Should we ban some Christmas songs?

Baby it's cold outside has met with some controversy recently, with some radio stations refusing to play it because it endorses pressuring women into sex, or even date rape. A couple of weeks ago, before I'd heard this news, I was musing to myself that perhaps the lyrics should be: "I really can't stay / OK fair enough, take care." And then the rest of the song could be an instrumental! I find Tom Jones a bit creepy, and the thought of him trying to convince a less than willing young lady to spend the night turns my stomach.

A man who just won't take no for an answer in real life might be a problem... But this is a song, not real life. Tom Jones' creepiness notwithstanding, it seems to me that really, the song needn't be interpreted as date rape, as some people have suggested. I would think that many of us in relationships have had conversations where one partner says they need to go somewhere, and the other tries to convince them to stay. So I'm not convinced that the song is endorsing anything untoward, and I don't think it needs to be banned.

But what of the other contenders for most offensive Christmas song? People have objected to Do they know it's Christmas and Fairytale of New York too.

Do they know its Christmas has been torn to shreds. It's been accused of treating Africa as one homogenous culture, and making factually inaccurate claims (no rivers flow - what about the Nile? There won't be snow in Africa - what about atop Kilimanjaro?) And it's been charged with being patronising (do they know its Christmas? Well yes they probably do, given how many Africans are Christians) and it is said to propagate the "white saviour" mentality. I discussed this issue in another post, in relation to the issue that misinformation and white saviour mentalities help to secure more donations for Comic Relief, and I argued that documentary footage for the programme ought to be honest even if fewer donations are received as a result. But a charity song seems a different kettle of fish, where factual accuracy seems less important. Or as Geldof so eloquently put it "It's a pop song, not a doctoral thesis. They [critics] can fuck off." So Do they know it's Christmas can stay off the naughty list, methinks.

Fairytale of New York is about two people who fall in love, then it all turns sour. With gambling, alcoholism, and epithets such as 'slut' and 'faggot', it doesn't seem the most likely contender for a favourite Christmas song - yet it is. Those words are offensive, but why should that make us ban a song? Bleep it if necessary. I must admit that when I heard my little boy singing "you scumbag, you maggot..." I did think oh no please don't say it. But he followed it up with "you piece of old junk" (which he obviously borrowed from the previous verse - and cleaned up the language too!)

But songs with dodgy lyrics aren't a specifically Christmassy problem. I had the same feeling when I heard him singing "for 24 years I've been living next door to Alice. Alice? Who..." But again, mercifully, his innocent little ears told him the lyrics which followed were "Alice? Who's the talking Alice?" So yes, Fairytale of New York does have some words in it we don't want our kids to learn, but it's still a great Christmas song (and one of my son's favourites), and deserves to be played. I heard a version by Ronan Keating which used the lyrics "you're cheap and you're haggard" instead of "you cheap lousy faggot", so that should hopefully satisfy critics.

"But Christmas is wholesome"

There are thousands of songs out there with offensive themes and explicit lyrics. It seems to me that rap songs are frequently about knife crime, drive-by shootings, nonconsensual sex, and that the "songs" are littered with words like bitch, ho, ni**er and of course the F word. But these songs are widely available and widely enjoyed. Compared to rap music, Fairytale of New York is like a nursery rhyme (not Baa baa black sheep though, that song is as offensive as black coffee and a blackboard.)

But maybe the objection to Fairytale but not to rap songs is grounded in the idea that Christmas songs ought to be more wholesome than non-Christmas songs?

Well...

I was born and raised in Macclesfield; a nondescript northern town whose only real claim to fame is the Macc Lads - a rock band whose songs have some... um... controversial lyrics. Most of their songs are about getting drunk, sex, chips and gravy, fighting, and bodily functions. To give you a flavour, here's an excerpt from the Macc Lads' song Fluffy Pup "I spent last night tryna chuck me bird / But she were clinging to me leg like a lovesick turd / I said "Your tits are too small and your legs are too short / I want a fit bird from Sunday Sport / I can't hear me records when you sit on me face" […] "You can cook / you can fuck / you can do the washing up / but I've had enough / go on, fuck off..."

You probably wouldn't expect a band like the Macc Lads to produce a Christmas song, but they did. When Feed the World was in the charts back in 1985, lead singer and lyricist Muttley Macc Lad didn't pass up the opportunity to offend, and wrote a little Christmas ditty called Feed your face. Here's an excerpt: "Watching Live Aid 'Sit up straight you scruffy ni**er' [...] Feeling peckish so I went down the chippy, bought some pies and pasties / didn't give any to the starving ni**ers so I'm a fucking Nazi / Feed your face, don't give them a second thought". Now that is an example of an offensive Christmas song which doesn't get much air time. Geldof quite rightly slammed it. But should the Macc Lads' song be banned? No, I think not. (If you find the N word as objectionable as I do, then it's worth reminding ourselves that rap uses this word with far greater frequency than the Macc Lads do - in fact, I think this may be their only use of the term.) It's just music, and - like rap - people should, generally speaking, be allowed to listen to what they please.

John Stuart Mill (I love Mill!) in On Liberty wrote that offence is not harm. There should be freedom of speech, and that involves the freedom to offend. As ever, Mill hits the nail on the head. You might be offended by Feed your face, Feed the world, or indeed Baa baa black sheep, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to exist.

Am I a hypocrite?

My last blog post was calling for books about child abuse to be banned, and now here I am supporting artistic freedom - am I being hypocritical? Well, I think not, and actually, last week's argument and this week's argument are very similar.

Last week:
X is similar to Y
X is banned (illegal)
Therefore Y should be banned (illegal)
(Where X was child porn, and Y was child abuse books)

This week:
X is similar to Y
X is not banned
Therefore Y should not be banned
(Where X is rap music, the Macc Lads etc, and Y is the Fairytale of New York etc)

All I'm calling for is consistency in what we ban or don't ban. If music is an area where we support artistic freedom to the extent that we allow music about drive-by shootings and fights, then a song about a man trying to get a woman to spend the night, or a song which uses the word "faggot" is small fry.

If someone were to turn my argument against me and call for consistency in my beliefs, they'd need to show that a book about child abuse has enough in common with a Christmas pop song that they ought to be treated the same. I think Socrates himself would struggle to show that.

Conclusion

Some well-loved Christmas songs have the odd word or sentiment which some might find at odds with 2018 political correctness, but if people enjoy listening to such songs, let them. It's Christmas after all, live and let live.

If you aren't in the PC brigade, then you might like this tongue in cheek list of offensive Christmas songs. Some amusing examples are "folks dressed up like Eskimos" = cultural appropriation;  "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake" = Santa is a peeping Tom. And how about "Children gays open-mouthed, taken by surprise" = supporting homosexual abuse of children.

Happy Christmas.

