Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
Read More“I wondered why my own slow resignation - making my statement to the Head in January and then still attending work in exactly the same way that I attended before my resignation for the last seven months - seemed completely acceptable to me and yet Johnson's far less lengthy suggestion seemed so egregious.”
Read More“I wrote that phrase on the board: “Metaphysics of Mind”. I then made a lame philosophy joke: “let’s see if the innatists are right. You haven’t been taught any of next year’s content yet but do you already know what philosophy of mind is?”
The task they are then set is to simply “do philosophy” to try and work out what they think next year’s course will cover, simply from the phrase “Metaphysics of Mind”. I give them a blank sheet of A3 paper and ask them to fill it with all the questions, issues and answers they think they will be studying from September.“
Read More“As philosophers we can smell fallacious argument a mile off. We know an ad hominem attack when we see one, attacking the person (or people) rather than the actual idea. When it comes to discourse around striking in this country, it seems that fallacy and fear-mongering abound. And I would suggest that if you can’t counter the actual arguments of the unions you should be supporting their strikes, maybe even joining them, rather than complaining about them or attacking their industrial action.”
Read More“a possible case could be made for accepting certain, limited, forms of animal experimentation but not within the current economic system because it is structurally set up to maximise, rather than minimise, the possible duplication of unnecessary suffering due to prioritising intellectual property rights over the rights of non-human (and human) animals.“
Read More“According to last week's confidence vote, the majority of Conservative members of Parliament have confidence in the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. 211 out of 359 MPs, or 59%. But what does this actually tell us? And why do we care about their levels of confidence? Should confidence have anything to do with governing in a democracy? And, if it does, ought the question of confidence be put to the demos - the whole population - rather than merely the MPs of the current ruling party, many of whom are frontbenchers dependent on the very Prime Minister whose confidence is in question for their current political and financial success?“
Read More“The very act of codifying into a constitution the core principles of how your society is to be run is to commit future generations to values that they may not actually hold. It is a normative act, wherein one generation is imposing a set of values in stone on the basis that they believe future generations ought to hold such values. But while human beings remain autonomous agents capable of choosing many different values such an imposition has no guarantee of sticking unless the values are, in fact, actually held by the citizens for whom they are endorsed. This means constitutions are either attempting the impossible and trying to force people into valuing something they don’t value, or they are redundant, as they simply articulate values already held.“
Read More“I found myself asking the obvious next question: is our own British colonialism taught openly and honestly in British schools?”
Read More“If we all are running around like headless chickens to make things look nice whenever someone visits then that must mean that none of us actually live our lives in the way that we present to others that we do.“
Read More“one of the founding principles of Philosophy Unleashed is that it is a place to go “beyond the curriculum” and discuss things not covered by GCSE and A-level courses in Philosophy. Abortion ethics, as every student knows, is central to any current examination specification in either Religious Studies or Philosophy, and most undergraduate courses in Ethics will also cover it. So I will be careful here not to simply rehash the standard arguments most people will have already covered.“
Read More“Consider: it cannot both be true that advertising has no influence on our thinking and that people spend over £23bn a year on advertising. At worst, people are spending their twenty three billion pounds to influence us in a range of ways we are barely aware of. At best, the only advertising that has ever worked is the advertising for advertising itself which has convinced so many people to spend billions on a product which is utterly useless. Which means advertising does still work.“
Read More“A few weeks ago someone suggested on Twitter that I write my next post about the relationship between the established media and power. “Is independent journalism a counter to the established media or just a rival for its central position?“
Read More“Must death really silence critique?“
Read More“A student asked me my thoughts on children playing violent video games. My first response was to ask him why he thought it mattered that the players were children. Why not adults playing violent video games too?“
Read More“It’s time that schools became more diverse, and their staff, at least in the short-term, a little less comfortable.“
Read More“This week, understandably, I have been asked a lot of questions about the ongoing situation in Ukraine.“
Read More“It is the concept of nations that lies at the root of the problem of war. It is the global economic systems of manipulated scarcity, inequality and hoarding that motivates taking by violence what can’t be gained legitimately. When we ignore the underlying motivations of invasion and speak only of the good and the bad, we sweep under the rug the tricky truth that we are all culpable for maintaining a global political system that nurtures the conditions for war far more than it inculcates the conditions for peace.“
Read More“I told my form on Friday that this would be my last year at the school. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but there also hadn’t really been a relevant opportunity to bring it up.“
Read More“Imagine the police-force where you live offer you the choice of one of two officers to be your local law enforcement from now on:
1) An officer who holds prejudiced thoughts against people like you (taken to mean whatever characteristic you want it to that identifies you specifically - i.e. ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, hair colour, accent - whatever).
2) An officer who holds no prejudice against people like you.
Both officers have taken a pledge not to discriminate against certain groups of people and have received training to support this pledge. There will be sanctions in place if such discrimination happens and Officer #1 is fully aware that their prejudiced thoughts would not be condoned if turned into discriminatory action.
Which officer would you choose?“
Read More“Boris being forced to resign might make me feel momentarily happy, but fundamentally it does nothing to address the actual wrongdoing or make things better. It is symbolic, but the symbolism is largely empty.“
Read More“Often we hear people say something that they didn’t think they said at all. They might accuse us of not listening, or being ignorant of certain things, but the fact remains that if you say X and I hear Y, then you did not communicate X to me, you communicated - whether intentionally or not - Y.“