Big Ideas
...doing philosophy, in a pub in London, as and when we feel so inclined
-
Next Event: Is Europe A Place Or An Idea?
Our next event will be on Tuesday 28 October 2008 at 7.30pm, upstairs at The Wheatsheaf. Most Europeans now share a red passport and a taste for city breaks in each others countries, but what else? Is to call something European simply an indication of location, or something deeper that draws on i …
-
Is Being Rational The Same As Being Logical?
Heres my write-up of last nights event please add comments where Ive missed things, got things wrong etc. In particular, this is my recollection of what Wilfrid said and isnt based on his notes, so apologies if Ive mangled anything. (more)
-
Policy Twizzler
Recent Big Ideas events have come back again and again to the (lack of) possibility for individuals to influence the society in which they live. Jamie Olivers School Dinners campaign was a bizarre case in point: was he a citizen who saw something wrong and successfully put it right, or was he an ove …
-
Next Event: Is Being Rational The Same As Being Logical?
Our next event will be on 30 September 2008. Most of us think its a good thing to be rational, but few of us could really say what that means. If pushed, we might say it involves being able to argue coherently for our ideas, not believing contradictory things or things for which we have no eviden …
-
Last Night’s Event on Democracy
Last night Alasdair Mackenzie took us through some different models of democracy that supposedly connect the people with political decision-making more directly than the hoary old representative model that led Edmund Burke to warn his electors: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, bu …
-
Next Big Ideas Event: How Much Democracy Is Too Much?
Our next Big Ideas event will be on Tuesday 26 August; as usual well be upstairs at The Wheatsheaf. Doors open at about 7:30 and well aim to kick off at 8. We tend to assume that democracy is a Good Thing, like love, learning or lucre. In that case, the question might seem bizarre: if course we s …
-
Podcast Out Now: Are Political Parties Dead?
Four Big Ideas regulars attempted to answer this at the St Brides Tavern last week and you can listen in by downloading the latest podcast.
-
Newtonian Space-Time and Giddens’s Modernity
In the last Big Ideas we talked about Anthony Giddenss view of modernity as involving, in part, an abstraction of space and time from our immediate environment. The railway timetable, for example, is able to refer to places and times distant from where we are, and perhaps places and times at which n …
-
What Does It Mean To Be Modern — Notes from the Event
The following is a rough write-up of my notes from the intro to our August 2008 event. We had a really interesting and wide-ranging discussion, which I havent attempted to summarise, so please feel free to add what you remember from the night in the comments. (more)
-
Quantifying Education
A recent post at Good Math, Bad Math concerns a proposal for evaluating university courses that tries to measure outcomes. One relatively easy outcome to measure is salary; another is the qualification earned. But, like Mark CC, I started to feel surprisingly skeptical about the whole idea. (more)
-
Next Event: What Does It Mean To Be Modern?
The next Big Ideas event will be on Tuesday 29 July 2008. As usual, well meet in the upstairs room of the Wheatsheaf pub in central London (nearest tube Tottenham Court Road). Doors open at 7:30 and well aim to kick off at 8. Does modern just mean contemporary or recent, or is it more like a stat …
-
Announcing our 2008 Schedule
Yes, we said we’d get organised this year, and so we have. The following is a preview of the Big Ideas schedule for the rest of 2008. Were very excited about this we have some really excellent speakers lined up and the whole programme will, we think, build into something really substantial. …
-
Podcast: London Nationalism
On 9 June 2008, four Big Ideas regulars Danny Birchall, Rich Cochrane, Nathan Charlton and Robert Kingham gathered at the Crosse Keys pub in the ancient City of London to discuss London Nationalism. Does it make sense to talk about a city expressing a nationalism over and above its supposed ident …
-
Group Theory 5: Subgroups, Conjugacy and Normality
One of the things mathematicians soon learn to look for when they meet a new mathematical object is its subobjects, which are parts of the object that have the same type of structure as the whole thing. In our case those are subgroups, which are subsets of a group that are, themselves, groups. (mor …
-
The 70th Philosophers’ Carnival
Welcome to the 70th edition of the Philosophers Carnival, a fortnightly round-up of quality philosophical posts from the blogs of the world. It seems to have been a busy two weeks, so hopefully theres something here for everyone; apologies to those who didnt make it in. (more)
-
When is something English?
What criteria apply to an institution or individual to make them English? Does it involve a love of tea and fair play, an general feeling that Scots grievances are largely baseless or just English parentage? Is it ever possible to nail this stuff down? (more)
-
Are Computer Games Art?
Columnist Charlie Brooker recently stirred up this familiar hornets nest by writing a piece about censorship of computer games, inspiring a slew of comments comparing the medium to films and novels. Are modern computer games a valid art form, and should Grand Theft Auto IV be treated just like a pai …
-
Group Theory 4: Symmetries
In the previous instalment we saw some very mathematical examples of groups, but group theory also has an important geometrical aspect. Well take a look at that before we get into the more abstract material of group theory proper. (more)
-
Big Ideas Event: What Can We Do About Vagueness?
If we study logic, we begin by learning that truth is a black or white matter. In particular we know that either a given claim is true or it isn it cant be both and it cant be neither. Logic is often called the laws of thought and we hope that it captures the essential nature of rational deduction …
-
Supertasks, Paradox and Impossibility
I was reminded of supertasks the other day and thought theyre interesting enough for a post, particularly as an argument that theyre impossible uses a similar tactic to some arguments against time travel and other speculative activities. (more)
Big Ideas