Stop the books about child abuse

Wander around a bookshop and it won't be difficult to find masses and masses of books about child abuse. Amazon even has a specific section dedicated to books about child abuse! I think "A child called it" was an early pioneer of this genre, with its black and white photo of a sad-looking child and its provocative title, it became a bestseller. Since then, hundreds of child abuse books have followed. Many follow the example of pale backgrounds, washed-out photos of sad-looking children, and provocative or disturbing titles like "A special place" "Stop, Daddy, stop" and "Our little secret". These books are obviously flying off the shelves, because each year, yet more books about child abuse pop up, ready to be consumed by people who enjoy reading about child abuse.

Am I the only one who finds this disturbing?

Child pornography is illegal. You wouldn't find it on the shelves at eye level in Asda, nor would there be a whole section dedicated to it in Waterstones - and rightly so. People who abuse children are the scum of the earth, and people who want to look at images or videos of child abuse are a pretty close second. So why is it seemingly perfectly acceptable to read about child abuse in graphic detail? People wouldn't buy their grandad a subscription to a child porn website for Christmas, so why do they buy their granny yet another book which describes child sex abuse?

Below I consider and reject several possible reasons for thinking that looking at child pornography and reading about child abuse are morally distinct. Perhaps we should stop short of making these books illegal, but I do think we should stop these books from adorning the shelves in bookshops, and carefully monitor people who buy or read such books.

It's not all sexual

OK so not all books about child abuse are about sexual abuse; most are "merely" about emotional and physical abuse, and neglect. But some books are about sexual abuse, and those are my main targets in this post.

And as an aside, although there might not be a specific law against watching people beat, torture, kill, emotionally abuse or neglect their children, we might (rightly) think that people who enjoy watching these things are doing something morally troubling, if not wholly wrong. Yet we seem to think it's fine for people to read about all these types of abuse: Why? Some possible reasons are discussed below.

Visual / literary medium

Firstly, child porn is visual, whereas child abuse books are literary. Perhaps we differentiate between them because we think it's wrong to look at abuse, but OK to read about abuse? This is probably a distinction that most people do make, but without good reason.

Suppose there was a website where paedophiles share stories about the sexual things they've done to children (sadly, such websites probably do exist). If a person were to spend an evening reading the stories on such a website - but without looking at any pictures - I think we would view this person as morally bereft, and almost as bad (if not just as bad) as someone who looks at child porn. So this makes me think that it's not just about the distinction between the visual / literary medium.

The author

So if it's not the visual/literary distinction, then maybe it's because most child porn is created by the perpetrator, and shown from the position of the perpetrator, whereas child abuse books are told from the point of view of the victim.

Or at least, that's what we're supposed to think. How many readers really check whether the author of a book is the victim? Perhaps some authors of child abuse books are actually perpetrators, retelling the abuse they've committed from the point of view of their victim. Or perhaps the stories are fictional, the author detailing their appalling sexual fantasies in literary form. I imagine that at least some of the child abuse books on sale are as a matter of fact written by paedophiles. Still think it's OK to read these books?

What if it turns out that some child porn photos / videos are shared online by the child themselves? This wouldn't be enormously surprising, given that 'sexting' is a thing among tweens and teens: they share pictures of themselves naked or performing sex acts on snapchat, whatsapp, and other platforms. But surely we wouldn't think that it's OK for someone to view these images of child porn simply because the child (even if they've now grown up) was complicit in the sharing of the images? Someone who shares images of themselves being on the receiving end of child sexual abuse is (as far as the law is concerned) just as guilty as anyone else who shares images of abuse.

So if some books are written by paedophiles, and some child porn is shared by the victims, then the "who is the author" argument doesn't help us to distinguish between the morally acceptable and the morally unacceptable, if we're wanting to show that books are permissible but images are not.

Why people read / watch

So maybe the reason we distinguish between child porn and child abuse books is because of the reasons why people read or look at them. I think the assumption is that people (usually men) who look at child porn photos and videos are doing it for sexual excitement and gratification: they find the images arousing. Whereas the assumption with child abuse books is that the people (usually women) who read them are reading it with sympathy and horror; they come away from the book thinking how terrible the abuse was.

But suppose that someone who reads a lot of child abuse books with sadness and horror decides to start looking at child porn with sadness and horror too. Suppose they go online and seek out horrible videos of child abuse and rape, and they sit there watching them feeling sad and disgusted with what they're seeing. I think we'd see such behaviour as decidedly odd, if not wrong and  criminal. We'd say "you shouldn't look at child porn, even if you're looking at it in sympathy".

And suppose a paedophile enjoys reading the child abuse books for sexual gratification. Suppose he sees the books as a way of indulging his sexual fantasies in a legal way. Suppose the rape and abuse scenes in the child abuse books are so arousing for him that he masturbates while reading them. I bet some people do do this. I think we would see this as morally troubling that someone would find these books arousing. I don't think we'd just shrug and say well it's fine because it's only a piece of literature, and buy him another child abuse book for Christmas.

This is probably the most convincing of the arguments, but given that we don't know the real reasons why someone looks at or reads about child abuse, it will be tricky for us to distinguish between those who are looking at or reading about child abuse with sympathy, and those who find it exciting. So we revert back to saying pictures-and-videos - bad, books - good.

No legal restriction on books

Perhaps the only reason why we feel that looking at photos of child abuse is wrong (but books about child abuse are fine) is simply because the former is illegal and the latter is not.  Those who look at child abuse pictures do so in secret, in their own homes, through untraceable proxies. They keep it secret from family and friends, and if they are caught with all that child porn, they'll be prosecuted. It's not socially acceptable to sit on a train watching videos of child porn. Whereas reading child abuse books is legal; people who read them don't need to do so in secret, and if the police discover that someone owns a lot of child abuse books, nothing happens. It's (seemingly) socially acceptable to sit on a train reading a book about child abuse.

But laws are fairly arbitrary, and change over time and borders. In some countries, (Japan, perhaps?) there are no laws against child abuse (in countries where child marriage is practiced, it is acceptable for a man to have sex with a little girl so long as he is married to her). And there are probably some countries where child abuse books are illegal. If UK laws had been the other way around, and it was illegal to read child abuse books, but legal to view child porn, then would public opinion switch too? I think it probably would. If people secretly went online to read child abuse stories, but child porn magazines adorned the shelves of Sainsbury's, would our opinions switch too? I think they would, and if I'm right, then we are fickle and uncommitted to our beliefs, proving that there is not much of a distinction between child porn and child abuse books; it's just legal precedent and social convention.

All together now

A final possibility is that some or all of the above reasons group together to distinguish child porn from child abuse books. Child porn is visual, illegal, usually created by abusers, and the viewers are (mostly) men who are watching it for sexual gratification. Child abuse books are literary, legal, usually created by victims, and the readers are (mostly) women who are reading it with sympathy.

