It is widely assumed that religion is needed to justify a Moral Code which comes with bite, i.e. a Moral Code which prescribes and expects rigorous observation.  But this sequence can be reversed, by realising that religion was from the beginning based on airy generalised thinking about how the vast, […]

This blog puts the case for a major BOWT (“Burden of Work Taxonomy”) research project which might take years to come to completion. It is being offered as the “missing link” which is needed to achieve social justice. Probably the major cause of social disaffection in today’s society is the application […]

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.  […]