Famously, she and Richard Dawkins have had a thirty-year disagreement. Midgley argues that Dawkins goes beyond the scientific to sell “the worship of competition”; that he projects Thatcherite free-market economic beliefs into his theoris of evolutionary biology; a charge which Dawkins disputes!

In May 2009, my dad Alan McEachran, who has taught Philosophy and Sociology all of his professional life, gave a talk about the work of Mary Midgley to the Erasmus Darwin Society in Lichfield, Staffordshire. The prepared text for this talk follows:

Mary Midgley, by Alan McEachran

This is the second talk that he has given to the Erasmus Darwin Society. His discussion of John Gray is also available from this website.

Neel Burton, Plato’s Shadow – A Primer On Plato

Academic texts try to appeal to specific readerships. Though Plato’s Shadow has merit, this reviewer is left wondering who it was written for. It works best as a reference book of sorts, since it contains easily-read summaries, each of between two and twenty pages, of all Plato’s dialogues. Each précis is faithful to the original text and provides the reader who is unfamiliar with any dialogue a clear account of what is to be found there. The author also devotes the first forty pages to a useful account of the historical context of Athens and its relations with other city-states, and to a discussion of Pre-Socratic Greek thought and the place of Socrates in the dialogues which follow. A final introductory chapter also looks at scholarly views of when Plato’s works were written, in what sequence, and with what connection to each other.

A student encountering Plato on a Philosophy or a Classics course would undoubtedly benefit from having this book to reach for as a preliminary step before reading one of the dialogues for the first time. A general reader would also find this a useful reference book because of the way it treats each dialogue separately – something you don’t usually find in such a short and accessible paperback.

However, to call this “A Primer On Plato”, as the author does, is misleading. Anyone trying to understand Plato’s thought won’t find much help here. Nothing is done to point the reader to where Plato is specifically exploring metaphysical, ethical, epistemological, political, etc. themes. This book cries out for an index; both the student and the general reader are likely to want help in finding where Plato talks about The Sun Metaphor, or Forms, or Diotima. The occasional attempt is made to enhance understanding by the use of an illustration; this makes most sense in the Meno and Republic dialogues, though in the latter it is The Cave which is illustrated rather than The Divided Line, which almost every other book about Plato rightly and helpfully presents as a diagram.

This text is a welcome addition to a shelf of reference books, but it shouldn’t be seen as a general introduction to Plato’s thought.

• I do not want Megrahi to die in prison;
• I want Megrahi not to die in prison.

There ought to be a clear distinction between the intention of the speaker in the two cases: the first does not necessarily convey any intention, while the second takes a clear intentional stance.

On BBC Radio 4 this morning, a five minute interview went frustratingly round in circles because neither the Foreign Secretary nor the interviewer could satisfactorily explain this distinction.

We often use the first form of the sentence when we mean the second, and this linguistic ambiguity was siezed upon in a piece of journalistic opportunisim. Bill Rammel was asked a question about whether the UK government ‘wanted Megrahi to die in prison’. He responded that they did not. The question asked about whether an intention existed; he replied that it did not. He was not asked, nor responded to whether there was the converse intention; he was not asked “Does the UK government want Megrahi to be released from prison before he dies?”, but it is now widely reported that he confirmed exactly that.

Increasingly, it seems that journalists exploit these linguistic ambiguities in order to create a story. No wonder politicians (of every persuasion – I am ambivalent with respect to the different parties) are so careful when asked ‘clear yes and no questions’ and sometimes simply repeat a well-rehearsed phrase. When they are misrepresented so wholly as in this case, can you really blame them?

When they occur, these stories are good opportunities to highlight the ambiguity of language and the care with which language needs to be used to sixth-form philosophy students. It is perhaps the most important practical application of learning philosophy that its students can be forewarned against the pitfalls of such exploitative misrepresentation.

Listening to Stephen Fry’s ‘podgram’ on language, it appears that Mr Fry does not agree that pointing out the difference between “less” and “fewer” is worthwhile. To him, sadly, I am a pedant, attempting to impose a sort of lingustic-conservativism on the world.

Frustratingly, I agree with the majority of what Mr Fry discusses in his podgram; which is that language is a rapidly changing thing, and that what is aberrant in one generation will become established in another. Obliquely he suggests that language is ‘evolving’ though I am scared off that word having read John Gray’s Straw Dogs, and I think rightly so. The problem with calling something ‘evolving’ is that it somehow implies progress, and I do not think that this is the case for language all of the time.

My reason for believing that “minus” and “negative” should be more clearly demarcated in language is really for its utility in mathematics classrooms, and it is there where I believe the demarcation should be expressed and preserved. There are two separate concepts here: one an operation over two numbers to express (as a directed number) the difference between the two numbers; the other to express the direction of a number, ie whether postive or negative. They are difficult ideas, to be teased out. We tease them out poorly, and need to improve. They would be teased out more successfully if their use wasn’t so interchangeable.

