Welcome to PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED

Philosophy Unleashed is about breaking free from the limits of syllabi and exam boards and allowing students and teachers to cast a philosophical eye on issues that interest them beyond the topics of an exam paper. If you want to write for Philosophy Unleashed click HERE.

All views expressed on the blog are those of the author of each post, and are not a reflection of, or affiliated with, any institution to which they may belong. In some cases, being philosophical inquiries, they may not even be the views of the author, but rather a “devil’s advocate” position they are trying on for size and kicking about, ultimately to reject. Consider this place an intellectual gymnasium where we “work out” our thoughts. And enjoy!

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208. WHY #PHILOSOPHYMATTERS IN THE CLASSROOM - Reports from the Field

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“#PhilosophyMatters to students because it’s a unique space in the school curriculum where they’re taught to take everything they think they know and see if this received wisdom can stand up to philosophical scrutiny. Including the wisdom they receive in the philosophy classroom itself.  In a world where we are increasingly bombarded with truth-claims, and information and misinformation is coming at us without any distinction between the two, when students have the tools to be able to analyse claims for their validity, it’s a vital intellectual self-defence that we should want all young people to have.  And that is why #PhilosophyMatters.“

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207. #PHILOSOPHYMATTERS - Doesn't it?

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“Part of my answer of why #PhilosophyMatters to students is that Philosophy is a unique space on the school curriculum where students are able to take received wisdom - including the wisdom they learn in the Philosophy classroom - and see if it stands up to philosophical scrutiny. So I thought it would be worth doing exactly that with the claim that #PhilosophyMatters and asking - does it?“

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206. THE IDIOTS ARE TAKING OVER - Is Culture Getting More Stupid?

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“We teachers are complicit in any increased “dumbness” our culture is showing because we are often the ones dumbing things down for the next generation.“

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205. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: A Philosophy for Life

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“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.“

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204. START THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE - Time to Name Trump For What He Is

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“humanity routinely ignores the evidence of their eyes to make the common, everyday, standard oppressions and violences that are going on to people other than themselves ‘inconceivable’“

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203. IN THE DARK - Medicine, Epistemology and Economics

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“I wonder if the economics of medicine are too-often overlooked, even in countries with a decent free public healthcare system. I wonder how many people have lived or died because of investigations presenting as questions of epistemology - how can we possibly know what is going on in this body? - which are actually questions of finance - can we justify the expenditure it would take to find out?“

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202. PROGRESSING EVER BACKWARDS - Why This World and Not Another?

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“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.“

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201. THE FORBIDDEN BEAT - Should I Stop Listening to Marilyn Manson?

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“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.“

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200. WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OURSELVES? - Ethical Digital Hygiene

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“why do I get news headlines sent to my phone?“

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199. DOES SANTA EXIST? - A Christmas Inquiry

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“I pointed out that while their ‘evidence’ certainly seemed to point to the idea that none of them were being given gifts from Santa - at least not on the Christmases in question - it did not completely remove the possibility that Santa Claus might still exist…“

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198. NOT DEALING WITH TRAUMA - Why We Need to do Some Work Before Returning to Normal

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“And now normal is what happens when we live so long in denial about our generational wounds that they fester and metastasise into something ugly and, possibly, untreatable.”

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197. ASSISTED DYING - A Reasonable Adjustment to Make

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“one could even call it a ‘reasonable adjustment’ to ensure one’s universal ability to end one’s own life is not unfairly denied to people just because of a physical disability (a protected characteristic under UK law). Not allowing assisted suicide is discriminatory to those of us without the physical capability for killing ourselves.“

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195. RECKONING WITH THE ELECTION - Reflections on a Soul-Crushing Week

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“Either I’d got Trump wrong, or I’d got the morality of my fellow citizens wrong? And neither explanation was particularly comforting.“

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194. SHOULD THE STATE CARE ABOUT PRIVATE SCHOOLS? - On the Meaning of Independence

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“the conversation around VAT on independent schools being a conversation purely based around money, costs and affordability, instead of it being a serious public conversation around education and what a good education should look like is a conversation that fails to address what really ails the current state school system and what the advantages of going to, or working in, the independent sector actually are. “

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