Philosophy Thoughts as and when

Happy Atheist Day! 🥳🎉🎊🎉🥂🍾🎇🎆 I would add some atheist emojis here but I can't find any specific ones, unlike the choice we have for the various religions 🙄 There's bias right there! This despite the fact that there could be up to 750 million atheists in the world which would make atheism the 4th largest 'religion'! Anyway, it seems that the emoji atheists have adopted on social media is one that scientists also use, which is a scientific symbol of an atom: ⚛️ For Atheist Day this year, I'd like to unpack the complexities and a few details about atheism, which, I think, are oversimplified and generalised. Just as with most belief systems or identities, atheism is on a spectrum and not a simple matter of 'either you are, or you are not'. Nevertheless, there is no set definition of Atheism or a required set of beliefs one must hold to count as an atheist. My aim in this post is two fold: one, to explore the various ways in which people can be atheists a...

As I've been mentioning on my blog about Spinoza, I think some people may conflate my personal and philosophical beliefs and thoughts with the philosophers I research, assuming it's somehow all the same system of thought/belief. One aspect of this is becoming confused about my personal religious beliefs and experience and, I suppose, consequently what my account of philosophy of religion would look like, if I were to expound one. In terms of religion, the philosophers I write about are superficially quite different, ranging from Spinoza who was Jewish, to Shepherd and Cavendish who were liberal-minded Christians to Hume and JS Mill who were on the agnostic/atheistic side. Well, the thing I and all these philosophers have in common is being rational, tolerant, freethinkers who keep philosophy clearly separate from religion, reject dogma, superstition and are critical of institutional religion, preferring religious beliefs or non-beliefs to be a personal, private matter.  Even Sh...

Happy LGBT+ History Month ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤💙💗🤍💜💛 to all members of the LGBTQIAPD2S+ community! To mark the 50th Anniversary of Pride March in the UK, this year's theme is Politics in Art: The Arc is Long. For more details about this month, click  here. As an LGBT+ philosopher myself, I am acutely aware of the shocking lack of LGBT+ representation in philosophy, including philosophers in the history of philosophy a well as a lack of proper discussion of LGBTQIAPD+ topics in philosophy.  The most famous LGBT+ philosophers in the history of philosophy are: Margaret Cavendish (genderfluid lesbian) Ludwig Wittgenstein (gay, who had a lover named F. Skinner) Foucault (gay) Judith Butler (non-binary lesbian; pronouns: they; she)  Not forgetting that we should credit Jeremy Bentham for arguing against criminalizing gay men. 👏👏👏👏

Happy Freethinkers Day! As a Freethinker Philosopher, I thought I'd discuss this holiday today and what it means to be a Freethinker.  The long-standing symbol for freethinkers is the pansy because, when the emblem was created, it reminded people of a person with their head bowed down, deep in thought. Later, pansies started to have offensive connotations for some people but this was not the original intention of this symbol so we must not erroneously mentally associate this with the positive meaning of the pansy flower for Freethinkers.  Freethinkers celebrate this day in honour of the 18th century freethinker, philosopher and political activist Thomas Paine. It was later made into a public holiday in the US. There is a statue of him in his hometown, Thetford, UK. Early in the 21st century, a BBC nationwide poll nominated Paine 34th in the top 100 greatest Brits. Freethinker is an umbrella term for, as the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries  aptly puts it, a "person who forms...

 Happy #WorldLogicDay ! Logic can be as simple or as complicated as you wish or need it to be. There are many different forms of logic, they don't all look like some type of mathematical calculation nor should it be approached as though it were a branch of maths. It can be a useful tool for a range of academic subjects, from science to humanities. However, it is a fundamental, distinctive part of all philosophy, not some separate, non-philosophical subject as some see it e.g. those who refer to themselves as logicians not philosophers, despite being in a philosophy department 🤔🤷 You rarely see it in papers or books in the History of Philosophy, nevertheless I do use it in my History of Philosophy papers and books in order to clarify my argument. But I always explain the logic symbols in plain English so anyone can understand them! 🙂💪

Celebrating World Philosophy Day!🎊🎉🎊🎉🍾🍸🍸🍸🍸🎂🍰🍫🍫🍫🍫☕🌈🤗😘🌈 Here's  the gif I posted on Facebook of Foucault🌈showing passion for philosophical discussion, with the following comment: As you can see, philosophy is a rigorous, rational, logical, analytic and passionate thought process that depends on reasoned arguments, counterarguments and counterexamples in order to test the truth within the philosophical argument. Opinions don't count as philosophy because they are inadequate ideas. Philosophy is an exhausting thinking and writing process which requires skills that you have to learn. They don't come naturally out of thin air. It is an extraordinarily difficult subject to do well!  Happy #WorldPhilosophyDay ! 🎉🍾🍸🍸🎂🍰💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

 Following on from the latter part of my previous post: Templeton funding was suggested to me for my Spinoza research by a male lecturer over breakfast at the Aristotelian Society Annual Conference 2016. So I created a profile with them in all innocence, not realising what I was doing. After all, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks received a Templeton prize in 2016 so I assumed that my Jewish interpretation of Spinoza would be in their wheelhouse. However, I never actually used my profile to apply for any funding and just as well. Because I later discovered to my horror that the founder was an US-born ultra-conservative billionaire and that the foundation is known for being the top funder of rightwing popularism in the UK, according to the Guardian newspaper in  this article  and  another . In the latter article, they call this foreign interference in British politics. Of course, Templeton exploited a loophole by living in the tax haven of the Bahamas thereby making himself also B...