Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
Read More“The entire UK political system operates, arguably, on a mission to intentionally create a permissive environment for the perpetual violence of the state, for its intolerance of disorder and dissent, and for its hatred of alternatives.“
Read More“Philosophy is difficult. But it is only as difficult as we choose to make it. Rigorous thinking does not have to be alienating. It does not have to speak a secretive and opaque language different from the way non-philosophers speak. That is a choice, not a necessity. Nor too should academic specialisation and disciplinary complexity be mistaken as necessary components of philosophy. Navel-gazing is still just navel-gazing, even when it props up an entire job market. So too is self-interested gatekeeping intended to preserve a questionable system rather than make it accessible to the masses.“
Read More“We had seen the signs that things weren’t going well. That the wheels were falling off a bit. And we had made the inference - this place was going out of business. And the inference was right.“
Read More“is Madonna’s late start really “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive”? In philosophical terms: are such late start times, different from those advertised, genuinely immoral?“
Read More“Sunak’s latest descriptive wish of a ‘safe’ Rwanda is just another modern day Gaunilo’s island: a stark example of the demonstrable failings of the ontological argument’s logic and, perhaps, of the UK Prime Minister’s troubling commitment to perpetuating damaging linguistic fantasies instead of solving actual problems in the real world.”
Read More“in a world where there is a very real epistemological threat coming from falling down online rabbit-holes into algorithm-guided conspiracies, we teachers are spending a lot of our own free-time guided by those very same dangerous algorithms as we hunt and click for hours looking for the perfect clips for our students. We then normalise this behaviour to our students“
Read More“if my utterly inconsequential change of capitalisation could not be easily noted and assimilated into the understanding of work colleagues, friends or family, then I could barely imagine what it would be for a far more important identity marker to be so similarly ignored“
Read More“conspiracy thinking - the initial pathway that leads to conspiracy answers - trades on many of the motivating assumptions of philosophy as an activity: a desire to get to some underlying hidden truth beyond the superficial understanding of everyday life.“
Read More“This week I’m doing something a little different on Philosophy Unleashed and releasing a lecture I gave last week to Year 12 students at a Sixth Form interdisciplinary conference on the theme of inequality…“
Read More“I had some interesting conversations with students this week about first principles. How, once you unpack the thing you are talking about you might realise that you no longer believe what you thought you did, or might even be having a different conversation entirely…“
Read More“Any time we approach an area of education with an attitude of it being too difficult or even impossible for someone to do something, we make it so through a process of self-fulfilling-prophecy.“
Read More“I’ve been thinking a lot about protest and rebellion the last week….“
Read More“To not comment on the state of the world today is never to be impartial. It is to implicitly state a preference - a partiality - for maintaining things exactly as they are, inflammatory immigration policies and all.“
Read More“Instead of asking what we are reading on World Book Day, we ought to raise the level of questioning: what are we reading and how is it changing us? What is it making us think? What questions are the book raising? Even if the answer is, to all these questions, not a lot (I am unchanged, not thinking about anything, and asking no questions), to ask them makes us perhaps realise that some books are like junk food while others are more nutritious.“
Read More“Don’t let the illusion of sole authorship fool you. Published writing has always been edited by many and influenced by audiences. If you want to read the unblemished, pure and unfiltered draft straight from the author’s mind and onto the page, read something self-published (like this blog…although I do tend to do a few drafts). Anything else you read, assume there have been drafts, edits, alterations, corrections, and the input of many. The author, often, is a group of authors. Dahl is no different.“
Read More“of course God - a being defined in terms of transcendence - would not be confined to one single point on a spectrum or one limited half of a binary. The very terms of transcendence that makes God God would necessitate God being beyond either a gender binary or the limits of a single gender. The omnipotent God responsible for creating both men and women in their own image, logic would suggest, must possess an image inclusive of both male and female (and everything in between).“
Read More“Deciding not to bore the student with Donald Rumsfeld’s treatise on known knowns and known unknowns, I instead decided to offer guidance from the existentialists. That is to say: no real guidance at all. What my student was facing, I suggested, was a living example of the sort of anxiety and despair existentialist philosophers suggested comes from our absolute freedom.“
Read More“Why complain about this in a philosophy blog? Because a perpetual area of philosophical inquiry concerns perception versus reality, and sometimes this coming apart of perception from reality (or reality from perception) often leads to questions in ethics too. I believe this problem - of the women’s teams of football clubs not sharing the same home ground as their male counterparts - touches on both.“
Read More“The following essay for Philosophy Unleashed was produced by AI. ChatGPT to be precise. I asked it to attempt to write a Philosophy Unleashed post on the topic of the ethics of using ChatGPT to cheat in school work, and do it in the style of me as author. I will present the essay to you first, then show you how it came to be. As you read, ask yourself the question: if I hadn’t told you it was artificially generated, would you know that a human being didn’t write this? And if you know my work specifically, would you know that I hadn’t written it?“
Read More“The more depressed you are the more accurately you see the world.“