Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
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“now it is three weeks since the day I got my positive COVID test, and I cautiously think I may have survived it, I have decided to look back at the experience to see what, if any, philosophical lessons it taught me.“
Read More“The Grinch who steals Christmas this year isn’t COVID 19, it’s the mindset that is so rigid about what Christmas has to be it can’t conceive of doing things differently.“
Read More“It has been a week of waiting.“
Read More“Unfortunately there is a school of though around masks that equates personal liberty with the freedom not to wear one, regardless of the potential consequences. A selfish conception of what it means to be free that ignores our social connections with, and the needs of, others for personal desire and gain.”
Read More“As a philosopher it’s hard to follow the logic around Covid policy because in many cases there simply isn’t any. There is only the illusion of logic. A symbolic nod to a vague sense of health and safety which doesn’t dare follow its own argument to a conclusion for fear of what that conclusion might say.“
Read More“It doesn’t take a logician to see the problems with the Department for Education’s plan for secondary schools this September, but it can help to crystallise the specific flaws by laying out the argument carefully.”
Read More“I feel strangely trapped in my own home, and yet my life this last month looks little different to the life I lived before lockdown.”
Read More“By clapping, was I supporting the myth, the propaganda, and the lies which have put so many unnecessarily in harm’s way during this crisis? From the unprotected nurse to their dying patient, infected because they couldn’t stay home for fear of losing their job - each a victim not of Covid-19, but of our political system?”
Read More“Currently we know little about the virus, but we have not denied the science. We accept that it is a major issue that needs to be tackled. In comparison we know a lot about the effect of climate change. However, we do not treat climate change with the same sense of urgency than the virus. “
Read More“Supporting the lockdown does not, therefore, undermine the anarchist argument, but, to the contrary, makes it even clearer how dangerous, infantilising, and corrupting such state-systems can be. “
Read More“the world has changed. And here are the questions arising to me as it does…”
Read More“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”
Read More“Doing the right thing only becomes hard when we have constructed a world which puts embedded obstacles in the way of doing so.”