A X Douglas @alexxdouglas Twitter profile

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

Academia is full of overachievers, but don’t forget about us overattempters

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

This is a level of nerdery that shouldn’t even be possible I love it

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

My Covid test is so negative it should be on academic twitter

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 months

The hardest skill to teach modern philosophy students is how to be lazy enough for a good idea to take root in the mind.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I struggle for words, but this is the best I could do right now:

Katherine Hawley (1971-2021)

Katherine Hawley, St Andrews I’ve spent the last day trying to think of ways to express my response to the death of my colleague Katherine Hawley. What I say here will be inadequate, but I fe…

axdouglas.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

A lot of philosophy books and articles have now been published, at what point do we call it and use research time to just vibe?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

7 months

1. God necessarily exists (proof at Spinoza, Ethics, 1p11d). 2. From God’s infinite nature there necessarily follows everything conceivable by an infinite intellect (1p16). 3. Electrons are conceivable by an infinite intellect. 4. Therefore electrons exist. Hope this helps.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

5 years

Greta Thunberg has a lot to say NOW, but back when climate change was reversible all we heard from her was goo goo ga ga

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

A lot of irresponsible analytic philosophers publish results before they’ve completed the process of consulting their intuitions

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

If analytic philosophy is so “uncool” then why are funk and soul artists always saying “break it down”?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Why don’t more people discuss this book? Or have I missed the discussions? It has it all: Gödel, Daoism, thoughts on Chinese communism, Quine being wrong, rationalism being true, the ontological proof being valid, the way to immortality - all the philosophy a lifetime needs.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

7 years

G.E.M. Anscombe: "once, entering a smart restaurant in Boston, she was told that ladies were not admitted in trousers. She proceeded to take them off."

Nick

@z3lIus

7 years

Name a bitch badder than Taylor Swift 😍😛😤

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Many UK universities were forced to rethink their policies when it was discovered in September 2020 that coronavirus can be transmitted from one person to another.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Today I'm delighted to announce that I've never been promoted in any job including this one.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Peer-review in the humanities makes no sense. There are no data sets to check, no replications to request, just the instinctive feelings of some randomly chosen opinionates who got into their own positions as the outcome of the same random process. It’s a joke. In my opinion.

Jonathan Ichikawa

@jichikawa

4 years

@philoso_foster Peer review creates some extremely strange results in philosophy sometimes. Amazing amounts of great work has a ton of trouble getting published, and quite a surprising amount of bad philosophy makes it through too. It's weird out there!

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

My wonderful dad, James John Douglas, died a couple days ago, though Alzheimers had taken most of him for years. Miraculously, I got to see him just before - maybe he held on for me through Covid. Here he is with my mum on their wedding day. An invincible love.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

I'm Reviewer 2, and I just accepted a manuscript, within a week of receiving it, with a list of optional suggestions. This is the New Way for Reviewer 2, please spread the word.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Honestly I got into philosophy because I thought it would be like this, and I’ve been disappointed ever since.

noam chompers

@NoamChompers

3 years

I love philosophy

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Reading David Hume, and continue to be impressed by the clarity of the prose and the honest precision of the thought. Such a relief from the undisciplined metaphysical speculations of Spinoza.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

@kuuhulluutta @christapeterso Ziporyn does try to explain his decision on this 🫤

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

1 year

My new book on beatitude in Spinoza is available to pre-order with a 20% discount in April

The Philosophy of Hope: Beatitude in Spinoza

Can philosophy be a source of hope? Today it is common to believe that the answer is no – that providing hope, if it is possible at all, belongs either to the predictive sciences or to religion. In...

www.routledge.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

5 years

No, I have a clear and distinct idea that it was capitalism that did that.

Aeon Magazine

@aeonmag

5 years

How the dualism of Descartes ruined our mental health. Last week’s most read: @psychgeist52

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

People talk about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ as opposed. It’s worth noting that the Enlightenment was mostly smug intellectuals, convinced of their superior virtue, relentlessly casting the first stone.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

@lastpositivist Once I was talking about Hegel; somebody rolled their eyes and said “can you formalise all of this?”, and I said “yes, p”.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

There's a strange pleasure in having your mind changed about something you were pretty convinced of by a really great student essay.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

If your philosophy can be described as ‘naturalism’ you will one day be tweeting evolutionary explanations of why women find aggressive men attractive. You might think that’ll never be you, but it will.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