When put like that, the argument seems more convincing... but if as I've shown above, each of the constituent parts of the argument are unconvincing, then merely adding several unconvincing arguments together doesn't really make it convincing. Five wrongs don't make a right.

Conclusion

It doesn't look like the law or public opinion on this pseudo-distinction between child porn and child abuse books is going to change any time soon. It looks as though, for the foreseeable future, looking at child porn will (rightly) be seen as abhorrent and immoral, but reading about child abuse will (wrongly) be seen as a perfectly legitimate pastime.

Am I the only one who finds this distinction weird? I don't know. But whenever I meet someone who enjoys reading books describing child abuse, I can't help but feel disturbed, and I wonder why they are reading these books. If you ask me, books which describe child abuse in graphic detail should not be adorning the shelves of supermarkets and bookshops, available for anyone of any age to buy, read, and enjoy. I suggest that the readers of child abuse books should be viewed with suspicion, and perhaps even scrutinised by the police.

Zotero - reference management software review

I've been writing my thesis - but not writing it "up" - for a couple of months, and although I've previously managed all my references manually, I decided that I'd use some reference management software as I wrote my PhD thesis.

I've previously been happy to write all my references the old fashioned way - by looking at the book / journal, and writing down the salient information in the bibliography, and writing out my in-text citations manually. This method has always served me well and because I am a pedant when it comes to things like spelling, grammar, punctuation and indeed referencing, I have been able to manage my references flawlessly in this way. I haven't made mistakes because I know how to reference (Harvard-style) and so I continued with the mindset of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

However, since the number of references I'll probably be using for my PhD thesis was likely to be far greater than those I used for my essays and MA thesis, I decided that I'd start using some reference management software to help me keep track of it all. I'm glad I've taken the plunge, because even at this early stage, I already have 74 items in my reference list! (I've not fully read all of them yet though.)

So I decided that before I got started on my thesis, I'd compare / try a few reference management software (RMS) programs and decide on one which I was happy with. I probably spent nearly 2 days faffing around with RMS and making up my mind, but I was hopeful then - and I'm convinced now - that that was time well spent.

The RMS I settled on was Zotero. Below I list some of the other main RMS and why I chose not to use them:

• Refworks - this was the one which I had heard of most, and so was the one I was originally intending to use. Then I learned that unless your university had a subscription to it, individual students had to pay to use it (and that the University of Nottingham does not have a subscription to it). This quickly put me off Refworks.

• Endnote - The University of Nottingham does have a subscription to Endnote, so this became top of my list. I tried to follow the instructions I found for how to set up an account, and the instructions were unfathomable (for starters, they referred to a different version of Windows than the one on the library PC I was using, so were impossible to follow). I tried to get some help from an online chat person/bot, and from the IT support people in the library, but they struggled to use it too. This is not a criticism of them, but a criticism of Endnote, as I usually find them to be really knowledgeable and helpful. At length, with the help of an IT support person, a YouTube video, and an online help sheet, we finally managed to get the program running. I thought it'd be plain sailing after that, but it wasn't. The way to get an article onto Endnote seemed to involve a very complex procedure of searching an online library database... well, some of the sources I'd already taken a look at aren't on an online library database, and working out how to get these sources onto Endnote seemed impossible to me. Added to which, the 'main' version of Endnote could only be accessed from university PCs, and I'm likely to be doing most of my work from home. So I gave up on Endnote.

Once I'd dismissed these two 'big names', it was a question of doing some comparisons of the alternatives. I looked at a few online comparisons, and screenshots of different RMS systems, and downloaded a couple to try. I can't remember which ones (so this part of the blog post isn't that enlightening, as I can't recall why I dismissed Mendeley, BibTex and whatever else. What I can do is explain why I chose Zotero and why I like it).

Zotero - just click the Download button and Bob's your uncle.

Reasons why I like / chose Zotero

1. It's easy to use. This reason is up there front and centre of the reasons I chose Zotero. Here's how you do it: (1) go to Zotero website. (2) Download Zotero software that takes about 1 minute. (3) Start using it straight away. The Word plugin only has 5 buttons on it (add/edit citation, add/edit bibliography, refresh, unlink citations, and settings). It did take a little playing around with to work out all the functions, but more on that later.
2. Metadata is automatically uploaded to Zotero. Until I looked into RMS, I didn't even know what metadata was (data about data, I would have assumed). Metadata is in fact the details of a document such as its title, authors, publisher, date, URL, DOI, and suchlike. Having tried a few RM systems, it became evident to me that the sheer amount of time it can take to add metadata is just ridiculous on some applications. It can take a minute or two - at least - to write out all the metadata for one file. When that's multiplied by the possibly 300+ sources I may use during the course of my PhD, I realised that that would be a lot of time wasted and a lot of tedium suffered. The fact that Zotero automatically detects and uploads all the metadata on almost every file you drag and drop onto it was a godsend to me: "future me will thank me for this" I thought, and indeed I am grateful to past-me for choosing software which automatically sorts the metadata. And when metadata isn't detected (which has only happened on one online source so far) it's easy enough to enter it yourself with Zotero.
3. Zotero allows me to upload PDFs and other files whilst keeping those files on my computer. This is a must for me, because tech isn't always as trustworthy as we'd like it to be (yeah, I know my PhD thesis is about why we should trust tech to care for the elderly, but this is an entirely different issue!) If a company suddenly goes offline, into liquidation, etc, then I'd like to be able to have all - or at least, many - of my files stored offline on my hard drive as possible. Zotero ticks this box whereas so many other RM systems don't. This also appeals to me because I like to edit my PDFs with notes and symbols and things which aren't available in some RMS dedicated editors. eg some of the other RMS will allow you to edit a PDF, but only within the RMS program; if you then try to view that PDF in Adobe or similar, you can't see any of your notes. Or, the software allows you to highlight but not annotate PDFs on the page itself. Zotero allows me to edit documents with Adobe, Nitro or any other program, and then upload them as they are.
4. The code for Zotero is open-source. I'm not a software buff but apparently this means something along the lines of: if Zotero goes out of business, another company could use the same code to make the same program and so I'd still be able to use it. Or something like that.
5. Zotero is cloud-based, so wherever I am, I can access my saved sources, and the files can be viewed and accessed even if the source file is not on that computer. For example, say I annotate a PDF which is held on my home computer, and then I drag and drop it onto Zotero. The file is still on my home computer, but now if I go into uni and use a PC in the library, I can access and edit the very same PDF (with my notes already one it) even though it is not saved on that uni PC. This is a great feature which I didn't even realise was a feature when I started using it, but I find it really good. Most RMS is cloud-based, but still...
6. There's a Chrome plugin which allows you to upload sources direct from the web. The plugin takes about 30 seconds to download and sits right next to the URL bar. The program detects what type of page is being viewed (eg a news article, journal article, blog etc - I guess that's the metadata doing its job again!) and so when you click the icon, it knows what metadata is needed (date of publication, issue number, etc.) Amazing!
7. Sources of various different types can be uploaded. PDFs are standard for RMS, obviously, but some of the other RM programs I came across couldn't seem to handle a news website, let alone a Word document, powerpoint presentation, TV programme or a jpeg image. Zotero can handle any and all of these - and lots of others too.
8. I can use it as a cloud-based way of saving my own work. Because Zotero can handle Word documents, I made a folder within Zotero called 'my work' and now I upload my work to it at the end of each day as an additional cloud-based backup in case my house burns to the ground during the night. I suppose this wasn't the intention of Zotero, but it's a nice feature I'm utilising for my own gain.
9. It's easy to write notes and summaries. There's a text box on the right-hand side which you can write whatever you like into. I'm using it to write notes and summaries of documents. I know this is standard in almost all RMS, but it's obviously a useful feature!
10. It's possible to tag sources and link sources to one another. This is probably a simple feature which may be available in other RMS, but it's useful nonetheless. For example, I have scanned and uploaded a few different chapters of the same book, and although each chapter is written by a different author, I wanted them to be linked to one another, so that was easily done. I've also tagged my sources with various content-related tags like 'consent' and 'harm', but also 'fully read' and 'not yet read' to help me keep track of what I have and have not read. As one would expect, you can search for particular tags.

