You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there… just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ‘em showing up at those jobs (George Carlin).

Any domain of science that asserts the existence of systems, and/or uses the language of  ”functionality” and “organization”, in order to explain the existence of components of those systems, is idealist in character. This would include much of biology, systems theory, cybernetics, complex systems theory, ecology, population theory and so on. It would also include the social and psychological sciences, where they rely on functional or systemic explanation, and theories of organization (Dunham, Grant & Watson, Idealism: The History of a Philosophy).

Can’t say I disagree with any of this, but it really serves to highlight the whole problem with the realism/idealism debate – With very few exceptions (most of which are more intellectually interesting than philosophically practical), most positions are neither purely realist nor purely idealist. Consequently all this arguing about whether or not someone is an idealist is a complete waste of time.*

Somewhere in his astonishing Hegel’s Ladder (a work three times as long as the book it is commenting upon), H.S. Harris describes the whole realism/idealism debate as a sterile logomachy – That sounds about right to me.

*There is one exception – Collingwood’s description of Russell as ‘our great Berkleyian’, which is possibly the most concise and damning critique of sense data that one could come up with from Russell’s point of view. Also, it makes me laugh.

Via Doc 40.

Please note, ladies, that if you follow the Left Hand Path (geddit?), you get to wear more hats.

Children as young as 11 should be expected to read 50 books a year as part of a national drive to improve literacy standards, according to Michael Gove, the Education Secretary.

He said pupils should complete the equivalent of about a novel a week and that the academic demands placed on English schoolchildren had been “too low for too long”.

You can read the rest here.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, here’s a link to all the libraries under threat of closure that children won’t be able to get their fifty books a year from:

http://libraries.fromconcentrate.net/

Still, I’m sure that Gove has thought of this and is funding school libraries to take up the slack. I mean, he must be, mustn’t he?

And another point from the Telegraph article:

“One of the biggest problems in the English state education system is that only a minority can follow an academic education and that only a minority can go to university. Quite wrong,” said Mr Gove.

So that’s why university teaching budgets have been devastated then.

Go easy on the Thixofix

Back then the tech was improving at a dizzying rate and, working in the industry, I got to see a lot of cutting edge stuff as it came out. This, combined with reading far too much cyberpunk and related material, got me seriously interested in the philosophical and social implications of new technologies. The possibilities seemed immense.

Last week I got a new Android phone – It has over 100 times the processing power of my old 286  and over 400 times the storage space. Do you know what one of the most popular things people run on this technological marvel is? An app that lets you simulate throwing a ball of paper into a waste-basket.

Wtf went wrong?