1 month

Academics who don't respond to review requests -- no agree, no decline, just no reply until you've chased them for months. Why is a yes/no question hard? Why do they have no respect for the poor author's time? I hope they step on a Lego.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

Times like this it all feels worthwhile

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

If you went to Oxford you can write like this: "Shall we begin? If so, how should we begin? And once we have begun, should we go on? If so, how would we go on?Would we give answers or dwell longer in the realm of questions? But if we dwell in the realm of [1 / 5.3*10^358786]

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I’m going to start saying I study Qing dynasty Western philosophy/logic. The years line up perfectly with my interests. A bit weird to use a Chinese reference to characterise a period of Western philosophy, but then people say things like “medieval Japan”.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

If I could have drinks with just one philosopher? No surprises here. It’s Spinoza, of course. We wouldn’t talk. We’d just drink and grunt approvingly, and eventually arm-wrestle.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

In the review mentioned here, Warburton states that Pluckrose and Lindsay "have done their homework, and can’t fairly be accused of a superficial understanding of the thinkers they engage with". I have done extensive research into three pages of the book. Below are my findings.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I was at a conference dinner, facing a barrage of objections to some heresy I had propounded. A great scholar cut through the noise to say: “excuse me, I’d like to understand this idea, and I can’t unless you let him finish explaining.” I’ll always remember this ❤️

John Harris

@drjohnaeharris

3 years

When I was a grad student I was invited to give a paper at Yale and I was pretty nervous. My first big outing. A senior historian (who is on Twitter) was in the second row and she nodded vigorously during my talk. 6 years later, I would still follow her to the end of the earth.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I’m sorry to ask, but can people stop publishing new philosophy until we’ve finished doing the history of the existing philosophy? I’m just concerned that we’re falling behind.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

7 years

Social media is full of academics writing "If I remember correctly..." followed by something they've totally just looked up.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 months

It is very important, in my opinion, to read Spinoza.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

My new encyclopedia entry, on Spinoza's Metaphysics, in the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences has been published:

Spinoza’s Metaphysics

link.springer.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

10 months

Polly Pocketknife🌸🔪

@polypocketknife

10 months

not to be dramatic but genuinely how does anyone make peace with the fact that one day you’re just gonna not exist anymore without like being delusionally religious

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Psycho killer Qu'est que c'est φ φ φ φ, φ φ φ φ φ φ

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I like the ‘retro’ feeling of Microsoft Teams - the way it takes as long to boot up as a 1940s computer.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

As a philosophy lecturer you get to spend all day discussing the Big Questions: Why won’t the reporting website load? Why won’t the procurement database load? Why won’t the applications website load? Why won’t the seminar sign-up tool load? Why won’t your emails load?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Philosophy departments to hire jocks only for the next couple of years - we need to balance it out

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Naturalism is about rejecting “spooky” entities but maybe you should stop being spooked by everything you gutless wonders

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

This is as sophisticated as empiricism gets

Dr Jordan B Peterson

@jordanbpeterson

3 years

"Empiricism is an intellectual tradition of using experience, or trial and error, or experiment to prove or disprove, or to investigate an idea." - @stephenfry Another clip from my conversation with Stephen Fry talking about empiricism and rationalism.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Explain exactly what Marx means by ‘value’ or never tweet about him again

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Hey have you guys read Spinoza? I really like it.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

I've left @UCU and won't strike. Here's a quick thread on why.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

I've supported all the strikes so far. But @ucu calling for this strike now makes little sense to me. I don't feel that many members are signed onto the agenda of @UcuLeft . But when I ask other members about their position they generally confess ignorance of the issues. (1/)

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

5 years

The point @StephanieKelton actually made is that deficit spending *at first* credits reserve accounts and increases M1, though Treasury or the Fed can *then* sell bonds and drain the excess reserves. Krugman is being deliberately obtuse, but I post this for the honestly curious.

