We saw in the last two blogs that the slow disintegration of our society as an organic whole  (the rotting effect) might be halted by introducing a radical change in state education. State education MUST TRY to inculcate all its learners into a sense of responsibility to, and membership of,  […]

We saw in blog 58 that the slow disintegration of our society as an organic whole can probably only be halted by introducing a radical change in state education. State education MUST try to inculcate all its learners into a sense of responsibility to, and membership of, the society. The […]

The problems of philosophy of politics at the present time are multiple, difficult and diverse. They begin with an historic anomaly: the collapse of all previously credible world-views and universal codes of behaviour. This is a uniquely troubling situation.  Such codes were the glue which used to hold society together. […]

The inexplicable poverty of modern political reflection An unexpected consequence of modernity has been the consistently weak level of insight stemming from political philosophy during the last hundred years.  There have been few political philosophers of any stature since Karl Marx: and his reputation, let’s remember, was partly built on […]

In the last few blogs I have pointed out the astonishingly simplifying effect of anti-maths when applied to scientific modelling. Suddenly a thousand unsatisfactory, hopeless questions disappear. Jumping up and down is in order… This is not just great news —it is the kind of great news we have been […]

Is philosophy as an academic subject still relevant to life in the third decade of the 21st century?  This is a question which hangs in the air wherever the academic subject is being pursued today in colleges and universities. It appears that today a daunting level of intellectual confidence is […]

This blog switches from the grand philosophic issues derived from anti-mathematics, to a specific problematic feature of Wittgenstein’s conception of the nature of philosophy.  A paper in the current issue of the  journal Philosophy took the line that Wittgenstein’s concept of philosophy was essentially therapeutic. Various commentators have taken this […]

In the last blog (no 52) I pointed out that rigorous ethics is needed to hold civilisation together, and also that piecemeal science cannot provide a basis for rigorous ethics, because it can only offer us a “not yet falsified” view of the nature of the world and human nature.  […]

Today there are signs of a widespread fatalistic mood about the collapse of Western Civilised Ethics. It is fuelled by an educational vacuum, i.e. a lapse in the edifying effect of schools, and the casual,  inadequate level of judgment brought by the mass population to politics. A US former president […]

One of the most difficult problems associated with the aim of renewing reason in education —and hence with issues for the P E R Group— is how to harmonise the mindstyle of the humanities with the mindstyle of the STEM subjects. Craig Ross did an impressive presentation about this to […]