Philosophy Thoughts as and when

On gaining my BA degree summer 2013, I immediately started working on my aesthetics research paper on BritArt and Empathy. Later, I reworked it by putting more emphasis on Hume to tailor it to a Hume Workshop. So here I took two topics (and a philosopher) and played around with how they interconnected. So here again, I'm using the same approach as I learnt in the A2 Philosophy course content (final unit).  Then I thought up more ideas in the autumn 2013, read through a lot of uni material on the internet as well as books on PhDs: how to structure a PhD proposal and PhD research skills.  I used these PhD research skills when later working as an independent researcher in philosophy, January 2015 onwards. What's the difference between my 2013 research on BritArt and my 2015 research on Spinoza? 🤔  1) the first was me finally (I couldn't wait to leave uni!👩‍🎓) being able to get down to my own research in philosophy ie without a dissertation supervisor and without having to b

  I have updated 3 previous posts. I may update a post more than once because it's more efficient.🙂 Latin. To recap: Prior to my Philosophy BA, I had already done a last year BA degree module in Latin as a stand-alone module which ended at the same time as my BA Philosophy started, except for the Latin exam, which overlapped with the first month of my Philosophy degree. So after completing that Latin course, I left that university 😪 and I didn't take the (Latin) exam 😪 because I'd be on 2 different degree courses simultaneously which you can't do 😪 and because I didn't want to start gaining credits in 2 different degrees and at 2 universities. Messy! I enjoyed the Latin degree module 👍 and was getting really high marks (1st class) for my assignments but at the time I was recovering from sports injuries so wasn't going to return to the tennis tour until the autumn at the earliest. 😪 So I decided to use the time to study at university. 👍 As I've already

I had previously studied A Level Philosophy as a long-distance Certificate course and the tutor who marked my assignments for it was very encouraging, supportive and suggested I study philosophy at uni because I'm really good at it. He gave me very high marks and gave me two marks per assignment - an A Level mark and the mark he would give me if it were for an UG essay. So I had a very good idea of how my work should be marked at university and that I should expect a 1st class degree. The tutor thought I'd already overshot the A Level standard and therefore the A Level exams wouldn't suit me because they won't expect to mark essays that look degree-like and he was loath to change/disrupt my style and approach just for a couple of years simply to sit A level Philosophy. Especially since A Level philosophy isn't necessary in order to study it at uni.  The A Level course covered History of Philosophy and how to read and interpret philosophical texts so I'd already

Following on from an earlier post where I discussed research "help", here I'll give some of my further thoughts on the subject.  Male lecturers give themselves access to help with their research as they please, on both a formal (Q&A) and informal basis (e.g. Chat over a beer). Partly because, in my experience, men are less hierarchical in their approach to philosophizing with others. I've found I can chat to male philosophers (from around the world) about any aspect of philosophy without them pulling rank. But I try that with women and I don't find they have the same approach as men. For instance, 2 years back, one female (ironically feminist) speaker from abroad immediately started posturing and saying "I've got 30 years experience". How nice, but so what? I've only just met you and what's the relevance of how many years you've been doing something? The real question is are you any good? 🤔I've never heard that from a man, he jus

I thought I'd follow on from my previous post on the theme of dissertations to give a better picture of how my supervisions went because they may be hard to imagine. Just because I did gain a great deal from them doesn't mean the decision over my Cavendish dissertation and  supervisor were right. It's still unjustifiable,unfair, unethical and plain wrong. And I'm still angry 😠about it! Anthony Price's dissertation supervisions prepared me very well for presenting my future papers and answering questions. It wasn't all contras - it was mostly philosophical discussion, exploration of topics and probing/testing my thesis. Discussion with him isn't some vague chit-chat - it's like developing a train of thought, constantly building on each other's thought. We had 50/50 input in discussion time because we both talk a lot and are quick to respond to each other's academic points. I'm glad I experienced that because it is something which is a very ra

Why am I writing these posts on my experience of life at university? Because I tried to deal with the nightmare situation at college when I was there but didn't achieve anything. I asked to resolve issues amicably through human resources but the college wrote that formal complaints were the way forward. I was under extreme stress and had suffered a second bereavement in as many years so, unfortunately, I believed them.😢 Another good reason to write my story!  The college made a total mess of the procedure and just incorrectly recorded events and then dismissed everything as though it hadn't happened, clearing everyone of any blame (which includes me, of course), assured me the following year would be better and if I wanted then any member of staff (no exceptions) in the department could help me out in awkward situations. Nobody was nominated to oversee anything the following year or after (if they had been then it would have been someone in Human Resources, not anyone within t

 So now the big one!  🎺 The dissertation!  Dissertation, a compulsory module which should be a student's opportunity to research an area of Philosophy that they are interested in as long as there is a relevant lecturer who can supervise it. 👍 🙂Or so everyone believes. My first choice for my dissertation was Spinoza 🙂👍 but there was a general negative attitude towards Spinoza 😥😢😪 which even the UG students started to pick up at the end of the first year and even more so by the 3rd year (not sure how and why because they were perfectly positive at the start). So I didn't think a dissertation on Spinoza would be welcome, and I wasn't wrong. My essay on Spinoza (Spring term 2012) went missing, along with the tutorial tutor. I emailed the tutor my Spinoza essay so he only needed to email back the comments/feedback/mark but he never did. He also did a no-show 😮 for the tutorial on that essay topic. After wasting our time hanging around an empty tutorial room slowly reali