I am a philosopher AMA

[Booboostwo]

This will probably be the shortest AMA in the (admittedly short) history of AMA, but here it goes anyway.

[Booboostwo]

from the inside out

[mnahmnah]

Thanks! I’ll take a look. I struggle every year to understand why they struggle with it. They do well with other ethical theories and get great results overall. They think it’s too ‘vague’ compared with ethical systems like utilitarianism I think

[TheCatFromOuterSpace]

Can we be sure that the reality we perceive around us is really there, and not just a collective dream / alien science experiment

[Booboostwo]

No, we cannot. We can’t even be sure other minds exist.

[TheCatFromOuterSpace]

Can I even be sure that other people exist? Could you all be figments of my imagination?

[MrsBodger]

the cat
If I am a figment of your imagination please could you make my life a bit more interesting.

[newtlover]

what do you think of Philosophy for Children
(methodology in which socratic questioning is applied in groups to questions chosen by children)

[Booboostwo]

We cannot know that we’re not a simulation and we can’t know that other minds exist.

The first type of skepticism comes from Descartes. Have you ever seen an optical illusion? For example, a branch that appears bent in water is taken out of the water and appears straight, so what is its shape? At first, in the water, you were certain in was bent because your eyes told you so, but clearly your eyes are mistaken. Now you are certain that it is straight but again because of evidence of your unreliable eyes.

Have you ever had a dream that seemed real as you were having it? At the time you thought the dream was the reality and then you woke up, but have you really woken up? Couldn’t this reality equally be a dream you will wake up from? You were deceived once so your senses are not reliable.

Let’s generalize this thought: your senses are unreliable maybe everything they tell you is a deception. Descartes imagined an evil demon that deceived you about everything, but modern versions of the example could be that you are a brain in a vat being stimulated by a scientists to have the experiences that you have, an alien experiment in consciousness, or inside the Matrix.

[Booboostwo]

The problem of other minds follows the same sorts of lines of global skepticism.

I know about my experiences, e.g. I know when I feel pain and what that pain is like, I.e. the experience of feeling pain. But I can’t know anyone else feels pain, or that what they call pain is the same as what I call pain or that other people have any experiences at all. To know that I would need to experience their experiences which is not possible.

I can see someone who has just hit their knee on the coffee table, hold onto it, hop on one leg and swear, all things I do when I experience pain, but I have no proof that they are not faking the whole thing. We can draw inferences about the existence of other minds, I.e if it behaves as if it has a mind then it has a mind, but we can’t know anyone else has a mind as we don’t have access to it.

[Booboostwo]

I am not familiar with the Philosophy for Children but all of, analytic at least, philosophy is taught using the Socratic elenchus.

If you look at philosophy curricula you’ll see there is no such thing. Some unis teach Aristotle, some Plato, some both, some neither. Some offer philosophy of mind as a third year elective, some have it as a core subject. None of this is a problem because philosophy is not about information, if you forget the seven formulations of the Categorical Imperative then just go read them again no one cares that you forgot, it’s about arguments.

We want to teach students how to think, not what to think. So we expose them to good, and bad, arguments and we help them to figure out what is good and bad about them. By being exposed to these arguments and actively thinking about them, we hope that they will learn something about argumentation itself.

So if this programme uses elenchus methodology it sounds great.

The fundamental issue with philosophical thinking is that you need to engage individual thinkers so you need really small class sizes. No one can learn philosophy in a lecture theatre or large seminar group - they can learn about philosophy but they can’t become philosophers. Sadly, class sizes have been increasing and there is pressure to offer a lot of teaching in lecture theatres.

[Itoldyouiwasgeeky]

Bit more low brow, have you seen The Good place?

Does everybody hate moral philosophy professors?

[Itoldyouiwasgeeky]

The fundamental issue with philosophical thinking is that you need to engage individual thinkers so you need really small class sizes. No one can learn philosophy in a lecture theatre or large seminar group - they can learn about philosophy but they can’t become philosophers.

