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The Doctor and the Donut Seller
Imagine you’re a doctor: all you want is to heal the patients in your care. Your place of work, your hospital, in a drive for profitability (forced by a withdrawal of government support) is taken over, first partially but then as a majority share, by a company that makes donuts and sugary soft drinks. At […]
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Rustic
I read other philosophers and they are like symphonies, or at least etudes. I read myself and it is like hill country blues: rough and slightly out of tune, rustic and not urbane, repetitive, unsophisticated, improvised and full of duff notes. It’s not clean but distorted. I play badly. To the refined ear these are bad sounds, but these days I have no interest in playing any other way.
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On Election Day
The proper purpose of democracy is not to find the right answer (for that we should appoint experts) but to allow each individual to participate in their own government. It is a way of preserving freedom or self-rule (autonomy) as a community. The will of the people will often choose badly, just as people will often make bad choices in how they govern their own lives. But since this was a free choice, and our purpose was to preserve freedom, this is not a failure. Democracy does not fail when it chooses badly: it fails when people do not choose.
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Antinomy
Science is offered in support of everything nowadays, true and false, good and bad. Without a capacity to distinguish the difference between good and bad science, ‘the science’ means nothing. How do you develop a capacity to distinguish between good and bad science?
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Esoteric Protreptics
1. Society will support whatever it values. Society does not support philosophy. Evidently, society does not value philosophy. Philosophers should put all their efforts into demonstrating the value of what they do. 2. The value of philosophy can only be seen by those who understand it. Few people understand philosophy. Consequently, few people can see […]
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Reflections on the Fate of Philosophy in the University
I wonder if it’s easier to see what might be on the other side of the wall once you’re on the other side of the wall? When I left the university I asked: ‘how can philosophy survive without the university?’ Now I wonder if philosophy can only survive without the university. The university, as it’s […]
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Trading
Philosophers trade arguments like traders trade commodities. But whereas a trader looks to make a profit, a philosopher looks to make a loss, because it is better to lose an argument and learn your error than win an argument and remain in it.
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Trash
Most philosophy online is trash. It’s either people trying to be academic but failing, or people not trying to be academic and therefore failing.
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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