Screenshot of some of my Zotero sources at the moment

One wish

I saw on one RMS - I forget which now - that whenever you highlighted some text within a document, it transferred the quote to some sort of clipboard / note-taker interface. This seems like a really useful feature which it would be quite nice if Zotero had, but it doesn't. I suppose that's because it is a file depository rather than a file editor. My highlighting has been done in Adobe/Nitro, and not through Zotero itself; Zotero essentially just keeps a copy of the file. It's not too great a problem though, because it's still easy to cut and paste quotes if I want them.

Using Zotero

For the most part, Zotero is pretty easy to use. you drag and drop the files you want into the window as shown above. You download the Word plugin, and when you want to add a citation, you just click 'Add citation', type in the author or title you want to cite, add the page number, and press Enter. Pretty simple. And indeed far simpler than the other RM systems I had a go at.

But of course, there are always some times when there are slightly trickier things that one wants to do, like adding metadata, having one source with multiple sources attached to it, and it wasn't particularly easy to find Zotero help / guides on how to do these twiddly bits. I did find one help guide from Zotero, but this isn't exhaustive. I worked it out for myself though and wrote it down - here is my help sheet. Anyway, I've found Zotero to be pretty intuitive and easy to use, and I'm glad I took the time to choose a RMS programme which suited me and what I wanted. I definitely have no complaints so far.

Black Friday: No thanks - just bargains

It's that time of year again - Black Friday. The time of year when people clamour for bargains, enthusiastically elbowing others out of the way in a frenzy of desperation to save a few quid buying consumer goods at knock-down prices. That time of year when, for a week or more, people are glued to their smart devices (even more so than usual), in the crucial search for stuff.

Apparently, Black Friday has been with us in England for eight years now. It's long been an American trend; it's the Friday after Thanksgiving. But whilst Brits - and probably numerous other countries - have been only too happy to adopt the greedy fight for cheap electronics that encapsulates Black Friday, we seem to have no interest at all in the ethos which precedes it in America. We don't want to give thanks; we just want bargains.

I know that Thanksgiving has its history in colonialism, pilgrims, and has a religious spin to it, but even though I'm an atheist and a Brit, I think there is something worthwhile in the festival which we would do well to adopt. A general disposition of gratefulness is something that is probably quite good for one's mental health. Life is busy and it's no wonder that there's been a growth in mindfulness and relaxing activities like adult colouring books, meditation, yoga etc. Reminding ourselves of everything we are grateful for is a worthwhile exercise in itself, even if we don't say it out loud around a table full of turkey and pumpkin pie the way Americans do. I know I'm grateful for good health, my wonderful son who brings joy and meaning to my life, and for my family and friends. I'm grateful that I've recently started a relationship after nearly 7 years of being single. And I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to study for a PhD and that I'm being funded to do so.

All of this gratitude - the very essence of Thanksgiving - seems intrinsically valuable, and it's a real shame we don't adopt this festival. But what's more sad is that we're only too happy to adopt Black Friday, the fight for cut price electronics, clothing and suchlike, whereby we're implicitly reinforcing in ourselves the idea that garnering more stuff will make us happier.

Perhaps I'm being too cynical: perhaps everyone uses Black Friday (which has somehow morphed into a week or more of sales) to purchase gifts for their loved ones in time for Christmas. And they use these gifts to spread the love and bring about gratefulness, wellbeing and happiness in those around them. Yes, that probably happens to some extent. But I just don't think that these HD TV's and Playstations and iPhones are all being given as gifts. And maybe it's none of my business - if people want to buy an iPhone cheaply for themselves then why shouldn't they? Well, yes, my revulsion at the fight for bargains is not iron-clad proof that Black Friday is somehow morally wrong.

I just wish that we would adopt the disposition of gratefulness for what we already have, and appreciate that the people around us are what really makes life worth living.

Thesis-writing book reviews

I've now read these four books about thesis-writing for PhD study, and I share my thoughts on each of them below.

• Murray (2017) How to write a thesis (4th ed). Open UP Study Skills. Open University Press
• Carter, Kelly, and Brailsford (2012) Structuring your research thesis. Palgrave Research Skills. Palgrave Macmillan
• Oliver (2008) Writing your thesis (2nd ed). Sage Study Skills. Sage Publications
• Williams, Bethell, Lawton, Parfitt, Richardson, and Rowe (2010) Planning your PhD. Pocket Study Skills. Palgrave Macmillan

I've also bought "How to survive your viva" by Murray, but I haven't yet read it; I'll review it at a later date perhaps.

Murray (2017) How to write a thesis

This is a great book - the best of the four - and well worth the £20 I paid for it. I don't often write or highlight in books, but with this one I did because there are some parts of it which are stand-out gems of advice that I wanted to be able to find again and again.

I'd say that this book would be of particular use to people who might find it difficult to get started writing (or continue writing) or people who believe that they have nothing to write about (yet), because the book is filled with writing prompts, ways to get started, ways of planning, and ways of structuring your work. It's written for a generalist audience, but the suggested exercises seem flexible enough that there can be something useful for everyone, whether they are writing about biochemistry, medieval literature, or international politics. With 311 pages, it is bursting with useful tips, advice and information for thesis-writers.