Paul Krugman

@paulkrugman

5 years

So one thing I learned from the past few days of discussion is that MMTers believe that budget deficits necessarily increase the money supply. That's an interesting view, where by "interesting" I mean "completely wrong" 1/

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

I don’t normally give investment advice, but the markets are looking very favourably on people who are already rich.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Empricists are so unoriginal they have to copy all their ideas from impressions.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

This thing is designed either to piss Russians off or to make them regret taking Kaliningrad

Soner Cagaptay

@SonerCagaptay

4 years

Most famous person from each European country

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I have a joke about contemporary philosophy, best illustrated by the example JOKE below. JOKE Hokey McNormalname delivers to Plain Jane Abstract-Character a humorous remark, perhaps involving word-play or defied expectations. Jane is amused, and repeats the remark to others, who

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

6 years

Is your child texting about Wittgenstein's Slab Language? brb = slab idk = slab lol = slab smh = slab stfu = slab tbh = slab

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

In Kantian economics, rational agents minimise utility

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 months

Hehe... 🫣

Fuck Peer-Reviewed Publications, No Offence

Publications–peer-reviewed publications in highly-ranked journals–are the currency of academic philosophy. This paper will address the following question: WHY????? 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 When I…

axdouglas.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

Here’s my review of Clare Carlisle’s _Spinoza’s Religion_:

Spinoza’s Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics

Spinoza is often taken to be an opponent of religion. Clare Carlisle’s book presents him, rather, as challenging standard conceptions of religion ...

ndpr.nd.edu

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Given that they have time travel, I don’t think any of our stuff is going to impress them much.

Jim Pickard 🐋

@PickardJE

3 years

a time traveller from 1921 arrives in the year 2021: which single innovation does he/she find the most mind-blowing?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

11 months

As a communist, William Morris imagined a utopian future. As a Londoner, he included in it the detail that Manchester had altogether ceased to exist.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Maybe the reason philosophers aren’t more politically engaged is that there’s a limited amount of philosophical interest in questions like: should children get to eat, even if their parents have been taxed and fined into poverty?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

10 months

Checked out the OUP translation of Pascal’s Pensées from a public library in Edinburgh and found this drawing:

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Has anyone else noticed that when you submit a manuscript on the work of a female philosopher, the reviewer comments are largely lists of male influences and interlocutors, whose work you should have extensively discussed, as directly shaping her thought? Seems sexist.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

7 months

Historians of philosophy acknowledging the relevance of religion to the development of thought:

Bristol Airport

@BristolAirport

7 months

This week, we have opened a new multi-faith area in the free waiting zone. Located just off the Silver Zone roundabout, the new area provides customers with a private space to reflect and pray whilst waiting to collect friends, family or loved ones.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

6 months

Sometimes reframing the language around feelings can help you see them in a new light. For example, instead of “career ambitions” or “life goals”, try: “my great, insatiable, soul-devouring black hole of an ego again demands live sacrifice”.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

This one literally took me forever

Your Daily Epsilon of Math

@Daily_Epsilon

3 years

Today's #dailymaths CHALLENGE PROBLEM. Problems are taken from the Mathematics 2021 calendar. Each day's problem is posted at 1am Eastern/6am London. Previous day's solution is added a few hours later. Guest mathematician posts welcome; DM if interested!

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

Philosophy is the art of happiness, so please please please do not work 60 hours a week at it; that is anti-philosophy.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

9 months

Make no mistake, the soul does the thinking. That brain stuff is what we in the business call epiphenomenal.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Jon Nassim and I wrote an article on Susan Stebbing as a public logician; it's published online now:

Susan Stebbing’s Logical Interventionism

We examine a contribution L. Susan Stebbing made to the understanding of critical thinking and its relation to formal logic. Stebbing took expertise in formal logic to authorise logical interventio...

www.tandfonline.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Analytic philosophers are always basing arguments on 'our' intuitions and what 'we' would say in such-and-such a case. I always wonder: what if I dissent from this? This is where Xunzi comes in. He proposes that if you don't conform to society's tastes, it crushes you.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

@lastpositivist Sorry but have you not noticed the important observations of Steven Pinker?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

How do philosophy academics have time to post comments on Daily Nous? I barely manage to keep up with teaching and admin, and I work up to 3 hours per day.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Thesis: I don't want no scrubs. I shall use 'scrub' to mean 'a guy that can't get no love from me', along with other typical scrub-making features (hanging out the passenger side, etc.). Given some uncontroversial assumptions, my thesis might appear true by definition, however

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

I’m not against analytic philosophy, I just think it should be in Latin and written in the seventeenth century and mostly focussed on questions of natural theology.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

2 years

I started this recently and couldn’t put it down. It’s beautiful but also philosophically fascinating, because it shows what philosophy can do. Everyone should read it. But if you’ve experienced incarceration, directly or through your loved ones, it’ll change your life.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

1 year

Hey, this was my career trajectory!

