182. MUCH TOO QUIET ON SET - Stepping on Eggshells as we All Work Under Capitalism
Read More“This is not just Hollywood stuff. This is not just the entertainment business. This is all work under capitalism.“
180. WHAT PHILOSOPHY COULD BE - Breaking The Norms That Don't Have To Be Norms
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.“
179. INFERRING THE END - Doom-Spiral or Fallacy?
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.“
177. REACHING ROCK BOTTOM - Why England Needs to Sober Up
Read More“I guess what I am really doing is posing the following thought experiment: do you think a sober society would have sat by and done nothing for twenty-four years as their country failed to meet even the most basic standards of functioning anymore? And does the fact that England is not a sober society give us some explanation as to why the English have seemingly done exactly that?“
176. BURN IT DOWN - Why Elitist Institutions Can Never Be Inclusive
Read More“those who cling on to the old ways things were need more than an appeal to their personally liking the old standards to maintain them. They need to explain why keeping the bias, and the inequality and lack of inclusion those biased standards cause, is more important to them than making things better.“
175. SUING MADONNA - The Ethics of Honouring Stage Times
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?“
172. INFLUENCERS - Why Violent Video Games Must Make Us More Violent
Read More“When you speak to a classroom of teenagers about the possibility that playing violent video games might make them violent, you can immediately see the smirks and ready yourself for their knee-jerk defensiveness. After all, they are the smirks and defensiveness you, yourself, have given in response to the same suggestion your whole life…“
168. IT'S NOT JUST THE KIDS, IT'S US - Why It's Important for Teachers to Look in the Mirror
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“
161. THE GREAT CONSPIRACY - On Philosophy Classes and Dangerous Thought
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.“
159. TAKING STUDENT SILLINESS SERIOUSLY - Lightning McQueen and the Importance of Battling Deepities
Read More“Like garbage washing up on the shore of a polluted sea, the Philosophy classroom is often where a lot of these deepities come to rest as students, impressed by their apparent wisdom, share them with the one person they think will be equally impressed: their Philosophy teacher. Often those students are soon disappointed, even angry, when that teacher is not impressed at all and, instead, pops the bubble of the illusion and exposes its emptiness.“
157. I WON'T MISS SIR - On Naming Our Teachers
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.“
153. PHILOSOPHY AND THE CORONATION - Questions Raised By The Crowning Of A New King
Read More“The coronation of a new King is an undoubtedly historic moment, but it raises a lot of philosophical questions…“
150. YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN - Gary Lineker and The Myth of Impartiality
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.“
148. THINKING ABOUT WORLD BOOK DAY - How Reading Is More Than The The Fetishisation of Books
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.“
147. NOT ALL GOBSTOPPERS ARE EVERLASTING - Why I'm OK With Changing The Words of Roald Dahl
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.“
146. THEY/THEM - Why We Need To Be Gender-Neutral About God
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).“
144. CHALLENGING PERCEPTIONS - Why Top Tier Football Clubs Continue To Do Women's Football A Disservice
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.“
141. THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA - Does It Have Any?
Read More“I was struck by the idea that social media gives us a living example of what emotivism really would be like sufficient enough to demonstrate why Ayer is wrong about normal moral discourse. Places like Twitter or Facebook really are just expressing ‘boo’ or ‘hurrah’ about certain issues and moral discourse is rendered meaningless there.“
137. NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS - On Our Obligation to Stay Informed
Read More“If I told a colleague or friend that I have never watched Breaking Bad or watched The Godfather, they might be surprised, even incredulous, but they could not call me irresponsible. If I told them I didn’t watch the news, however, it would be a different order of outrage.“
136. NO GODS NO MASTER-DONS - Decolonising Twitter Migration
Read More“The site of struggle here being the realm of social media might seem trivial to some, and online colonisation lacks the bloodshed and brutality of historical imperialisms, but as a living model it has been instructive of the sorts of behaviours we see offline too.“