I'm not someone who finds it difficult to get started writing, but I've still found the book really useful - and full of encouragement too! Almost every page has something really useful on it, and I can't praise this book enough. Here's a quote:

"In writing a thesis, we are entering a debate; there are many people who will not agree with our writing. Not only can we not ignore the work of those who are likely to disagree with us, but we must directly address it. We have to articulate the basis of such disagreements in our writing, showing where our work fits into the debate." (p121)

There are sections on getting started, structuring, becoming a 'serial writer', editing and revising work, and some information about the Viva. The only 'criticism' I have of the book is the suggestion that we should try to write 1,000 words a day. You don't need to be doing your PhD in maths to realise that 1,000 words a day for 3 years is over a million words! I suppose many people may struggle to write and so the chance of this actually happening to them is minimal: for me, over-writing is a genuine danger. Typically my way of producing the 4,000-word essays for my MA studies was to write an essay of around 15,000 words, then to cut it down and distill it. The thought of distilling 1,000,000 words into 70,000 words is unappealing, and so I'll take Murray's advice with a pinch of salt.

Nonetheless this book is fantastic, and something I'm sure I'll return to again and again throughout the next three years.

Carter, Kelly and Brailsford (2012) Structuring your research thesis

I found this book a bit weird. It is supposedly written for a generalist audience, as one would expect, but in some parts of it the advice seems very specific to particular domains. There is also a lot of what I can only describe as 'waffle' - which would be fine if it were a lengthy book which can afford to go off-piste from time to time, but with only 84 pages I would say it should stick rigidly to the point, which it doesn't seem to manage.

Something else which bothered me is the style in which it is written. I know it is aimed at an educated audience, but nonetheless, the goal of a textbook - any textbook - should be to explain what needs to be explained in the most efficient way possible; a textbook is not (or should not be) a chance for the authors to show off their articulacy with flowery language unless it is really necessary to the cause. This doesn't necessarily mean dumbing down, but it does mean using concise language where possible. Some sections of this book were unnecessarily verbose - here's a quote which is supposedly about how to make a common thread run through your thesis:

"Because it makes use of the complex semiotics of poetic language, metaphor can also be a strong structuring device. Metaphors that have a cultural underpinning enable a researcher to inhabit a social or cultural space simultaneously with their academic one. Cultural metaphors demonstrate the way that metaphor can contribute to methodology, and our examples make explicit the deep-level functioning of metaphor to carry one set of connotative meaning into another field." (p8)

I am struggling to know what the take-home advice of this paragraph is, and this quote is by no means an isolated cherry-picked example of the way this book is written. Whilst there are some parts of the book which may be of use to a thesis writer, I found the general tone of the book strange and at times almost impenetrable. And so given its price and low page count, I would say that - unusually for the Palgrave study books - this is just not worth the money.

Oliver (2008) Writing your thesis

[NOTE - There's now a third edition of this book, but I have the second edition pictured here.]

This book is really useful, and is a really good accompaniment to Rowena Murray's book, because much (around half?) of the material in this book isn't covered in the Murray book. For example, logistical and technical advice about fonts, layout, use of Latin terms, referencing, academic conventions and suchlike. There's also a useful chapter on working with supervisors and examiners. 

I think that if you're a person who is motivated and ready to start writing, then this book is probably even better than the Murray textbook. But this book does assume a certain readiness to begin study, which not all people will feel. It's fairly concisely written  and provides a happy medium (174 pages) between the brevity of the Williams book (below) and the detail of the Murray book. Here's a nice quote about thesis introductions:

"This [the Introduction] is a very significant chapter in the thesis. As it is the first chapter which is read by the examiners, it inevitably creates an impression in their minds about the writing style of the student, and of the broad nature of the thesis. The main purpose of the introduction is to provide the reader with an overview of the research study, and of the key factors which were influential in its inception. It sets the scene for the reader, providing a glimpse of the setting for the research and of the methodology. It should also provide a statement of the aims of the thesis." (p84)

The down-side of this book (for me as a Philosophy student, at least) is that the chapters on the literature review and methodology were largely irrelevant for me. Notwithstanding these chapters, the book as a whole is a very useful one I'll no doubt return to several times throughout my doctoral study. 

Williams et al (2010) Planning your PhD

This book is only tiny - smaller than A6 - and only 120 pages, but it packs a lot in. Brevity and ease of use are its assets.

As the title suggests, its focus is on planning and preparing for a PhD, and it's probably of most use to those who have not yet written a PhD research proposal. Once you've written a proposal and had it accepted, most of this book becomes redundant (I should have bought it before I wrote the proposal to have got the most out of it!)

Nevertheless, there are a few pages (perhaps 15 - but remember that each page only has around 300 words on it!) about introductions, literature reviews, attending conferences and publishing in journals, which are brief but of use. This book by itself would be insufficient to use as a guide to writing a PhD thesis, but given that its intention is to help you plan your PhD, it does exactly what it says on the (very small!) tin.

Kids, peas, and the sorites problem

My son is a picky eater, and not a fan of vegetables, so in order to encourage him to eat a wider variety of food, he has a "super eating" food list. If he eats a food he's not keen on, he gets it written on his list. When he has 20 instances on the list, he gets a (non-food) treat of some sort.

Generally, the list technique is the only thing that has helped him eat a wider variety of foods, but being a child, he does like to push me on it. And today he unknowingly presented me with the Sorites problem with his peas.

Me: "Here's your tea. I've given you some peas; I know you're not all that keen on them, so if you eat all of them they'll count for your list."
Him: "Peas? Ugh! Do I really have to eat all of them?"
Me: "Yes please. Eat all of them."
Him: "But if I left a tiny one then would you still write it on my list? One little pea won't make a difference will it?"
Me: "Hmm, well I suppose if it really is only one pea that you're leaving then yes I guess I'd still count it for your list."
Him: "Because a pea is only small."
Me: "I suppose so..."
Him: "So if I leave two peas then that would be OK too wouldn't it?"
Me: "Well why would you be leaving two peas? Eat them."
Him: "But you said one pea doesn't make a difference, so two peas doesn't make a difference either."
Me: "Eat your peas please. I'll let you leave one, but not two."
Him: "Hmph. Well that doesn't seem fair."

He ate all but one of the peas, and I counted it for his list, but I was laughing a little to myself about being presented with the Sorites problem by my little philosopher in the making.

But next time, I should probably just stick to "Eat all your peas, and don't leave any"!

Driverless cars, the trolley problem, and tyranny of the majority

Today BBC News ran an article entitled Driverless cars: who should die in a crash? The news story has come about because researchers at MIT have conducted a study analysing more than 40 million responses to an online 'trolley problem'-style ethical survey.

The trolley problem is a classic philosophy problem (which, by chance, I taught today to a class of Year 5 pupils). The problem is this:

A train is hurtling along a track; and on the track ahead are five innocent people who will die if you do nothing. You can't stop the train (its brakes have failed) but you can pull a lever to switch it onto another track - where it will kill just one innocent person. Should you pull the lever or not?

