Tag: university

The Emotions

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The emotions eh, who’d have them. Well most people actually. The suffering and torment of cognitive and physiological reactions that make no sense to us what so ever. More learned people than I am believe similar to me and equally more learned people think differently to me. When something makes little sense trying to form your own argument while being aware of such varied and different ideas simply makes the head spin further. Yet this is philosophy, finding a (temporary) point when you think you get it and being able to bask in your own glorious comprehension gives the self doubt it’s own value and makes it all worth it. And doubt I did, and momentarily bask a little too but only a little of course.

The module is now complete and while there was a lack of posts in here on my progress, or as a means to achieve progress, it feels right before moving on to the next module to cover a little of what I think I learnt. I won’t necessarily give an overview of the Philosophy of Emotions as that is too much of a task and there is not enough space or I suspect appetite for it, mine mainly, but will go over the question I answered for the assignment.

‘Being horrified by the events of the Rwandan genocide or Jewish holocaust justifies you in believing that those events were horrendous atrocities.’ Discuss.

Seems pretty straightforward I hear you say but what if you were to reframe the question using kittens instead as the object. It doesn’t seem quite so justified then, they’re only kittens and kittens are cute, genocide is quite clearly not. Ultimately the question is one of whether our emotions can justify our beliefs. For better or worse I argued not. They may influence our beliefs and help us to understand our beliefs, or help us understand whether our beliefs need deeper contemplation, but they’re on the whole too unreliable to justify what we believe about something. We form our beliefs, I argued, through a continually evolving conscious and unconscious process of reflection. Arguably this would be a form of conditioning, but it also comes down to experience and knowledge amongst other things. As our emotional intelligence and maturity increases, if it does, then we can trust our emotions more. Paradoxically, and this is a new thought, the more they were to increase surely the less likely we would be to trust our emotions as we became more aware of their unreliability and the importance of reasoned reflection. Our ability to use reason is important, and while our reasoning may be flawed for whatever reason it is still integral for the formation of our beliefs. Ultimately I believe kittens to be adorable and genocide horrendous because having learnt about them, what they are as conceptual objects, as well as the conceptual attributes of adorability and horrific, my reasoning relates each object with their corresponding attributing value.

There’s likely more but seeing as I’m not emotionally strong enough to torture myself by reading though my rushed and muddled assignment, whatever other points I made have seemingly drifted off into the ether. Having taken an eternity to get my head around the topic, there wasn’t a great deal of time to complete the essay and while I haven’t got the mark back yet, I’m not one for thinking and telling everyone I’ve done poorly while getting a good result. The most frustrating thing, although it’s also a real positive, is that I know I can do better and don’t believe I did myself justice. We use this and make sure we do better the next time but at the very least appreciate the fact it wasn’t as an unconquerable field of philosophic thought as it felt. In a perverse kind of way, I think I actually kind of enjoyed it in the end. Or at the very least had some kind of an emotional reaction that helped me form such a belief, or perhaps I will after a little more reflection.

Educating Irony

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Although the exact wording now alludes me, and with my lack of desire to look back over previous posts, I shall paraphrase myself. “The Scottish government made a total tits up of the exam results, surely the Tory government will see their mistake and avoid doing the same thing”. There was more, I mentioned the imbalance between affects on those attending state schools and those attending private schools, and how this was the perfect opportunity for the Tories to twist an easily insertable knife into the SNP. Well it looks like they couldn’t find the knife, or perhaps they didn’t quite understand what went wrong with the SNP. Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, has exposed another Member of Parliament for not having a clue what they’re doing and having absolutely no understanding of their area of ‘expertise’. He only went and lowered loads of English students grades, the very thing the SNP went and did a week early with dramatic failure. Not only that but it appears he hasn’t exactly lowered many grades of students going to private schools only the poor kids who have less opportunity for recourse.

Admittedly Gavin Williamson wouldn’t have made this decision. This is a political one and he simply does what he is told to do by someone higher up than him. He is the face of this department though so it’ll be his head on the chopping block. The day before the results came out the government released news of some triple lock that would secure kids from having anything lower than their mock exam results. Unfortunately the next day it appeared the lock was non-existent and thousand of kids have now had their futures inexplicably altered. But it is explicable lets be honest. For political purposes they couldn’t be seen to be having much higher grades than normal across the board, so they devised a formula and lowered some. In the process they undermined the teachers and called into question their professionalism and abilities. What is the point of taking months to devise a system if at the last minute you change it because it doesn’t suit your narrative.

There are many things we could discuss in this, there are most likely details I don’t know and have overlooked, but ultimately these things are simply affirming details. Despite the Scottish warning signs these idiots have shown themselves up once more for being utterly inept at doing their job. Or maybe they did there job perfectly, perhaps it was no accident that there was a clear bias in favour of privately educated kids. He’s hardly going to downgrade his mates kids results now is he. But as he said, he doesn’t want to “overpromote” anyone beyond their abilities. Clearly the irony was lost on some.

The Simple Joys Of A Spreadsheet

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I’ve just spent the last two hours making a spreadsheet of pizzas we’re selling. Not the most exciting two hours of my life but there was certainly something satisfying about it. In truth I’m not entirely sure what was satisfying about it but I feel satisfied so it must be something. Perhaps it was the sense of accomplishment at completing a task, thats usually what gives me that feeling. It is is hard to deny though, and perhaps even harder to admit, that there was something pleasurable about looking at all those numbers on the page in order and lined up. The organised spreadsheet took on some kind of mystique before my eyes. The days of searching of creativity and havoc are seemingly behind me as I revel in the joys of ordered filing systems. What kind of monster have I become.

My Dads an accountant. I’m not, and I have no intention of ever being so. This isn’t the beginning of a heartwarming story which ends with him adding ‘& Son’ to the business. I have a GCSE in maths, just, and while I can count and do my times tables most other things seem to be beyond me. I was trying to learn computer coding recently and I realised with horror that I might need some basic maths skills. That certainly put a dent in my aspirations. I even found myself looking online for some maths courses I could do but lets be honest I’ve probably done enough courses in my life, it might just be time for a good book, a pad and a pen. The old fashioned way.

This daily writing thing can be a challenge sometimes. I wanted to share my pleasure in a spreadsheet victory but clearly it’s not worth four hundred plus words. Beyond dissecting the whole process, which I seem to be doing on writing this piece, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal more to talk about on it. Perhaps this is some kind of writing lesson; either learn how to stretch a piece out like I have done with every university essay I’ve ever written, become a better writer and therefore easily write some funny piece taking the piss out of myself and spreadsheets or just don’t choose to write about bloody spreadsheets in the first place. There is something to be said for the last two. Well it’s all part of the learning experience after all. I’m currently living beside the sea so maybe tomorrow I can write a detailed piece on how to dry sand. That’s probably on par. And that’s now over four hundred words. My essay writing skills coming to the fore once more.