Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
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“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“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“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“Because if this government falls - and it should - it should be for their far more egregious moral wrongs than this purely selfish complaint: how come they got to have a party last year when we couldn’t have one ourselves?“
Read More“The anarchist in me naturally balks at any enforcement of mandatory rules from on high. But the ethicist in me can see the moral reasons why those people either looking after the most at risk of dying from Covid-19, or most likely to come into intimate contact with large numbers of members of the public, specifically for health-related reasons, should want to do what they can to protect both themselves and others.“
Read More“the issue I would like to consider as we return for the 2021/22 academic year is, surprisingly, given my usual vocal opposition to all things Tory, whether Dominic Raab actually did anything wrong by staying on holiday while Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. Or, more broadly, whether holiday should mean holiday - a total cessation of work - even when your work brings with it important responsibilities.“
Read More“Given that we do not yet live in an anarchy, and on July 19th we will still be living in the same exploitative capitalist system which limits so many of our options and choices, the end of these particular laws does not mean we are being given radical new freedom by our government. The only thing being given the green light here is capitalism, to resume its exploitation as usual at the continued expense of our wellbeing.“
Read More“Miranda Fricker wrote of what she called “epistemic injustice” - “a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower”. She identified two forms of such injustice: “testimonial injustice”, the injustice of denying credibility to someone’s word, and “hermeneutical injustice”, the injustice of disadvantaging someone in their access to interpretive resources and forming an obstacle to their capacity to know. This week a member of Sage, the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, urged the UK to expand its official list of Covid symptoms so that UK citizens could better identify if they have the virus. In this article I intend to show that by ignoring this advice, and keeping the official list of symptoms restricted to a high fever, a new continuous cough, or a loss of sense of smell or taste, the UK government is permitting a continuing epistemic injustice to occur which is causing unnecessary and highly preventable suffering.“
Read More“In the days since, many have criticised the broadcasters for continuing to show traumatic footage. The collapsed player, the crying teammates, the shocked fans, the devastated wife, even the philosophical pundits shaken by what they had seen. Couldn't, in fact shouldn't, the stream have been cut and the tragedy kept as far out of the public eye as it could be?“
Read More“That this well documented fallacy remains so effective and so frequently used is one of the frustrating reminders that knowledge of philosophy, and of the mechanics of arguments, is not necessarily a path to happiness or contentedness. Often, it simply means being fully aware that an argument is faulty, but seeing it work to convince people regardless.“
Read More“In my classroom, I don’t feel my free-speech is threatened, or my right as a non-Muslim to draw or see images of a Prophet I don’t believe in impeded, if I refrain from showing images to my students which I know violates their beliefs. It is an act of kindness to them, not an act of repression to me.“
Read More“If you suggested that women should be barred from having the same rights as men because of their reproductive organs you would be laughed at or face a lawsuit for discrimination. We have overcome these old ways of thinking with technological, intellectual and emotional advances which have rendered the old narratives obsolete. Yet for some reason the myth of gender norms seems harder for people to shake despite the obvious failings of the binary male/female model.“
Read More“I don’t believe in examinations, but I do believe in moral tests, and I worry that when we do eventually hear back from the consultation about the alternative to 2021 GCSEs and A-levels we will have failed yet another one.“
Read More“…what is actually missing from the current business model of the music industry is not more pennies per stream, but a meaningful ethics instead of mere talk of ethics with very little substance. So here is my first attempt at drafting some…“