From Paul Redding

Philosophy is not a 'ridiculous' pursuit. It is worth funding

My work was targetted by a Coalition MP, who described our research as 'ridiculous' – but philosophy is work, and the discipline is crucial to helping us understand our world

 

 

 

I remember a cartoon from the 1960s: a man in an office is leaning back in his chair, feet crossed on the desk, staring at the ceiling. The sign on the half-open door reads “philosophy department”. A passing colleague asks: “Dan, don’t you ever stop working?” A nice joke, having the right combination of absurdity and half-truth. Philosophy is an activity that can look like inactivity. But let’s not get carried away. Philosophising is, like all intellectual work, work.

Perhaps Jamie Briggs MP had something like this picture in mind when he recently ridiculed a project – which I'll describe shortly – for which a colleague and I had received a research grant. Given the ominous signs this sends regarding what may be in store for philosophy, humanities and areas of “pure” research, one should understand the nature of the activities that may be at risk.

As a first, crude attempt, I’ll describe philosophical work as work with and on "concepts". Philosophers are concerned with concepts in the same rigorous sort of way that, say, a pathologist is concerned with diseases, or a mathematician with numbers. This may look like philosophers apply their energies to other-worldly things (“staring at the ceiling”, “head in the clouds”) or to the contents of their own imaginations, but this is based on a misleading account of concepts.

Concepts are not the contents of so-called thought-bubbles. They are the hinges or links of reasoning processes. They describe those aspects of thought that enables it to make the right connections: connections with the rest of the world; with other thoughts; and with actions. I use the word "right" here to indicate the possibility of getting these connections wrong.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/17/defence-philosophy-abbott

 

Gus: and I will add that Tony Abbott is an idiot...

 

 

The paper shows Abbott had to take eight exams for his finals – two in philosophy and six in politics. Abbott already had an economics degree from Sydney University so was exempt from that part of the course.

His exam papers have been graded by Oxford’s time-honoured system based on the Greek alphabet. To get a first, you need some alphas (maybe two or more). Abbott hasn’t any. In fact the mark on his first paper, general philosophy from Descartes to present day, starts with the dreaded gamma – in other words, a third.

It will come as a surprise to few observers of the Australian political scene that Abbott’s strong suit was not philosophy. He gets a very low second for his moral and political philosophy exam, but good 2:1s for his political institutions, theory of politics and politics of developing countries papers.

He’s back in the danger zone with his paper on communist government in the USSR and eastern Europe and gets a high 2:2 for foundations of modern social and political thought. Overall, it does seem like a disappointing mark for a Rhodes scholar, who are meant to be the crème de la crème. Not that it held Abbott back

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/25/tony-abbott-just-about-makes-grade-as-rhodes-scholar

 

No surprise to me: Tony is not even a philosopher boot-lace... HE IS A THUG... TONY ABBOTT IS AN IDIOT... read article above... I am prepared to believe that Typhoon Tony is hell-bent in taking his revenge on philosophy...

 

The transcript, released by The Queen's College, Oxford, shows Mr Abbott did most poorly in the subject "General philosophy from Descartes to present day", for which he received the mark CCB.

In "Theory of politics", a subject clearly closer to his later interests, the enthusiastic pugilist and arch monarchist registered a B++.

In "Moral and political philosophy", Mr Abbott scored a BBC.

The future prime minister completed the course and was placed in the "second class" of the "Final Honour School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE)".

Mr Abbott's contemporary, the Conservative British Prime Minister, David Cameron, emerged with a first-class degree. But former US president Bill Clinton, one of the most intellectually gifted leaders the modern world has seen, who also received a Rhodes scholarship, did not complete the course.

Mr Abbott of course was busy doing other things as well while at Oxford, not least, obtaining a boxing "blue" for his efforts in the ring.

Perhaps those skills were also useful for the robust challenges that lay ahead.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-oxford-transcript-released-20131125-2y6a1.html#ixzz2lieybJvW

