Text to audio

Posted on by appleonionme

I quite dislike the written word as a means of communication. My favourite kind of information exchange is by audio (in cases where people aren’t face to face).

This extends to the way I like to communicate, I would rather tell you about something than write about something.

With this in mind, I am thinking about beginning a podcast. The purpose of which will be to discuss things I am interested in, but also as a place to store information and ideas that are pertinent to my studies at university.

I might have guests – I might even have listeners, though this quite unlikely.

Some topics to expect:

  • Philosophy of all kinds analytic
  • Certain 20th century texts and their political contexts
  • Feminism
  • General rambling and interests of an idiosyncratic nature

 

We shall see if I follow up on this. I hope that I do.

Two horizons

Posted on by appleonionme

There are two suns here,

One will rise soon,

A crimson sun that sets over the past,

Or an older sun from a warmer land.

 

For some, one is chaos,

For others, one is death.

 

Crimson glows dangerously,

As it descends, its surface recoils and explodes in a fiery apocalypse,

This star is unstable, it glows darkly.

Some hope that it will soar. It won’t.

 

The older sun is getting stronger,

Every revolution it makes is brighter, more fluid and whole.

It has seen shakier times.

Unperturbed by its doubters it rises.

With youthful vigour it urges people to rise.

Its progression is their progression.

We hope that it rises. Only hope.

 

Writing for the sake of writing

Posted on by appleonionme

I have not written in a while. Not the kind of personal and idiosyncratic writing that I had intended.

I have answered (to myself) some of the questions that I set out in my first post. Equally the kinds of questions I am interested in have changed. Before, I wanted to write about philosophy and feminism. Now I write about philosophy at university – in fact I wrote about feminism too. My desire to write about them is satiated and sometimes over-stretched.

The thing is, I haven’t decided, or realised, what I actually want to write about.

I didn’t know where I stood with feminism, I wanted to know what kind of feminism I ascribe to. Now I roughly know that I am a feminist, and that my position within feminism is up for debate and change. I am pro women, anti patriarchy, and in support of the oppressed. One might be drawn to calling this position intersectional feminism, this is what I would label myself, although taking up the particular mantle is not important to me. As  a man there are people who say I can’t be a feminist, and that’s fine by me. I care that I support women in the pursuit of equality in society, and that I support oppressed groups to the same end, what I am called because of that is neither here nor there. If anything at all; I am an ally.

My writing about philosophy has taken an academic turn since beginning university (as one might have expected). My experience of first year philosophy was a resounding disappointment, it lacked depth and covered topics I was largely already familiar with. I think this is my own fault though. University is about self learning, so if what you’re learning isn’t up to scratch it’s clear where the blame lies. I could have added depth and tackled the unfamiliar myself. But I didn’t, and I finished my first year feeling underwhelmed, and under-stimulated academically.

There’s plenty I would do differently, and I intend to next year. Perhaps writing about philosophy recreationally could be somewhat of an antidote. I will try to. At the moment my desire is low, I think this will change, and I will endeavour to change it.

A conclusion from this muddled flow of thoughts: I want to write more, about new and different things. I want to write for myself, and I want to write because I am interested. I don’t know exactly what though.

 

More to come. Hopefully.

Knowledge – this is a tough one.

Posted on by appleonionme

What is knowledge?

The most basic view is that it is True Justified Belief. For me to know some proposition for example that ‘the door is shut’, I have to believe it, be justified in believing it, and it must be true. My justification may well come from looking at the door and seeing it is shut. Thus if I have a justification to believe that the door is shut, then do believe the door is shut, and it is shut, then I have knowledge that the door is shut. This may seem to be incredibly intuitive, even to the point of being very correct. However I am not convinced by it – others are equally as dissatisfied.

What is wrong with True Justified Belief?

Many other people find fault with justification as a part of knowledge. We can often proclaim that we have knowledge of something, when in reality we are wrong to believe this. We may have a belief, and a justification, but it may not be true. For example I may have shut the door, thus have a justified belief that it is shut, but unbeknownst to me somebody has since shut the door. In this example I have a belief that is justified, but not true. So although I would claim to have knowledge that the door is shut, it would not be true, and thus not knowledge.

What is better than True Justified Belief?

One account that is argued to be better is the reliabilist account of knowledge. Which defines knowledge as Reliable True Belief. Rather than being justified, the belief is reliable. To continue with the example, perhaps my belief that the door is still shut after a time becomes unreliable if there are other people in a building.

