PFRR POSTS

THOUGHT: The World has recently descended into a fragile state.  ‘The World’ here means the human world, the procedures, institutions, methods, customs, civilities etc. which allow seven billion of us to “get along together”, after a fashion, on this planet...


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03/04/2023

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 42

Today’s world is in considerable trouble as a result of the rejection of liberal democracy by some nationalist leaders and simultaneously by the rise of demagogues within liberal democracies.  Why is this happening? Because we are in a most unusual condition —there is no philosophy, world-view, religion or ideology around […]
01/03/2023

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 41

Philosophy includes epistemology, the exploration of the furthest limits of human knowledge. How far can we hope to go in understanding things?  What has emerged recently is startling. The best way to understand the physical universe is by building an anti-mathematic model of it —this is a no-brainer. When a […]
01/02/2023

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 40

Some anti-mathematic developments Anti-mathematics is not a body of rhetoric intended to attack mathematics, but a. new 100% abstract discipline —hitherto overlooked— running parallel to, and requiring much support from, mathematics. (Mathematics is needed frequently as its natural meta-language.) Anti-mathematics studies the logic of wholly transient objects, I.e abstract objects constructed […]
02/01/2023

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 39

Today morale in most local communities is probably at an all-time low. We have been wallowing in gloom since the conjunction of Covid 19, the dreadful 2022 Ukraine War, the poor level of post-Brexit leadership, and the severe austerity caused by outbreaks of strikes and inflation. To a degree, Christmas […]
01/12/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 38

Remembrance Sunday was held this year in Whitehall on November 13th and the ceremony was staged…with the usual spectacular turnout of the British Royal Family and the UK/Commonwealth establishment.  The presence of WW1 veterans has virtually ceased, but the haunting music which rings out while wreaths are placed on the […]
01/11/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 37

An Interim Report has recently been published by Baroness Casey on the state of the Metropolitan Police’s response to misconduct within the force. It says that numbers of Met officers are being sacked for misconduct every year, but also that these numbers are not enough: there are, apparently hundreds of […]
01/10/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 36

Queen Elizabeth II’s sudden death has brought home to many of us the role she played in balancing the persistent anti-social, nihilistic aspects of modernity.  Which raises the question <<Why did such a persistent vein of anti-social emphases come to be so up-front and prevalent?>>. Well, for about a hundred […]
01/09/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 35

Anti-mathematics is the new, the 100% abstract, 100% logical, 100% lucid way… to describe transient reality.  And there are transient realities all around us, quite different from —actually much commoner than— the allegedly timeless realities onto which so much attention has, historically, been paid. How did it come about that […]
31/07/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 34

The theme of the author’s six essays in The New English Review (NER) on-line journal has been the De-mystification of Mathematics, a project which Ludwig Wittengstein tried to accomplish, but on which he was unable to make much progress. Now two posts have appeared in The New English Review respectively […]
30/06/2022

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 33

How can we alert the alertable few of today’s young people that reason and light in human affairs will disappear unless we take a determined stand to support it and bring it back? Whether we like it or not, the global human community is hurtling towards a contentious, chaotic, painful […]
01/04/2025

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 67

We currently have an incumbent in the White House who has somehow managed to bedazzle a body of hand-picked officials and thereby acquired an astonishing degree of “apparent authority”. His word is now being fully accepted in the US governmental network as “actionable” and “legitimate”. A charmed circle of Yes-men […]
04/03/2025

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 66

It is March 2025 and the Royal Institute of Philosophy is about to celebrate its 100 years of existence  … with a reception in the Middle Temple. This can be a prompt… to look at the state of philosophy at the present time. Philosophy is obviously the most general area […]
01/02/2025

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 65

There are some potentially dangerous trends at present which include treating AI as a prime source of sound advice… which could —if left unchecked— potentially do a lot of damage. Those who have their ears to the ground say that 75% of sixth-form essays written in UK private schools are […]
03/01/2025

Philosophy for Renewing Reason – 64

There are potentially dangerous trends abroad which might lead to the abandonment of democracy in politics —unless the leadership of the genuine democracies wake up and start furiously retrenching their fragile estate. How could this happen?  Well, the whole influential class seem to be quite “blind” to the damage a […]