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.

Schrödinger's cat was an example created to show how batshit crazy quantum physics is...quarks do not hold a set state, they change according to observations.
This was Schrodinger's point, it isn't practical or reasonable for this to be right...a cat cannot be both dead and alive until it is observed, it must be one state or another.

Thank you for posting Booboostwo - really interesting.

My DD is going to take Philosophy & Ethics A level and we love discussing a bit of philosophy over dinner, but I am woefully ignorant. I'm going to have a look at some of the links you posted.

I often wonder about religion and frequently ask the question about why we don't worry about existence pre-birth and yet worry so much about existing after death! I think it is because non-existence is such a huge and possibly frightening concept that we can't bear it. Obviously, before you exist such things are less troubling because you don't exist to worry about them! IYSWIM.

My own view is that we all exist in some way forever. I am the sum of all the microbes, fish, amphibians, monkeys and humans that went before me. I couldn't exist as I do at this very moment without all of them and so therefore they continue to exist in some tiny way as part of me. Is that nonsense?

Academia is becoming more and more demanding. When I got my first permanent post I had one publication in a top journal, one in a good journal and few book reviews. That was for an entry level, permanent post in 2000. My PhD supervisor said that was what his CV looked like when he applied for his Professorship 12 years earlier. Now this CV would not get you a permanent post, only a nine month contract.

Hercules the reality is that he will need to do a Masters first which he will have to self fund. If he has a first and a distinction for the Masters he will get funding for a PhD but perversely even this has changed. Whereas before the student shaped the thesis proposal and chose a supervisor to apply to, now the supervisor has the funding and calls for a PhD student to work on a narrowly defined topic of the supervisor’s choice. This really distorts the direction of research and forces young people to pursue the research interests of others.

Then he will have to complete a PhD really quickly (3 years ideally and no longer than 4), while getting some experience at teaching, attending conferences and, crucially, getting published (peer review is time consuming and rejections are frequent - most journals have a 10-15% acceptance rate - so that adds a lot of stress).

He then faces the horror of the nine month teaching contract. Competition for these crap jobs is fierce. They only last nine months so you need to do something else to survive for the rest of the year, they can be anywhere up and down the country which makes family life impossible, they are heavily (if not exclusively) weighed towards teaching so there is no time to do research, and the pay is crap.

A better route isn’t to try for a research fellowship, get more work published and then have a stronger CV for a permanent post.

Having said that, even permanent posts are not very secure. Many departments either downsize or are not properly funded and staffed to the point where workloads are ridiculous (workload models that tell you you are working at 120% but there is no change from year to year, working evenings and weekends). Many departments are looking to push people into teaching only contracts which defeats the purpose of wanting to do philosophy because you enjoy the research. And the admin burden is out of this world. You are constantly working towards a TEF or a REF or a student satisfaction survey or god knows what they will think of next.

It is a stressful career, with a lot of'pressure, constant rejection and conditions that make family life difficult with no monetary compensation.

Sorry that sounds awful but it’s best he goes into it with his eyes open. The idea that academics had low salaries but were free to'pursue a topic they loved dies in the early 1990s.

Happily deadhead but I live in France and only come to the UK from time to time. I’ve given a few talks to high school students it’s always been enormous fun and I have been involved in producing teaching materials for Extended Projects.

Philosophy of physics is well, well beyond me, I shall leave the cat to others!

Not nonesense at all. I find the idea of continuity appealing as well. Maybe we change into other energy types but there is a thread between what we were and what we become.

Simon Balckburn’s books “Think” and “Ethics” are really lovely starting points for philosophical discussions.

Thank you so much for such a detailed response.
He is about to start his masters and is borrowing the money to do so. He's also moved back home and will be able to commute from here to uni. I'm pretty sure he has some understanding of what you've described but at the moment his love for the subject clouds any judgement. He's only 22 so not thinking of future family life etc. Such a shame that it isn't as you describe in the 90s - that's when I went to uni and how you describe it is how I remember university.
Thanks again.

A better route isn’t to try for a research fellowship, get more work published and then have a stronger CV for a permanent post.
Did you mean is not isn't?

Thank you for answering.

I'm still confused.

Yes, all our senses can be mistaken so they are unreliable - this is Cartesian doubt. But Descartes goes on to show that some things cannot be doubted.

If you go back to Cartesian At first, in the water, you were certain in was bent because your eyes told you so, but clearly your eyes are mistaken.