My 'Trolley Problem' powerpoint for the Year 5 pupils.
Several of them said it would matter if some of the people were
criminals; no one said the people's skin colour or gender mattered.

Most people (and indeed the pupils I taught today) say that one should pull the lever based on purely utilitarian grounds - this can be phrased in the words of Spock from Star Trek: "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". In other words, although it's bad for one person to die, it's even worse for five people to die, so pull the lever and kill one.

It's OK for us to hypothesise about what we'd do in this very unlikely scenario, because it's just a thought experiment: it's not real. But driverless cars are forcing us to reconsider this problem not as a hypothetical possibility, but as a very real possibility. If a driverless car is in a no-win situation where its brakes have failed and someone will die, who should it be? The passengers, the toddler on the zebra crossing, or the old ladies on the pavement?

Well, the people at MIT designed a survey / experiment ("The Moral Machine") to find out people's responses to these very sorts of questions. So far so good you might think, but here comes the troubling part: BBC News quotes the MIT people as saying:

"Before we allow our cars to make ethical decisions, we need to have a global conversation to express our preferences to the companies that will design moral algorithms, and to the policymakers that will regulate them."

Now although this falls short of their suggesting that we use the results of the survey to inform the moral programming of driverless cars, it certainly seems to be in that ballpark. But this, I maintain, is a dangerous and morally troubling step towards eugenics-by-driverless-car. Why? Because in the Moral Machine survey, people's choices about who should die and who should be saved are based on judgments about factors such as age, gender, class, weight, and how law-abiding the person is.

Screenshot from the Moral Machine survey

An optional section of the survey involves moving sliders according to how important you think that particular factor is. For example, you can say that saving higher class over lower class is really important, and saving the young over the old is fairly important. One factor which didn't feature in the survey was race/ethnicity/religion. The people at MIT probably thought it was just too controversial to see whether people would save a black man rather than a white man, or a Muslim woman rather than a Christian woman - but these are probably factors which would yield interesting and distasteful results --but no less interesting and no more distasteful than the actual results of the survey, which show that people choose to save:

• Women more than men
• The young more than the old
• Fit people more than fat people
• Middle class more than lower class

So why am I troubled by this? Well, driverless cars are on their way, whether we like it or not. And they will be faced with genuine moral decisions, whether we like it or not. And they will need some moral guidance or 'rules' to follow in order to make those split-second decisions about whether the fat young person or the thin old person should die. Yes, a moral system programmed into the cars will be absolutely essential - however....

Basing the moral system of a driverless car on the results of a survey - however large - is a huge issue. Even if we ignore the fact that there is no barrier to the same person taking the survey more than once (I took it twice) and even if we ignore the fact that details of the pictures in the survey aren't immediately clear (in my first time around, I didn't notice that some people were crossing the road on the red man, nor that some of the stick men were supposed to represent homeless people) there is still a massive problem in the form of the tyranny of the majority. 

John Stuart Mill (I love that guy!) in On Liberty wrote that we must take steps to guard against the tyranny of the majority - this is when a large group of people get their way simply because they are greater in number than a small group of people. Now if you ask me, the majority getting their way is unproblematic if we've taken a vote about whether we should have chocolate ice cream or strawberry ice cream - or about whether we should visit a castle or the beach tomorrow... but the majority verdict really does become tyrannical when the issues at stake are the welfare, lives and rights of people. And these are the very things that are at stake with these driverless cars trolley-problem-style dilemmas. The results of the Moral Machine survey show that the majority prioritise the young over the old, and the rich over the poor - and suppose a similar survey also shows the majority prioritise able-bodied people over disabled people, and white people over brown people. This alone is disturbing enough, but if we then proceed to program the moral system of the majority into driverless cars, and set them free on our public highways - well, it's the tyranny of the majority at its most foul, and a recipe for eugenics by carcrash.

We simply cannot allow the vulgar prejudices of the majority to inform the moral systems of driverless cars. Driverless cars need a way to determine which action to take, of course, but this should be based on non-prejudicial factors such as the likelihood of surviving the crash, the number of people, and the location of the impact: the age, gender, class (etc.) of people should not - ever - be a factor in decision-making about who lives and who dies.

Being a woman in Philosophy

The blog Being a Woman in Philosophy (BAWIP) is a well-known collaborative blog; it details some very interesting and eye-opening (not to mention eye-watering) events which have happened to women in the field of philosophy. It's just appalling that people have had to go through these experiences, and it's genuinely alarming if these experiences are commonplace for women in philosophy.

But are they commonplace? I don't know for sure, but I do know that my experience of being a woman in philosophy is entirely at odds with what is on the BAWIP blog.

I was a philosophy undergrad in the late 90s, and I've taught A Level philosophy for about 8 years, and now I have been doing an MA in philosophy at university for the past 2 years; I'm just starting my PhD. I've been a woman throughout, I might add. I don't believe I have ever experience
d any discrimination, harassment, a chilly climate, or anything of the sort. Let's disregard my years of teaching A levels since that's not comparing like with like vis-a-vis the BAWIP blog; let me just consider my experiences as a woman in philosophy as a student at university.

"Yes, I'm female. No, I don't want you to kiss me."

I don't recall every detail of my undergrad degree at Keele 20 years ago, but given that I don't remember any sexual harassment or discrimination, I'm willing to say that none happened (to me). The majority of my professors were men, but there were also some women, and the lectures and seminars which were led by a woman were not qualitatively different from those led by a man. I was outnumbered by males in all my classes, but I didn't care. Males might have "dominated the discussion" in virtue of there being more of them in the room, but I was someone who spoke frequently in seminars, and I never felt any discrepancy or discrimination based on sex or gender. In fact, I have nothing but great memories of my Philosophy degree at Keele; studying there was an absolute pleasure and they were some of the best years of my life.

My experiences as an MA student - and now a PhD student - at Nottingham have not been noticeably different. Yes, I'm almost always outnumbered by men, but this does not bother me. Actually, I quite like being outnumbered by men and I often feel more comfortable in a room full of men than a room full of women. Why? Hard to say. As a kid I was a tomboy, and as an adolescent and young adult, I had interests in activities which happened to be male-dominated. I did sports and activities where I was sometimes the only female among 10-20 males, and I never felt threatened by any of them; they were my friends. So I've always been quite comfortable with being outnumbered by men. From my teenage years onwards, the guys I was surrounded by sometimes made sexual jokes or innuendos, "locker room talk" and the occasional sexist comment, but I either laughed along with them, rolled my eyes and sighed, or gave as good as I got; I never felt uncomfortable or harassed. Sometimes my female friends and I would talk about sex, make sexual innuendos or sexist jokes, so what's the difference? None, as far as I can see. So those were my experiences of being a woman in sport and recreation.

