Do we only have one? A multiplicity? Do we inhabit a society that tries to suggest that we have only one? Or do we accept the premise of postmodernity, that we have none… ‘None’ is interesting: does none posit the idea that there are some which cannot be applied? That used to apply but no …
Author Archives: ashleyg60
The Value of Mindfulness
Ah, ‘mindfulness’! The buzzword of the zeitgeist, especially after the whole covid thing. Apparently, such a broad ‘term’ that it encompasses any kind of “mental health issue`” you care to mention…which makes it simultaneously useful and useless. I suppose the closest we can get to a ‘definition’ is “living in the moment”, aware of only …
The Value of Power
Overall, the term ‘power’ seems, to me, to be a negative one – we talk about having power over someone or thing, people taking power, abuse of power, political power and so forth. This is probably because, in capitalistic society, power is linked to competition: power gives us an advantage over others, it is a …
The Moralising Self
Moral philosophy (MP)is always the one that scares people. For years, philosophy was spilt into two parts: Logic & Metaphysics (L&M); Moral Philosophy. I was advised to keep well away from MP. For that reason, in my first year, I went with L&M. Rather tedious to say the least. Logic was boring – let’s put …
The Value of Self
This is something I intended to discuss anyway, but given Sunak’s blatant attempt to take control of the way people think of themselves as themselves, I’ll do it now. So, in capping “low value” degrees, Sunak is dong two things: firstly, suggesting that if you are not motivated by profit and personal gain there is …
The Value of Consistency
Or we could swing this round, “The Consistency of Value”. I’ve already discussed the idea of consistency as a “power play”, a mechanism that forces the disempowered into preordained channels, yielding preordained results. We can also discuss the idea of value in relation to what we are told is the human desire/need for security and …
The Discourse of Imaginative Thinking
So, if we are to avoid the mistake of allowing the discourse of IT to generate its own terms of reference, how are we to proceed? By linking it to those fields which have traditionally been seen as indicators of value: epistemology; rationality; logic. However, as I remarked earlier, these fields act as ‘guardians’ for …
Valuing Imaginative Thinking
At this point, I should be doing the usual “philosophy by numbers” game; that is, I should be investigating how IT relates to epistemology, to rationality, to morals etc. However, it doesn’t take much to see the obvious flaw in this: a way of perceiving is initially developed BUT it must then be reconciled with …
The Value of Imaginative Thinking II
(ii) Do we (should we) value Imaginative Thinking? (IT from hereon) Do we need to be able to define something in order to judge its value? If IT varies from person to person, must we, therefore, say it cannot be valued (have a value placed upon it) because there is no identifiable “common denominator”? In …
The Value of Imaginative Thinking
This is where it gets more difficult; if this were a book, I’d have to work everything out beforehand, but it isn’t, it’s a blog, so the characteristics are different. Anyway, I’m not getting b(l)ogged down in that. Two questions: (i) What is the value of Imaginative Thinking? (henceforth, IT) and, (ii), Do we (should …
Murmurs from the Forest 