All entries for Sunday 10 October 2004

October 10, 2004

Philosophy must be constantly renewed

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

And the answer to the original question is: even if all possible 'philosophical' questions had already been posed and answered comprehensively, there would still be major ongoing tasks. The first of these would be interprative, maintaining that philosophical discourse as meaningful in new situations and cultures as they arise. The second task would be pedagogical, in teaching philosophical skills as the best means for encouraging understanding of the arguments, but also to ensure that they can be reconstructed 'without loss' through time. Oh how Platonic!

But of course it is not the case that all possible 'philosophical' questions have already been posed and answered. There are no pure Platonic forms constituting the philosophical questions and answers. There are of course arguments that punctuate the 'history of philosophy', but only as discourses that are creatively reconstituted each time, subject themselves to doubt in relation to their 'original representation' (and why do we need that to rely upon?). It is possibly true that arguments relating to more mechanistic and restricted areas 'formal logic' are more easy to reconstitute through time, as the formal mechanisms over which they operate are themselves easy to reproduce. In this aspect of the discipline philosophy really is closer to science, capable of distinct progress as our abilities to master a fromal domain improves. Or perhaps we should say that logic is more like engineering, in that we are incrementally developing the formal domain to give us more control. At which point philosophy becomes computing. But once you start to consider more compex and less mechanistic subjects, things get a lot less certain and a lot less progressive. And finally you have two options, limit the scope of philosophy, or abandon the idea that it is like a science or like engineering.

Philosophy then, as a means for dealing with complex fundamental issues, is something that must be constantly renewed.


Robert O'Toole : 10 Oct 2004 09:45 |  Tags:    |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem

What are blogs for? Much more than ranting.

Writing about an entry you don't have permission to view

The response to Warwick Blogs from people who have already been blogging for a while (using other systems) highlights the fact that we are seeing a major evolution in the purpose and scope of blogging. As a response to a debate concerning this, I wrote that…

We are also seeing people using blogs in quite a different way to the traditional 'peronal soapbox' blogging. We are actively encouraging this evolution. In many cases, these new kinds of blogs don't really need comments, although they may still welcome comments. For example, I might use my blog to record a meeting in a group project. This is useful in many ways, for the group itself, and to let a wider range of people know what is going on.
Expecting every entry to demand a response or an argument is a mistake. That must be a bit of a surprise to people who have been blogging for a while. Some of the responses to Warwick Blogs that we've seen from traditional bloggers have reflected that surprise. We are, however, keen to get this message across, as the traditional approach to blogging may discourage many people from using what is essentially a general-purpose writing tool for which they need to find their own uses.

The extensive marketing campaign that we have used for the Warwick Blogs system has been motivated by the need to engage a much wider range of people in using blogs. It has focussed upon the many different ways in which the system can be used, for personal, private, social and academic purposes. From the start we recognised that there is a difficult balance to strike between building a blogging community, and getting the individuals in that community to use the software for a diverse range of purposes, 'soap-boxing' (or ranting as some people call it) being perhaps the least important of those purposes. From the evidence that we've seen so far, I think we are being successful in achieving this aim.


Robert O'Toole : 10 Oct 2004 08:06 |  Tags:   |  Comments (6) |  Report a problem