Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
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.“
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“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“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.“
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.“
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.”
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.“
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?“