PU #255 — DIGGING DIGGER — Offering Some Much Needed Love for This Misunderstood Movie
“Digger is a great movie. Not a popular opinion but, I think, the right one.”
Read MorePU #238 - CENSORING TOURETTE'S - Baffled By The BAFTAs
Read More“How the BBC dealt with John Davidson’s attendance at the BAFTAs last week is definitely morally questionable and offensive, but not because they let the racial slur slip past the censors when other insults were cut…“
PU #236 - CHOMSKY & EPSTEIN - How Much Do The Actions Of The Person Undermine Their Argument?
Read More“the more I read, the more my instinct for defending Noam Chomsky seemed to have finally run out of ground“
235. EVERYTHING GOOD COULD STILL EXIST - On The Internet Without Capitalism
Read More“The most powerful idea we can ever hear is this: if we took away money right now, everything that exists would still exist.“
229. WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING? - My Social Media Avoidance Project
Read More“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.
205. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: A Philosophy for Life
Read More“This month marks the 50th anniversary of long-running (fifty years!) American sketch comedy TV show, Saturday Night Live. To celebrate, I thought it worth taking a look at the philosophical life lessons its fifty year success story can teach us.“
202. PROGRESSING EVER BACKWARDS - Why This World and Not Another?
Read More“Trump is a symptom, not the sickness itself. There are other possible worlds where his overt peddling of misinformation and self-evident unfitness for office were immediate disqualifiers for an informed voting public. Where his allusions to Nazism and explicit fascistic authoritarianism were repulsive to us instead of something which won him votes. Where the intention disrupting of democratic institutions and surrounding himself with an oligarchy of tech billionaires rang alarm bells instead of raised cheers of support. That we do not live in one of those worlds should be the thing we ask the most questions about.“
201. THE FORBIDDEN BEAT - Should I Stop Listening to Marilyn Manson?
Read More“Manson always was a symptom and not a cause of the social sickness he personified. Watching the documentary this week simply reminded me that the world which created him continues to fail to confront the true causes of its sickness, and points the finger at individuals we can demonise instead of looking in the mirror and asking why such demons continue to exist.“
174. THE TRAITORS AND EPISTEMOLOGY - Why We're All Floundering In The Dark About Knowledge
Read More“It is epistemically wild to watch how fellow human beings construct seemingly viable theories of knowledge out of the flimsiest of observations and inferences.“
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.“
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.“
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.“
123. THOUGHTS ON STRIKING - Why We Need More Striking, Not Less
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.”
120. TALKING ABOUT MY CONSTITUTION - Why Conversation Is More Important Than Codification
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.“
115. IS THIS A POST ABOUT WILL SMITH SLAPPING CHRIS ROCK? - Independent Media, Established Media and Power
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?“