The global pandemic and resultant lockdowns are challenging our traditional assumptions about the times and spaces of labour and leisure - but how were these norms established and why have they had such an enduring appeal? In this paper, we take a long view to investigate the philosophical and historical roots of the binary distinction between work and play and outline ways in which these long-held ideas are being increasingly challenged. As lockdown measures are relaxed, we urgently need to develop (...) more nuanced conceptions of the spatial and temporal conditions of work and leisure to ensure a more equitable and compassionate post-lockdown world. (shrink)

The increasing adoption of automated technologies in the world of work results in starkly opposing predictions. Some scholars argue that these technologies could lead to the utopian emancipation of society from economic necessity and meaningless work (Srnicek and Williams 2015, Bastani 2019, Danaher 2019 ); other scholars warn of the unintended technological unemployment and dystopian social upheaval that these technologies threaten (Ford 2015 ; Jones 2021 ; Mueller 2021 ). In either instance, the increasing presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and (...) automation in the world of work is forcing us to consider conceptions of work beyond economic necessity: but the drive to remove necessity as a whole from the human condition can lead to unintendedly bleak and inhuman futures, where meaningful work might be made redundant by the very technologies intended to provide it. In response, this paper will critique conceptions of work as paid employment, while also highlighting the limits of adopting wholly technological means to remove economic necessity. I will offer an alternate understanding of work beyond paid employment, as two distinct modes of activity: _labour_ and _work_. In doing so, I will recontextualise necessity in work beyond economics, and provide a foundation for pursuing meaningful work, both now and into the future. (shrink)

What do words have to do with the world? Do our concepts make the world the way it is for us? If concepts do make the world what it is for us, is this making complete, without residue of a natural world, and how does this making occur? Is there a real world to which word and concepts refer that anchors their meaning? What is the role of the imagination in making words have meaning? Is understanding embodied, conceptual, or both? (...) A Modest Realism explores these questions through its examination of the foundations of articulatable experience. It joins language and experience in a non-essentialist realism, while avoiding the non sequiturs and practical impossibilities of most twentieth century postmodern philosophers. (shrink)

This essay suggests loosening pedagogical boundaries in order to prepare children for useful philosophical reflection, particularly ontological boundaries. The argument for this is that the analytic-contmental distinction is muddier than most realize. I explain analytical developments in logic from 1884 to 1931 in a way designed to show there should be no real distinction between analytic and Contmental philosophy. I suggest this explanation provides sufficient support for dismissing ontological boundaries in certain philosophical contexts as well as in early philosophical education.