But if you asked decartes a line = straight edge. A line is no longer a line if it bends. To all people a line is the same.

One is perception, one is our definition.

Similarly you could say two is a Cartesian illusion.People say, no there are definitely two or three syllables in the same word. Or if one person sees two objects and one person looking from another angle sees a third hiding from the first persons view and the object is short. Or a mirror can deplicate the same image when there is one.

Decartes says no two is a truth. It's a description of one plus plus.

There are just synonymous 'thruths' which means loads of things can be true...

Then there are truths on perspective.

??

I find your stance there is nothing after death interesting as you mentioned we could be in a matrix ect. Before being born there is no proof there was nothing just that we don't what was there.

These are things to look out for. Many people negotiate them successfully and have happy careers. He should keep in mind that the English speaking academic market is broadening a lot in Europe with many universities in Holland and Germany switching to English speaking degrees and attracting English speaking lecturers and students. This is definitely an avenue to explore, especially if Brexit goes ahead which will mean huge cuts in research funding and foreign student numbers.

Yes ‘is’ not ‘isnt’ , sorry. My iPad is autocorrecting to its own tune...I think it’s taking over!

Thanks!

When you look at a stick in water it appears bend, this is all about appearances and how your senses can deceive you.

The definition of a line as straight is something you can know without having ever seen any sticks, or lines, or anything at all. You can know it through reason alone, a priori, rather than through evidence from your senses, from experience, a posteriori.

Consider this question: are all swans white?
Can you answer this question sitting at your desk with your eyes closed never having met any animal?
No.
You have to go out into the world and see swans and observe their colour.
You may see 1000 white swans and infer that all swans are white but the infer nice is weak because it rests on empirical evidence. Swan 1001 could be the black one which would change your view.

Now consider whether two plus two equals four.
Can you answer sitting at your desk, with your eyes closed, with no objects around you?
Yes because it isn’t through reason and not through experience that you see the truth of the statement.

Some knowledge comes to us through experience, it is interesting but can be falsified by the next experience, by our fallible senses, etc. And some knowledge comes to us through reason, it’s is objectively true but not very interesting.

I did a year of philosophy at undergrad level (so not much!). Since then, I've become very interested in theoretical physics, to the extent that I'm now contemplating that the Universe could be something that exists, with time being just one aspect of it (there are various theories about being able to slice through the space/time continuum with a blade of 'now' perceived from various vantage points). I'm having trouble reconciling the idea of free will with an entity (the Universe) in which - if you consider time to be a dimension - the future is just as real as the past - ie, all points in time are extant, we just travel between them (in one direction only, it seems!). I'm not sure there's an 'ism' for this train of thought - it's not determinism as such because that implies cause and effect - it's just what 'is', and is immutable.

Erm - just wondering whether you've ever entertained similar thoughts, and wondering if you've found a logical refutation for that view of the Universe?

Now whether two plus two equals four. Can you answer sitting at your desk, with your eyes closed, with no objects around you?
Yes because it isn’t through reason and not through experience that you see the truth of the statement.

If you said grab one thing. A man could grab two stones. You say grab another thing. A man grabs three more stones. In his mind he has grabbed two things. Two plus two is four. In the other persons mind his two plus two equals five.

What is one?

Also how without experience do we know what add is? We use fingers to add and subtract as kids. The notion to add can only be described with synonyms without experience. It was like a child not knowing whether 'go up' meant ascend or descend the stairs. Only through experience he learned.

We can not know the difference between one thing or add/subtract/times without experience of these concepts.

I studied philosophy at degree level but these explanations wouldn't cut it for gcse.

Furry that does sound deterministic but I have no clue!

Why does the man grab two stones when I said grab one? Is it a linguistic mistake? If not, he doesn’t understand what one is. If I say draw me a triangle and you make a shape with four sides then it doesn’t make squares triangles, it just means you don’t understand what triangles are.

How we access the truth is a different matter. You may show a two apples and two apples to teach me four but that has to do with my learning process, not with the truth status of the number four. If there are no apples around four is still four. It is not dependent on th apples, or on me understanding what four is.

I see that your studies manaftermidnight focused more on kindness, civility and intellectual modesty.

This kind of thing, @Booboostwo - wondering what you think of it? It seems to deny rationality. It's by a philosopher.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3349118-Pro-Trans-article-Women-Can-Have-Penises-Katherine-Jenkins-Nottingham-University?pg=1&order=

I agree with her, she makes a pretty convincing argument.