This still runs into issues, I can have reliable belief that is not true. If my alarm goes off in the morning at the time I set it, then i have a reliable belief that it is presently the time that the alarm says. However it is possible that the alarm clock had reset over night, or perhaps the mains electricity stopped and the alarm went off late (as has happened to me). I would have a reliable belief that the time was what the alarm said it was – but this would not be true.

My fix.

I would take out the truth condition from knowledge. Rather I would regard knowledge of some proposition P, as a Justified belief that P is true. This means that we would be able to call some proposition that was untrue, knowledge. This is counter intuitive. This may even be wrong. However I think that it matches up with the way we use language. We often profess to “know” things that turn out to be untrue. We have mistaken beliefs that appear to be reliable or justified, but aren’t. We may even have such “knowledge” now. For example people really believed that the earth was flat. One may have said that it was common knowledge for people.

There is a condition of ‘No False Lemmas’ that some people apply instead of making the move I have. Rather than challenging the truth condition of knowledge, it adds the condition that the belief is not inferred from falsity. However this runs into the same problem – we do not know whether our belief is inferred from falsity or not. The awareness of falsehood or truth-hood falls outside of our belief in some proposition that we “know”. By that I mean that when we claim to “know” things, but that knowledge is untrue, we do not tend to have a way to access that truth. So it seems either unhelpful to define knowledge as having the belief inferred from no falsity because we can’t access this falsity – or it forces us to continue speaking of “knowledge” but being potentially wrong about it still.

So I think we should consider knowledge as something fallible. To do this, we must take away the truth condition.

If anyone has had the patience to get through this, I appreciate comments and challenges. Thank you.

Awareness awareness – mental health

Posted on by appleonionme

In the last year or two there has been a lot of work on raising awareness for mental health. I often meet the sentiment that we need to ‘raise awareness for mental health’. And indeed we do.

The clear message is that people need to recognize mental health as an existing issue; people around them live with it and are affected by it.

This is certainly an important thing to communicate, however it too often seems unconnected to a genuine awareness of mental health. People are now aware that mental health is a thing that people around them suffer with – this is progress.

But now, I think we need a more sophisticated level of awareness of mental health. An awareness that covers more than its mere existence; an awareness of exactly how mental illness effects people, how to deal with it, and how to cultivate good mental health.

It isn’t enough to be aware of mental health as a concept, we need to be aware how to deal with it.

As always, feel free to comment, question, and debate.

Modern living – Being virtuous

Posted on by appleonionme

There’s always been one good question to ask ourselves. How should I be? Looking at ourselves in terms of how we want to be – to exist – in the future seems to be a universal way of seeking fulfillment.

That question asks us to consider quite a lot. What do I want to be? What should I want to be? What am I already? The list could probably go on for a while.

So how are we to make sense of it all? Moral theories try to give us both the answer and a framework for working towards the answer. Bentham’s utilitarianism says that we should try to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Bentham told us there was a kind of (hedonic) calculus we could use to do this.

Another theory is Kant’s deontology, which tells us to act out of duty. Kant told us we could find our duties by testing actions as if everyone did them – if we can’t make sense of a world where everyone murders people, we have a duty not to murder anyone.

But I think that these theories don’t really work – my reasoning could fill pages and pages, in fact people dedicate their lives to arguing for and against these theories.

The theory that I think works though, is virtue ethics. By and large it answers the question of ‘how to be’ with ‘be virtuous’. A sophisticated account of what it is to be virtuous will point out that we should look to examine our societies. For the Spartans it was virtuous to be brave and fierce and willing to die for Sparta because that is what allowed the Spartan society to flourish. Aristotle thought that if you were brought up ‘right’ then you would have the right responses, thoughts, and feelings to situations. So a virtuous Spartan would look into the face of death against a Persian advance with thoughts of glory, pride, and strength. This amounts to being brought up in the ‘right’ kind of institution. This could be a family, business, or entire society. Being brought up in an institution makes you sensitive to it’s own kind of moral compass. But that doesn’t mean we always follow it.

As it stands, even my sympathetic account of virtue ethics is shaky. But what I hope would counter any reservations one might have is the notion that it lines up with our intuitions; we have this kind of sense that to act in a certain way is right and another is wrong. I can’t even quite tell you why I think certain things are right or wrong, but to me, and probably you, sometimes they just are. Somewhere along the way when we explain why we do things, we will likely end up saying ‘because it intuitively felt like the right thing to do’. And by appealing to the institutions or societies we grew up in, we may find the place that these intuitions come from.