Back to being a woman in philosophy... Yes I'm outnumbered, and no it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I've had contact (viz. conversations) with probably around 70 men and 15 women working or studying in Philosophy over the past 2 years, and every one without exception* has been normal, honest, decent, kind, and I haven't detected the faintest whiff of sexism. Ever. I've been to seminars; I've attended lectures; I've had private conversations in their offices; I've spoken to them less formally over lunch; we've emailed each other... and each and every man has behaved, as far as I can tell, with the utmost integrity, respect, warmth and professionalism. I consider several of them to be my friends. Just to be clear, it is not that I have noticed sexism but been OK with it; it is that I have never noticed any sexism in philosophy. (This differs from my teenage experiences in male-dominated sports and activities, where sexism occurred but I lived with it.)

*Actually there was a man who seemed hostile towards men and women alike, but he only stuck around for a few weeks.

So, my experiences seem fundamentally different from those collected on the Being a Woman in Philosophy blog. There are a few ways to explain the difference:
1. Different institutions;
2. Different intersections;
3. Different foci (confirmation bias);
4. Cherry-picking.
Let's consider each of these.

Different institutions

It's possible that the institutions mentioned on the BAWIP blog are at the opposite end of the spectrum to mine. Perhaps there really is abundant sexism in other universities, and none whatsoever in mine. But this seems highly implausible: it would be remarkably good luck if  sexism is rife but I just so happened to have attended two non-sexist institutions in different areas of the country 20 years apart. It's also implausible because I have had plenty of contact with people from outside my own institution, and indeed from different countries, and all of them, I would say, have behaved just as impeccably as the men in my university. So let's dismiss this idea as simply unconvincing.

Different intersections

A second possible explanation is that the experiences on the blog are from women who are discriminated against not (just) because they are women, but because they are working-class, transgender, people of colour, disabled, or some other reason, whereas I am a white woman who doesn't tick any other boxes where discrimination often occurs. So in many ways, as a white cisgender, able bodied person I am in the overwhelming majority, whereas others may not be. It may be that men's attitudes towards me is markedly different from their attitude towards black women, Asian women, disabled women, trans women, and so on. This is possible, but it seems highly implausible that the pleasant and welcoming male philosophers I know would suddenly change when a woman of colour, trans, disabled or whatever appears on the scene. One reason why I am convinced that this change in behaviour doesn't occur is that I have been in lectures and conferences where there have been women of colour and other minorities in the audience, and a white man at the front, and I would say none of the men have behaved inappropriately or in a sexist way. But hey, I suppose I have to admit that it's possible that some men might have Jeckyl-and-Hyde personalities whereby they behave impeccably when in a public setting, but offensively when in private. I just don't believe that this is true of the men I know. And even if it is true, then the difficulty is not specifically being a woman in philosophy, but being a trans woman in philosophy, a woman of colour in philosophy, and so on.

Different foci (confirmation bias)

It is possible that the women on BAWIP and I simply focus on different  things. I don't believe I'm in a sexist environment, and so any sexist comments that are said simply don't make it onto my radar, whereas someone who does believe they are in a sexist environment would pick up on even tiny instances of sexism. This seems like quite a plausible possibility to me. But is it that I'm getting lots of false negatives, or that the women on the Being a Woman in Philosophy blog are getting lots of false positives?

Perhaps 'false' is an inappropriate term, and there is no mind-independent fact about whether x is offensive or sexist; perhaps x is offensive iff someone believes it's offensive? (That's an issue I'll explore another time.) It does seem possible that people who are already feeling discriminated against, harassed or in a 'chilly climate' due to their sex would be more attuned to noticing sexist comments; this is a confirmation bias, and I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how confirmation bias can disrupt our objectivity. if these women are having a confirmation bias, then the incidents may be out of proportion or misinterpreted. ...But I am also susceptible to confirmation bias, and so perhaps I really am oblivious to sexism right in front of me? I don't think I am oblivious, but that's the nature of being oblivious, I suppose.

If I think really hard, I can recall experiences which, with a fair amount of spin, could be framed as sexist. For example: people accidentally referring to the author of a paper as 'he' even though it was written by a woman; people using male pronouns when talking about a generic philosopher; using male pronouns in written work. I wouldn't call any of these sexism; the only reason I mention them is that I've heard other people describe them as sexist. I'm not convinced that they are sexist - in fact, I've done all of these things myself. Does this mean that the reason I don't perceive the problem is because I'm part of the problem? I don't think it does, but again, perhaps I am just oblivious - and oblivious to the fact that I'm oblivious. Perhaps my definition of sexism is just different to others' (although many, but not all of the experiences detailed on the BAWIP blog are, even by my reckoning, quite clear examples of blatant and unacceptable sexism and sexual harassment).

So I think it's really quite plausible and likely that other women notice sexism where I don't notice it; whether the sexism genuinely exists or not seems something of a grey area. I've definitely had conversations (outside of philosophy) where it was clear to me that A was being disdainful towards B, yet in private discussions with B, it became evident that B didn't notice or didn't believe that A was being disdainful. Without further information, it's not clear whether B or I was correct about the behaviour of A. But this sort of occurrence could plausibly explain why my experience of being a woman in philosophy differs so fundamentally from those described on the BAWIP blog. But I think that confirmation bias alone doesn't explain the sheer volume of instances described on the BAWIP blog.

Cherry-picking

I think cherry-picking is a fair criticism to be made of a blog which collects sexist experiences from women in philosophy, and gathers them together all in one place. If every woman who works in philosophy for say 30 years experiences a single instance of sexism and shares it to the blog, the blog would have reams and reams of material - thousands and thousands of examples. But would one experience per woman per career truly constitute a pervasive sexist climate in philosophy? I don't believe that it would. That's not to mitigate or belittle the genuine and sometimes harrowing experiences detailed on the blog, but we need to remember that they have been cherry-picked because they are so sexist. When I first read the blog, I actually thought they were all the experiences of one woman (I was horrified!) - but they aren't. They are the collected anecdotes of goodness knows how many women. That doesn't make them any less disturbing or any more acceptable, but if they are set against a backdrop of almost universally good experiences of women working alongside men, they lose some of their potency.

Look! A red apple!

Cherry-picking is such a problematic venture when trying to fairly represent the experiences of an entire group. I'm not wholly clear on whether the BAWIP blog is aiming to fairly represent the experiences of all women in philosophy, or whether it is merely trying to gather together some of the worst problems with gender inequality. If the latter, then my argument here has little weight to it, but the title of the blog, Being a Woman in Philosophy implies the former - that it speaks for all women, and shows what it is like to be a woman in philosophy. If it really is intending to show the daily reality for all or even most women in philosophy, then I think it probably fails. If I had no idea about what it was like to be a woman in philosophy, and I read the blog to find out, I don't think it would give me an accurate picture of the reality for most women. I know for sure that it does not describe my experiences at all; it's at the other end of the spectrum. So I think cherry-picking goes a long way towards explaining why my experiences are so different from those detailed on the blog.