If I am right, then the interchangability of “minus 5″ and “negative 5″ should not be considered part of the great evolution of language. Wittgenstein is right to an extent, when he claimed that the limits of my language are the limits of my world, and if I lose the ability to use two words for two separate concepts, I lose the ability to differentiate the concepts.

I do not wish to be a pedant, but I think that linguistic conservativism is the bathwater to a good many conceptual babies whose protection is worthwhile.

John Gray is currently Professor of European Thought at the LSE, and has been an outspoken and controversial academic throughout his career. He has written about a great breadth of topics, but the thread of thought that ties his work together is his rejection of our contemporary belief in the progress of mankind.

The prepared text of my dad’s overview of Gray’s views is an excellent introductory text, with a good bibliography pointing towards further reading. I would strongly recommend this text to students as an overview of his thought.

John Gray, An Appreciation

The blog conversation starts with the big environmental issue of global warming and this friendly video where the protagonist explains the application of minimax to the global warming debate. He argues, in a nutshell, that given uncertain future consequences of humanity’s impact on the planet, and given also a choice of decisions about how to act against those potential consequences, it makes the most logical sense to exclude the catastrophic choice of doing nothing to prevent global warming by acting as if global warming were a certainty.

I like how the minimax principle here facilitates students’ understanding by offering a powerful structure for considering different possibilities. Because minimax is so clearly structured and relatively easy to grasp, it is the sort of idea, like the Venn Diagram, which ought to be a constantly recurring feature of students’ education. In Mathematics, it bears close resemblance to the Carroll diagram, which is a similarly undervalued structure for understanding issues.

The German Ideology

This might be a bit beyond sixth-form students – it may be a bit beyond you or I, for that matter – but what reason for teaching students how to think critically can there be that is more important than the hope that they can think critically about these issues?

It is compelling to listen someone with such a depth of understanding of our global state of affairs to give an optimistic view of the future.

Listen to the Reith Lectures by clicking here

This would be an extremely useful starting point for discussion about morality with sixth form students. Some may need to be reminded that this is scientific research of course, and so flippant and stupid answers would be inappropriate. The quiz is a series of pairs of moral dilemmas, and choices of action which you are invited to distinguish between. Ideally, I would ask all the students to do the quiz in preparation for a lesson, then would use a data projector or IWB and repeat the test as a classroom exercise, requiring students to come to a consensus about each dilemma.

Setup

I ask one game student to leave the room so that he cannot hear the class instructions. He will be invited back to a very strange environment, and that he shouldn’t be embarrassed or worried about the activity, but just do what he thought we wanted him to do.

Once he leaves the room, I tell the students that they may not talk under any circumstances from now on. They should not discuss with one another the activity until I say they can. I will bring the volunteer back into the room, and they are to make him move to the front of the room standing exactly where I am now (move to some unlikely position first). They can do this only by clapping. They can use body language if they must, but can’t use pointing, but or try to mouth words to the subject. I then ask one student to go and get the subject and bring him into the room.

The likely result is disaster! Allow the disaster to run for a while and then stop the class. Ask the subject to leave. Ask a couple of students to to review what happened, allow students one minute to discuss with one another strategies. In one minute, stop the discussion, and get the subject back in.

Repeat this a few times. It may result in total disaster, but more likely they will eventually settle on a hot/cold strategy whereby the clapping intensifies as the subject moves to the room.

A New Subject

If possible, then ask another teacher to come to the room – this may need to be setup ahead of time. The class should by this point be quite coordinated in their efforts, and hopefully the teacher will move to the correct position.

Discussion

I would first ask the original subject to be hot-seated and get the students to ask him what he was thinking, what he was trying to do. In the first instance, nobody had any common form of communication. Likely, the newcomer had no idea of what to do, and with no clarity of message. Once a strategy became adopted by the community, communication of that strategy could be expressed to the newcomer, who could then act as required.

There is a discourse between the class and the newcomer, but it requires the group to understand completely what they’re trying to do. Hopefully if it’s setup correctly the class strategy should never have been discussed by the whole class. The strategy will have diffused through the group and adopted by it without any authority telling them what to do. This is how language worked in the past. How does it differ now? How is it the same?

We hooked into pre-existing cultural understanding; we played a game of hot/cold with the subjects which we are all familiar with. When trying to communicate we use symbols and ideas that are culturally recognisable because it facilitates the communication. What would have happened if someone who had never played hot/cold had been the subject? What about an alien? Would the activity have worked as well or not?

Further Work

I have asked students to evaluate this activity, reflecting upon the nature of communication and language, with surprising results. It motivates thought, as well as being a highly entertaining lesson!