So, how should I be? According to virtue ethics, I should act in a way that lines up with how I intuitively think and feel about situations. The majority of people already do this, we do not think in terms of our duties, or maximization of pleasure, but rather in terms of what it feels right to do. Nowadays in terms of actually being, outside of morality, we should do what makes us happy, what will make us feel fulfilled – society has no absolute demand for bravery and strength in battle, but rather strives to have a content population.

Thank you for reading this, I welcome criticisms, questions, and inquiries.

Why do I enjoy Philosophy? (And maybe why you would too)

Posted on by appleonionme

I enjoy philosophy because it makes me a better thinker. It does not allow me to be lazy or dogmatic. The only time I can answer a question with “because that’s the way it is” is when I have good reason to. Becoming better at thinking has the advantage of seeing through fallacious arguments, and being able to understand complex ideas, all while being able to communicate that to other people.

However there are many other subjects or fields that could develop my ability to think, reason and debate – so why philosophy?

There is something natural about philosophy for me. As a child I would split hairs to no end. I would point out issues or slight inaccuracies that were irrelevant to the discussion or conversation at hand. However somewhere along the way I moved on from mere pedantry to being able to articulate relevant and somewhat sophisticated counter arguments. The thing linking this and the unsophisticated hair splitting is the way of thinking. Or the kind of questions I’m asking. When I was younger and even now I ask myself “what do I disagree with?” or “what’s wrong with that?” When I was younger the answer would often pick up on some minor detail that wasn’t quite right. Whereas now the answer often yields something more potent. And in essence that is what philosophy is – asking challenging questions, and finding answers to them – something I have spent most of my life doing to varying levels of success. So why philosophy in particular? Because while I was splitting hairs, I was unwittingly introducing myself to the kind of thinking necessary for “doing” philosophy. The jump from one to the other actually occurred as I began to seriously question the relevance of things I said, and criticisms I raised.

So why might you like philosophy?

If you want to challenge your intellectual muscles then it’s something you can get stuck into. You may even find yourself independently coming up with valid arguments against great thinkers and philosophers; such as seeing the holes in Descartes arguments for God, or Plato’s world of the forms. Which is quite an empowering feeling.

Not only that, but you can consider some of the big questions like: Where did everything come from? Who am I? What can I/we know? How do we act morally? And so on.

So if you want to become better at thinking, pit your intellectual clout against respected philosophers, answer certain classical questions, or even just learn something, then philosophy is for you.

And if after all you are interested then you could look on the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, or find an introductory book that seems interesting. My suggestion would be Simon Blackburn’s book “Think”.

General introduction

Posted on by appleonionme

This is the first time I have tried to write independently – to write for myself. As a result I have to set my own agenda, discuss topics of my own choosing, and write wholly out of choice. The aim of this post is to introduce myself. For me that entails telling you – my hypothetical readership – what I want to use this blog for.

As things stand I don’t expect anyone to be able to view this – I mean what are the chances that anyone will stumble upon this? So my first aim is simply to write. To use this platform to discuss topics of interest and become better at writing and articulating myself. If anyone should happen to find anything that I’ve written, then I hope it is worth the time reading that it is given.

I have a particular focus on philosophy. That is, I would like to write and learn about certain aspects of philosophy, to challenge myself and my beliefs, and be able to put my thoughts into digestible and coherent words. In particular I struggle to find my position within moral philosophy and philosophy of mind. As such I will set myself questions that I hope to answer over time touching on these and other topics.

Where do I stand within moral philosophy?

Which theory of mind am I most compelled by?

Why do I enjoy philosophy?

What is the point of philosophy?

Who is my favorite philosopher and why?

Another area that I would like to write about is feminism and the progression towards the equality of humanity. I have distinguished the two because feminism focuses only on gender and sex, whereas race, religion and other factors cause inequality too. I also take an interest in politics and current affairs. So I will ask myself these questions:

What kind of feminist (or supporter of equality) am I? Why?

What currently annoys me with some facet of the political establishment/system?

Where do I find most inspiration within the political spectrum?

Where do I align myself politically? Why?

I hope to eventually answer these questions and to make discussion around them, and other things of interest. In summary, I suppose I am writing this blog in order to better my ability to write, and at the same time learn where I really stand on certain issues.

On the off chance somebodies eyes get this far – thank you for reading.