Pigotts is a historic and wonderfully rural location in the Bucks
countryside near High Wycombe, a place to escape all urban distractions
and enjoy philosophy. The format is not unlike Members' Days held in
Rewley House, but cosier and more bucolic! The day always includes a
slap-up lunch provided by members – or their wives! Pretty good
value for 2016's all-in price of £15. Details of past AwayDays can be
found in the Archives section of the website. Notices of forthcoming
meetings will appear here.
On Sunday 10th July 2016 we held our fifth AwayDay. 23 of us gathered
at Pigotts, including the five Philsoc members who gave excellent talks
on the subject of Value. The programme and details of the speakers,
appear below, with transcripts of their talks or notes linked from
titles of their talks.
Marianne Talbot is Director of Studies in Philosophy at OUDCE.
In 1996 she was invited by the Secretary of State for Education to chair
the National Forum of Values in Education and The Community, a committee
of 150 people whose task it was to decide whether there are common
values that every school should teach. In this role Marianne was in
charge of the Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development of every
pupil in the English Education system, and served on several
Governmental Advisory Groups (including that introducing Citizenship
into the curriculum). Values: what they are and why they are important?
Marianne discusses the work she did chairing the National Forum of
Values in Education and The Community. 'Our task was to identify
whether there were values common to everyone to underpin Curriculum
2000. The work was triggered by a conference of teachers at which
participants argued they couldn't teach values, because whose values
should they teach? It was fascinating (and gruelling) work.
Identifying that we have common values was easy, not so easy to
identify them, and even harder to explicate them. Agreeing on values,
after all, is consistent with disagreeing on their interpretation,
application, source and ordering.
Jonathan Harlow has been a soldier, a civil servant, a
manager, and a secondary school and university teacher (History and
Economics). Now retired, he is mainly engaged in local history, but
very interested in the philosophy of mind and in ethics. 'Nothing has value', E M Forster
Jonathan argues that value is not an intrinsic or objective property
of things or of principles. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the
beholder. And even for a given beholder there is no useful standard
or measure of value. It is ordinal, not cardinal. It reveals itself
only in specific choice.
Bob Stone is a classics teacher, who specialised in Greek philosophy
at university and developed a taste for the whole range of philosophical
thinking. Since retiring from full-time teaching seven years ago, he
has attacked the subject with a vengeance, doing nearly twenty OUDCE
online, weekly or summer-school courses, not to mention countless Rewley
House weekends. His hobbies are arguing about philosophy, writing
talks and Review articles, and editing other people's. Value as a Category: what Kant might have said
Bob suggests that when we look at the world as a thing to be observed,
we see it in terms of certain a priori concepts, such as substance and
causation, and as subject to factual judgments that are true or false.
There is no morality, no value. When we look at the world as a place
to be in, and to act in, we see it in terms of different, practical
concepts, which include that of value. He argues, first, that, as
people in the world, we have no choice but to endow it with value, and
second, that the idea of a value-free objective, scientific view of the
world may be incoherent.
Alan Bailey read philosophy at Oxford from 1951 to 1956, then spent
35 years in the civil service (mainly Treasury and Transport) before
catching up with philosophy at OUDCE and enjoying 20 years of Philsoc
discussions. The public interest
Alan says political value-judgements are an instance (test) of general
theory of value-judgements: 'deontic force' (Searle), promoting actions
not conveying information (e.g. about personal preferences) – but
unlike commands etc., need valid supporting arguments
('universalisable'). So the aim is to explore what are accepted as
valid supporting arguments for judgements of the form 'X is in the
public interest'. A (familiar) list will be offered under five broad
headings (fairness, consequentialism, deontology, moral intuition,
libertarianism). They are incommensurable, requiring empirical support
and uncertain predictions. But they exclude partial interests, and are
based on some broad appeal to what 'society' wants and needs.
Nadja Plein is a painter. Her interest in philosophy originated from
the inclusion of philosophy of art and aesthetics in her doctorate in
music composition, an interest that grew when she later switched to
painting and began to explore philosophical and physical correspondences
between music and visual art, attending ; philosophy classes at OUDCE
and Tate Modern. Philosophy has become an integral part of Nadja's
practice as a painter. On the Brink of Futility - Schopenhauer, suffering and the '.
'value of abstract painting
Nadja asks, What is the value of abstract painting? What does its
existence add to humanity? Abstract painting has been criticised for
not engaging with the world, for being escapist. Drawing on
Schopenhauer's aesthetics and early Buddhist philosophy, particularly
the concept of mindfulness, she argued that abstract painting has a
very particular way of engaging with the materiality of the world. This
lends it an intrinsic value of being able to encourage unintentional
mindfulness, giving it the potential to help to reduce certain forms of
human suffering.
Pigotts location
Piggot's Hill is a single-track uphill road with passing places.
Pigotts (North Dean, Bucks HP14 4NF) is the first lot of buildings on
the right. Please follow the signs for where to park.
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satellite and street views.
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