I did a level philosophy and I completely agree with this. Class size of 30 odd, waiting your turn to make your point, but which time the discussion had moved on. I stopped going to the classes in the end and just read the books. Still managed to wrangle a C .

[Booboostwo]

I only managed one episode of the Good Place before I imploded. Having said that I do know of colleagues who enjoy it, so maybe I am grumpy!

Have you seen Jonathan Dancy on the LateLate Show? That’s more like it for me!

[Booboostwo]

When I was an undergrad we had tutorials, two students to one lecturer, one tutorial a week and we took it in turns to write a 5000 word essay that was taken to apart in the tutorial. It was really challenging but a lot of fun.

I understand why class size had to go up to 12 and I think that is still just about manageable, especially with small group work and clever ideas to get feedback from everyone, but 30 is a disaster. The problem is exactly what you found, it is impossible to follow (and challenge) one train of thought. Students get left behind, they get lost, they get bored, they have something brilliant to contribute. But never get the chance, etc. and the lecturer is none the wiser.

[Sharpandshineyteeth]

I want to find more out about the stoics. Can you recommend a good beginners guide that relates to modern life, or a good accessible author or ted talk or something

[newtlover]

philosophy for children, aka P4C worth a look- children benefit massively from this and are supported to think more abstractly and more critically than is usual (sadly) in the classroom

[Sunshiness]

What made you choose to become a SAHM? Was it very hard in your job to become a mum? Is it male-dominated?

[Booboostwo]

Try either the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
www.iep.utm.edu/stoicism/

Or, usually more in depth, the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/

Both resources are written by philosophers and are quite reliable.

[Booboostwo]

Thanks for the link newtlover. I am all for teaching philosophy so I am sure it’s a great initiative but I can’t quite tell what it is. There are examples of what it has achieved but I think i’d need to see an actual example of what they do in the classroom.

[Booboostwo]

Long story short, I love philosophy but I became disillusioned with academia. I really enjoy teaching and I think I was a good teacher but the more senior I became the less teaching I did. My time was taken up by entirely pointless admin tasks, which is not what I trained so many years for. At the same time I was expected to treat students appallingly, all the university was interested in was recruitment, after that they were no longer our problem.

I also enjoy my research but there was never any time to think. It was all about publishing like crazy and bringing in hundreds of thousands of pounds in research grants. You don’t need a lot of money to do philosophy but the unis were so cash starved we had to be ‘academic enterpreneurs’.

I left my job first and then I got pregnant shortly after so it was a natural move to being SAHP.

There are a lot of women at the lower levels in philosophy but few make it through to the higher positions. Generally the work of women is under cited and their input is, historically, unrepresented. There are efforts to improve things though.

[Sunshiness]

Wow that sounds tough Booboo! Not how I imagined academia at all Thank you for answering!

[Booboostwo]

The treatment of students was the worst bit. I complained about a student who had been let down by disability services (no needs statement, no crucial information passed onto halls of residence, no reply from disability advisor for more than two weeks, etc all leading her to crisis point and I was trying to help her from my home at 9 in the evening. A complete disaster for her, created by the uni failing her). I was advised to make it so bad for her that she gave up on her degree as impossible to complete!

That was the final straw for me but I have many similar stories.

[LoveProsecco]

Really interesting OP!

[noego]

I've just caught up with this thread. Interesting reading.

In my view, reality does not exist. Only perceived reality. If that is the case then in my view everything perceived has to be illusory.
However, what is it that perceives the perceiver, perceiving the perceived reality?
In other words what is aware of the perceiver, perceiving the perceiver of perceived reality and can it be real?

When you discover the answer then there is a realisation that all perception can only be illusory.

[Booboostwo]

If reality doesn’t exist and the perceiver creates what we think of as reality through her perception then nothing can be an illusion, as, by definition, everything is created by the perceiver. Illusions are distortions of reality because of the falibility of the perceiver, but if there is no reality then there is no illusion.

Berkeley had a similar view of reality as being created by the perceiver. He then had to account for what happens when no one is there to perceive, but assumed the god perceived everything all the time. That way things don’t wink in and out of existence as you blink.