The Sooty Empiric

Here's a dynamic that I think shapes a lot of politics in the West right now, though I am going to focus on here in the UK. I think this dynamic arises from the interplay of two facts about widespread voter preferences, and then another fact about the world more broadly. I suspect this dynamic is basically perennial, and it has just become more salient to me because it appeared much more salient later on in my life - I came of age in the high-growth-and-expectations thereof world of Britain in the late 90s through the crash, which suppresses this dynamic to a considerable extent. But I can't prove that so will just focus on the present. Finally, more generally, I won't be able to prove any of these points here, but I will try and provide links to indicate the sort of stuff that makes me think as I do. Obviously in something as far reaching as this I am far from expert on any particular element, so if I am wrong mea culpa, but you will at least see why I think as I do. Ok e...

This is another in the series of "things I often find myself saying so I want there to just be one blog I can point to rather than repeat myself" posts. This one is prompted by the University of Sussex facing a (to my mind) ludicrous fine  from a government organisation for failing to protect free speech whose head is, at the same time, lecturing universities on the need to "stimulate debate on contentious topics". These two aims - protect free speech, foster debate in universities - seem complementary and laudatory. But I think they are being interpreted in a way that puts them fundamentally at odds. And, what's more, the way they are being implemented at the moment creates an incentive system which will get us little open debate while punishing speech. Cards on the table: I am closer to the "free speech purist" end of things than most. I am, for instance, pretty cynical about speech codes when they are made parts of organisational codes of conduct. ...

                                            Hamlet -    Absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept   "indeterminate as to time" order lends to a unique simultaneity,  i.e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the   departure and return of a first-signal... So the Logical Positivists are some of my favourite philosophers. Those involved in the movement were also very much involved in artistic movements of their day, though nowadays philosophers tend to see them as rather humourless and dry. And often they could be. But I'd just like to draw attention to this rather odd piece from a positivist which combines wry humour with a bit of literary interpretation. Behold, Hans Reichenbach's "Hamlet's Soliloquy", which is chapter 15 in  The Rise of Scientific Philosophy . Enjoy!   " To be or not...