Gus: one could be sarcastic about Abbott's "philosophy" marks but I humbly cannot be... I flunked the subject, as at the time is was mostly "a don't ask questions doctrine" where the mother-land was full of heroic pseudo-philosophers with no interest in the natural side of things — except we strayed across to Rousseau to show how one can go poor and savage by not cutting down the trees...
Human thoughts were studied from a strong whitey viewpoint. Conquest and colonial empires were at the forefront. We did indulge in the Greek and Roman dudes, but only as what I used to call unreachable jam jars on shelves... The rest was devoted to spitting hairs about the obvious and glorify the unglorifiable.  Not only I flunked, I got detention for being deliberately rebellious and annoying... 
With Abbott, it's another sad story, really... From the evidence of his present behaviour (and that of the past few political years, mind you), the bloke was not really clever enough for the subjects and I would suggest that these subjects had been deliberately lowered in degrees of difficulty in order for him to get some points on the board... 
Of course by then, the little shit would have long before lost his ethical compass, in favour of religious morality and persistent sinning — erased by regular contrite confession. Thus the turd would have not understood one single word from Karl Marx or progressive social structure and he deliberately chose to position himself in the Lords' camp against the serfs... Most of us at that level of education would have fought the ruling bastards. Thus this Abbott superiority antiquated view of humanity still runs deep in many boys clubs: The catholic church, most religions, 99 per cent of business models and the royalty (despite the "queen"). He is in good company. 
Santamaria became his single guiding light in furiously narrowing his views of the world — which translate today as refusing to understand climate change, flunking feminism 101, being anti-marriage equality and of course being a fiercely idiotic royalist — as well as being super-turdish about proper education.... His offsider, Pyne, though not an Oxford graduate, also fits the bill of bloody-mindedness and tantrumic silly position... 
I believe the old Oxford University professors would be appalled by Tony's behaviour now, unless they, themselves, were narrow-minded pricks — which I don't believe.
The trick for people like Tony here is to be masterly deceitful, appearing to be philosophical about morality and politics while de-ambulating like a drunken sailor. In reality in that Abbott reactionary prejudiced bigoted camp, one is only carrying the card of exploitation of the servile for the progress of the ruling class exclusively. There are of course plenty of dancing tricks, lying postions and selected sneaky wordage that can convince enough people of the value in this crap... 

From Anne Summers

 

 

It's rare, maybe unheard of, for an elected political leader to set out to put his country into even worse shape than he found it.

If such a reversal occurs, it's usually the result of war, or recession or incompetence or exceptionally bad luck, or a combination of external circumstances.

Tony Abbott might not think this is what he is doing. It might not be what he intends to do, but he needs to be aware of the likely consequences of the course he has embarked upon. Because there is no doubt he is going to leave Australia in worse shape than he found it and this is going to be especially tough on the next generation. Babies born this week will, on average, live to around 2101 we learnt from reports a few days ago. But what will their lives be like?

Just looking at two of the Abbott government's policies – education and climate change – we can confidently predict the next generation of Australians will be denied the continuous betterment to their lives that their parents and grandparents have taken for granted.

Abbott's brazen backflip on the Gonski schools funding agreements and Christopher Pyne's extraordinary flirtation, later abandoned, with a return to John Howard's class-based socio-economic status (SES) system means today's generation will serve life sentences in whatever socio-economic group they happened to be born into.

And Abbott's bizarre notion that planting (even lots of) trees and paying polluters to be a little bit less dirty will arrest, let alone begin to reverse, the trajectory towards catastrophic climate change on which this planet is hurtling, borders on criminal negligence.

I will not go into other policies with likely adverse consequences, such as piling massive new spending (much of it on maintaining benefits for the already over-privileged) onto the government's declared "budget emergency", or the firing of most of the nation's government scientists, or the picking of a fight with China right on top of not picking up the phone to the President of Indonesia.

These and many other of the early actions of the Abbott government are cause enough for worry, but education and climate change policies are the really scary ones because they each have irreversible lifetime consequences.

The essential Gonski recommendation was to establish a national resource standard for all students, against which disadvantage caused by postcode, immigrant status, lack of English language or any of the other well-documented causes would be balanced out.

The author of this plan was not some screaming leftie from the Teachers Federation but David Gonski, investment banker, eastern suburbs denizen, and chairman of the elite private school Sydney Grammar at the time he was invited by then education minister Julia Gillard to head a review of schools funding. Gonski made it a condition that in addition to the education experts on the panel, Kathryn Greiner – former head of Loreto Convent and former wife of former Liberal state premier Nick Greiner – join him.

Gonski said he was shocked to discover "a growing tail between those who suffer disadvantage and those who don't". Although it was not explicit, what he was describing was the outcome of John Howard's SES funding system.

He was determined, he said in a speech shortly after delivering his report to (by then) prime minister Gillard, to deliver "a funding system that ensured that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions".

Abbott cannot pretend to be unaware of what he is doing. The unfair outcomes of the system he proposes to return to are documented in Gonski's report. The Better Schools Plan which Gillard, Peter Garrett and Bill Shorten negotiated with the states was to implement, however imperfectly, the basic Gonski proposition: that we need to find ways to deliver opportunity to all people, not just those who are already advantaged.

If Abbott turns his back on this proposition he is condemning a large, and growing, number of the generation born during his term in office to permanent economic stagnation.

The Abbott generation will be in its late 20s when the climate of Perth changes irrevocably. Perth will be the first Australian city to be affected, according to scientists at the University of Hawaii, who last month produced their findings on what they call "climate departures" for major cities around the world.The study found that in 2020, the climate of Papua New Guinea will permanently enter a state "outside the bounds of historical variability and short-term extremes".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/his-country-our-grim-future-20131129-2yh5p.html#ixzz2m4rJdF7Y

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Anne, make sure the women of the country reject Tony Abbott sooner than later... We might need a revolution... Two million women in the street protesting at Pyne's porkies (porkie-Pyne) and at Abbott's idiotic extremist religious views hidden under a coat of lies. This should be followed by two million women, men and children in the streets... until Tony Abbott is kicked out of his own party... This is the only way. REVOLUTION. PEACEFUL REVOLUTION...