see new potential in it we were previously blind to.

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258. MAKING A COMPLAINT - What Complaining Tells Us About Those We Complain To

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“Complaints are important in any honest endeavour. A willingness to openness to being told that the thing you’re trying to do is not working and needs to be improved. An honest endeavour wants to hear its complaints because it wants to meet its objectives. It wants to fix those things being complained about.“

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225. NIGHT TERRORS - On the Possibility of Impossible Hauntings

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“But seeing no good evidence is not a total dismissal of the possibility. Perhaps “paranormal” occurrences have a natural explanation, but that explanation still goes beyond our current understanding of the nature of reality? “

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224. LIP SERVICE - On the Difficulty of Transforming What is Entrenched

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“As Audre Lorde so famously put it: “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Yet schools, as reproducers of the dominant culture of any given society by design, are the very definition of “the master’s house” and it is they which are giving students their useless tools. “

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222. JUSTIFYING FREEDOM - On Assuming Rights We Might Not Have

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"Freedom is not as self-evident as these young people seem to think it is, and an appeal to individual freedom is not the knock-down killer argument they seem to think that it is. In a world where are freedoms are routinely curtailed, often for very good collective reasons, the argument that X can’t be allowed because it will take away some freedom or another is simply insufficient."

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221. FROM DESPAIR TO WHERE? - Has Philosophy Failed Us?

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“The comfort of thinking it can’t happen here is the surest sign that it is already near. Right on your doorstep, right on your street. Amazing how well we can walk in our sleep”


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220. HELLO HUMANS - A Teacher Writes on Their Inclusive Classroom

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“the bell rang and I could not think of a response in the thirty seconds I had to dismiss the class so left the question unanswered. I have been thinking about a response ever since so I have decided to write this.“

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218. FLAGS - Against Lamppost Patriotism

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“Once we did have a symbol of the country that used to make me proud:

hotels welcoming those seeking asylum from persecution with open arms.

Now the hotels are being shut down by angry mobs

and all we have in their place are cheap flags tied from lampposts

wilting damply in the rain. “

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