chris271272
30/09/2020
The last blog (No. 11) pointed out that to embark on the Renewal of Reason Project will be to start a long hard, taxing journey, but one which is essential if civilisation is to survive. Without the help of reason, civilisation risks collapsing under the weight of its multiple contradictions, […]
02/09/2020
We need to renew our commitment to reason, which means, in effect, rigour, much stamina and open-mindedness in grappling with deep problem issues. Neglect of reason leads in the end to the pathology of personal hedonism, which is blind and inward-looking. The world which sleep-walked into Covid-19 in January 2020 […]
31/07/2020
We saw in Part 9 that evolutionary explanations have a rarely discussed downside. They only work well when they are applied to recent episodes where we have a very secure sense that we know what the furniture of the past was like. Once our “mental picture” of the past begins […]
30/06/2020
The last blog (No. 8) broached the issue of the historic natural attachment of the most reflective people to the God Hypothesis —the fact that for untold years a consensus existed that the only way to account for the existence of everything was to postulate that it was all created […]
01/06/2020
There are signs that the worst of the pandemic may be over, but the economic damage it has already done is huge. Putting the economy back together again will require a more positive, more rational, imaginative mindstyle… than anything we have seen in recent times. Much wider, more creative, more […]
30/04/2020
SOME GOOD NEWS Extra thinking time made possible by the Covid Lockdown has led to a major breakthrough in Actimatics, the new quasi-mathematical discipline introduced in these Blogs. Actimatic modelling allows us for the first time to aspire to conceptualising a dynamic model of the universe including human consciousness. The […]
31/03/2020
STOP PRESS The coronavirus has changed personal perceptions dramatically. Nothing looks the same today as it did three months ago. It has made almost everyone aware of the inherent fragility of the present World Order… in health terms, in employment terms, in economic terms and, for those most dangerously affected, […]
28/02/2020
FUTURE SHOCK: Isn’t this new picture of the universe one gigantic, fanciful, unnecessary thought upheaval? No, it is a large upheaval, but it is neither “fanciful” nor “unnecessary”. There have been many necessary “gigantic thought upheavals” in human history. As when the Greeks discovered that the Earth was spherical, not […]
31/01/2020
THOUGHT: Part 3 led to a surprising conclusion, namely that the ultimate constituents of physical reality must be absolutely random. If their behaviour still possessed vestiges of pattern, they would cry out for further scientific explanation. If so, they would not count as the “ultimate constituents” of physical reality. There […]
02/01/2020
THOUGHT: There are currently signs of a sickening and widespread loss of confidence in the efficacy of reasoning. It seems to be being felt simultaneously in many countries. It is quite alarming, because history shows that trying to maintain civilised standards is difficult enough with the help of reason: trying […]
02/11/2023
The horrific War started by Hamas against Israel is another sign of how lack of clear thinking in today’s world builds-up, creates hatred, and leads to violence. For ‘clear thinking’ read ‘fair reasoning’. The trouble is that the dreadfully-myopic so-called ‘thinking’ which characterised the 20th century —assisted by the 21st […]
02/10/2023
There is one massive reason why the most general kinds of thinking cultivated by the human race are in disarray. It is that most individuals with the greatest potential curiosity about the general outlook for humanity have been deliberately shying away from thinking about such universal matters for a very […]
01/09/2023
Why is philosophy labouring in the doldrums in academia and coming over as a sketchy diversified patchwork in the few places where it is still alive outside academia? Why has intellectual confidence fallen onto the floor? Why is the outlook for humankind so unremittingly bleak? Whatever has gone so hopelessly […]
01/08/2023
The P E R Group was first muted in 1993, at a philosophical conference at UEA in Norwich. Its emergence can be interpreted in various ways. It grew from a small group of people who had at that time been rooting for more than 20 years for a major reform […]