William Payne

William Payne commented on the post, Critical Thinking Note 29: Is Education Indoctrination?, on the site W. Russ Payne 3 weeks ago

In reply to: William Payne wrote a new post, Critical Thinking Note 29: Is Education Indoctrination?, on the site W. Russ Payne This charge is being leveled at higher education frequently. The idea that colleges are in the […] View

Hi Dan,

I’d hope people aren’t as stubborn as you suggest in worrying that beliefs, feelings and emotions always beat reasoning to the punch. You are right in pointing out that beliefs are often not the product of reasoning, but neither are they static or immune to the influence for better or worse. Emotions and feelings aren’t independent…[Read more]
William Payne wrote a new post, I have no idea, on the site W. Russ Payne 3 weeks, 1 day ago

I have no ideas. I grasp a good many ideas. I’m acquainted with even more. Some ideas I understand pretty well. But none of them belong to me. Not even any I might have been lucky enough to entertain before […]
William Payne wrote a new post, General Education Chairs Meeting, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 month, 1 week ago

General-Education-at-BCDownload
William Payne wrote a new post, Critical Thinking Note 29: Is Education Indoctrination?, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 month, 2 weeks ago

This charge is being leveled at higher education frequently. The idea that colleges are in the business of indoctrination is a standard trope in attacks on higher education. Foes of education aren’t just […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Policing your student's prose:, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 month, 3 weeks ago

I’m not a cop. I hate having to deal with this issue. But we are seeing AI generated writing turned in by students and this thwarts our efforts as educators trying to help our students learn. So, we’d better have […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Defining words, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 month, 3 weeks ago

We use words to express ideas. In principle, we could use any word to mean anything we like. Meaning is usage. If all the English speakers agreed to use the word “cat” to refer to goldfish, goldfish would be what […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Free Will, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 month, 4 weeks ago

Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism | VPRO Documentary – YouTube

We should think some about free will here. Lots of people suppose that they are exercising free will if they get to make a choice, […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Some of my Students went through this. Some are still going through this., on the site W. Russ Payne 2 months, 2 weeks ago

Opinion | Iraq Veterans, 20 Years Later: George W. Bush ‘Owes Me a Beer, at the Least’ – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Twenty years ago, I had students at BC who were signing up to fight in Iraq. A few of […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Reimagining General Education at Bellevue College, on the site W. Russ Payne 3 months, 1 week ago

General Education refers to the program of study aimed at instilling the knowledge, skills and abilities that will benefit students as persons, regardless of their career skills. Much of what we teach as General […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Meaning in Life and the Point of Getting and Education, on the site W. Russ Payne 3 months, 2 weeks ago

Imagine a world devoid of conscious experience. Not even at the level of mollusks or moths. This is a world where nothing matters. Nothing has meaning or value. Now let’s admit some mollusks and moths. And l […]
William Payne wrote a new post, The Dignity of Politics, on the site W. Russ Payne 7 months, 1 week ago

Hannah Arendt on the Human Condition

Hannah Arendt would certainly not claim that our politics is dignified. To the contrary, she would be among the voices warning of the current risks to our democracy in its […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Bellevue Reporter Editorial, on the site W. Russ Payne 8 months, 1 week ago
William Payne commented on the post, Logical Fallacies, on the site W. Russ Payne 8 months, 1 week ago

In reply to: William Payne wrote a new post, Logical Fallacies, on the site W. Russ Payne Early on in the exploration of reasonableness we made a point of acknowledging basic human fallibility. Inquiry is not a linear path […] View

Thanks Cara. There are some good ideas for future posts here. In this last chapter of my Critical Thinking primer I’m mainly out to illustrate a few commonplace fallacies. The climate and race issues you raise here are much broader discussions. But I’ll take a quick pass at these here in comments.

I think too many people think individual action…[Read more]
William Payne wrote a new post, Logical Fallacies, on the site W. Russ Payne 8 months, 2 weeks ago

Early on in the exploration of reasonableness we made a point of acknowledging basic human fallibility. Inquiry is not a linear path from absolute truth to absolute truth. Inquiry is a more typically a meandering […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Varieties of Normativity, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year ago

Normative claims aim to tell us how things ought to be or what we ought to do. This, as opposed to claims that just aim to describe how things are. Philosophy may be the only discipline that inquires into the […]
William Payne wrote a new post, The White Replacement Theory, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year ago

The idea that liberal elites are trying to change the electoral dynamics of America in favor of Democrats by racially diversifying the country has wide currency on the political right. We should note at the […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Amartya Sen: Identity and Violence, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 5 months ago

As a child, Amartya Sen, Nobel prize winning economist and philosopher of social justice, witnessed the Hindu-Muslim riots that accompanied Pakistan’s partition from India. His analysis of identity and violence […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Freedom!, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 5 months ago

Locke wrote at a time when it would have been easy to miss the role of social systems and how unfair these can be. But aside from issues of fairness in our social systems, it’s worth noting how big a job it is to […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Family debates about religion:, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 8 months ago

Sounds like an interesting family life. First off, the issue of whether there is or isn’t a God is not a subjective issue. Either God exists or God doesn’t exist, but either way, it doesn’t depend on how anyone […]
William Payne wrote a new post, Nothing Personal, it's just Reasoning, on the site W. Russ Payne 1 year, 8 months ago

When someone else offers you reasons to change your mind, you should be convinced by those reasons if they are good reasons. That’s not exactly the same thing is being convinced by the person. Nobody likes to be […]
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