Martin Janello

@martinjanello

1 year

“An Analytic #Philosopher is someone who would have been an accountant but couldn’t stand the excitement.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

People talk about "clarity" as a virtue in philosophy, but clarity at what level? Hume has very clear paragraphs, but put them together and who knows what he's saying. Spinoza assembles a clear overall meaning from very obscure propositions. No passage from the Inner Chapters...

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

I don’t want to single anyone out, but there are between 50 and 100 accounts on here that haven’t made a joke or analytical tweet in reply to Dawkins on Kafka - if you can get these in by the end of the weekend it would be greatly appreciated

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

This is such an interesting philosophical engagement. Becker's conversion of consumption into a form of production is one of the most philosophically-loaded moves in recent economics, yet few philosophers engage with it. Foucault (and now Schliesser) are welcome exceptions.

Digressionsnimpress.

@nescio13

4 years

Today's post ep. 30 on Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics. I have finally reached the part where Foucault shows how Chicago economics feeds into social eugenics.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

1 year

The prequel to Love Actually is Love Potentially

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Right well that won't be getting a good review then

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

6 years

Teaching this today and forgot how great it is. History of philosophy could save philosophers from dogmatism, if they wanted to be saved.

The Benefit to Philosophy of the Study of Its History

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the histori...

www.tandfonline.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Consciousness Mansplained

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Me: Amartya Sen St Andrews Library:

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Come on over to my lectures - there are always plenty of empty seats.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

All I'm saying is that theories of causation have steadily increased and now we have coronavirus.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Libelling Descartes is the founding murder of contemporary philosophy. His symbolic expulsion establishes, in students’ minds, the academic consensus on materialism, empiricism, atheism, and naturalism.

Liam Bright

@lastpositivist

4 years

@FeyeraBender I’m often struck by how Descartes gets such a raw deal regarding how people characterise him compared to his actual work and achievement. I assume it’s because of the pedagogical role he plays as someone for first year undergrads to dunk on. Creates a lasting impression.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

5 years

New Post: Spinoza, Logic, and Geometry

Spinoza, Logic, and Geometry

Geometry and Deduction

link.medium.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

6 years

Blocked and reported.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Is anyone writing a book about the philosophy of sleep? Please consider calling it _Unconsciousness Explained_

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

5 years

I have a little exam paper that I send out to all the internet trolls who post ‘I guess they don’t teach LOGIC in philosophy these days’ on my blog. The completion rate has been very poor. Please try to get your scripts in before the final exam board date.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

1 year

Ordinary people learning a basic fact about something they never studied: “wow, every day’s a school day!” Academics: “EVEN I, A CERTIFIED INTELLECTUAL ELITE, DID NOT KNOW THIS; I SHUDDER TO THINK OF THE DARKNESS INTO WHICH THE REST OF THE WORLD MUST BE SUNK O TEMPORA O MORES”

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Why is everyone a B-theorist about space?

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Does Spinoza have the answers to life's big questions? Yes!! Can Steven Nadler help us to understand them? Find out tomorrow at 7pm BST (register to attend).

The Philosopher

@philosopher1923

4 years

We are very excited to be hosting a dialogue between (Pulitzer Prize finalist) Steven Nadler and (fellow Spinoza scholar/our chum) @alexxdouglas ! Topic = Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die. Date & Time = Monday 21st Sep. @ 7pm (UK time) Register:

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

6 years

Investment tips: don't buy any shares. Don't talk about them either. Or bonds. Or crypto currencies. Or property. Just never buy or talk or think about them ever. Keep your mind on the eternal sleep that awaits us all. Subscribe to my Patreon for more tips.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

This also applies to the history of Western philosophy

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

Is the mind identical to the brain? No, they are two completely different immaterial substances.

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

4 years

A Mystery in Spinoza’s Psychological Theory

In his Ethics, Spinoza often discusses how our emotions lead us to ‘strive to imagine’ various things. We strive to imagine things that…

link.medium.com

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Who was May Sinclair (1863-1946)? A great novelist and a great philosopher, now largely forgotten. @emilytwrites provides an excellent introduction to her unique brand of British Idealism:

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

3 years

Philosophy is unsustainable; history of philosophy is recycling ♻️

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A X Douglas

@alexxdouglas

5 years

When I ask people why they got into philosophy, the most common answer seems to be intellectual curiosity. This is weird to me; why wouldn't intellectual curiosity alone drive you instead to get your maths solid and pursue a natural science? What am I missing?

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