The repercussions and the future

Do some men in philosophy make occasional sexist remarks or actions? Yeah, some probably do. But the vast, vast majority of men in philosophy that I have met - and men outside of philosophy for that matter - are kind, decent, friendly, professional, and not sexist.

The BAWIP blog may inadvertently be contributing to the very problem it seeks to eradicate: gender imbalance and gender inequality. Suppose that a 17-year old girl is considering studying philosophy for her degree, and suppose that a female MA student is considering doing a PhD in philosophy, and suppose that a female PhD student is considering following a career as an academic philosopher - and that all three of these women read the BAWIP blog to find out what it's "really" like to be a woman working in philosophy. It's plausible to think that some such women will read the blog, and run a mile. Why would any sensible woman want to enter into a career which is so horrendously sexist, where women are frequent victims of sexual harassment and even sexual violence? The BAWIP blog probably puts at least some young women off studying philosophy, and puts some women off a career in philosophy; this will only contribute to the under-representation of women in philosophy. Under-representation of a particular group is a recipe for discrimination, and so it continues. This is not a foregone certainty, but I think the blog may put some women off a career which they could otherwise have been well-suited to... and if it does, that's quite sad.

Of course, some people will argue that there is something to be gained from making any acts of bigotry and harassment public; that in making them public, we are better able to guard against them. I can see why people find such an argument appealing, but I am not wholly convinced by it. If one experiences harassment, discrimination or bigotry, one should absolutely report it to the Head of Department if not the police, but I think there is little to be gained from going public (ish) on a blog.

For my own case, I will continue to expect and look for the best in the men (and women) around me, and I won't try to add spin and reinterpret every action as if it's one motivated by sexism. I won't gather together all the tiny minutiae of times when someone referred to a philosopher as 'he' by accident, or didn't include "enough" women on the reading list for a module. I haven't seen any sexism until now, and I doubt I will see any in the near future. If that means I am happy in ignorance, then I am content indeed to be happy in ignorance.

Writing - or writing up?

I've been working on my PhD for about 2 weeks now. I've bought some subject-related books (about care, AI, and the robotic revolution) and I've bought 3 books about PhD research. The books I've bought are:

• How to write a thesis - Rowena Murray 
• Authoring a PhD - Patrick Dunleavy
• Writing your thesis - Paul Oliver

...and of course I've chatted to numerous students who are currently studying for - or about to start studying for - their doctorate. And something which has come up both in the books and when chatting to other students is this thing called "writing up". I admit I haven't read the above books from cover to cover, so it's possible that they will solve the mystery for me. But I am, at the moment, at a loss: I just don't see what people mean by 'writing up' as though it is something fundamentally different from writing or editing. I've started to wonder whether others work in a different (better?) way than the way I work.

Typically, this is how I would write something; it's the approach I've used to write textbooks, it's how I wrote all my MA essays, including the dissertation, and it's the approach I intend to use to write my PhD thesis:

1. Have an idea and make some handwritten notes in my notebook
2. Make more substantial notes / a plan on the computer (eg a 500 word plan of the steps my argument will take)
3. Read some relevant articles and make notes on the PDFs
4. Transfer some quotes / arguments to my essay to support my argument or as something to argue against (and edit my argument so as to agree or disagree with the literature)
5. Refine my question and argument by writing more, and deleting less useful parts
6. Repeat steps 3-5 a few times
7. Write introduction and conclusion
8. Decide that my essay is almost finished, and proofread for typos, formatting, and other small errors
9. Repeat step 8 several times until I can read through it without making any corrections
10. It's finished!

Which, if any, of these steps is 'writing up'? It seems to me that none of them are. Sure, some steps involve writing, but the study texts and PhD students talk as though 'writing up' is something distinct from mere writing. For example, I've heard PhD students say things like "I'm in my third year now, so I've done all the work; now I'm just doing the writing up" or "I'm allowing myself six months for writing up" and I find myself wondering: if they 'write up' in their final year, what have been doing the rest of the time? Reading I presume, but then does this mean that they read for 2.5 years without doing any writing, and then do all their writing in one go? Who knows?

Perhaps one day in my PhD journey I'll fathom the difference
between writing and editing, and writing 'up'.

I'm two weeks in and I have written about 3000 words so far. It's not amazing; it's not polished; it will probably be unrecognisable if it makes it into the finished thesis, having gone through several edits and re-edits - or it might not make it into the finished thesis at all. But I have done some writing (and some reading) and I will keep adding to my writing, improving what I've done and adding clarifications and detail, until it is done. If that's how I work (and it is how I work!) then it seems that I won't be doing any 'writing up' at all. 

Perhaps 'writing up' is more relevant to non-philosophical subjects (xphi notwithstanding), where a PhD involves a literature review, an explanation of methodology, results gathered and interpreted, and then conclusions drawn? Perhaps in such disciplines one spends a lot of time reading and explaining literature (without much argument of their own), collecting and analysing data, and then the 'writing up' is something that can (only?) be done afterwards, to draw together all these different threads and create a finished piece?

The thing is that I've dabbled in xphi (a piece of MA coursework I wrote about trustworthiness) and I was writing throughout. I wrote my argument and methodology, and a tentative interpretation of early results as I went along: I didn't just gather the data and then 'write up' my work as a separate process. This meant that once all the results were in, I only needed to edit and tweak my interpretation of the results rather than write it from scratch, meaning that there was no distinct time when I 'wrote up' my essay. I guess maybe my approach wasn't best practice, or maybe there are some disciplines that simply can't do things the way I did my Xphi study?

So it seems to me that there are only these two possibilities:

EITHER:

• Writing a Philosophy thesis is fundamentally different from other PhD theses

OR

• The way I work is fundamentally different from the way other students work

Perhaps I am displaying a woeful naïvety, and over the next year or two I'll have some sort of 'writing up epiphany' whereupon I'll realise what writing up entails... or perhaps I will do things my own way, only to discover all too late that my work is shoddy because I merely wrote it and edited it and proofread it, but I never wrote it 'up'. Because despite my having pondered this for the last week or so, I still cannot fathom how 'writing up' is a thing in itself, distinct from writing and editing.

Beginning my PhD

Secure funding from M3C for PhD study - Check!
Attend orientation residential session by M3C - Check!
Start work on PhD --- umm...

So, it's the end of September, and it's time for me to start work on my PhD. Having been on the residential session through M3C earlier this week, I've met numerous other students at the start of their PhD journey. We have been warned not to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of what we need to produce (i.e. an 80,000-100,000 word thesis), and to be honest, I don't really feel overwhelmed by it, so that's a good thing. I've produced work of similar lengths before, and when it's broken down into chapters, and I need to produce 12,000 words about a particular idea, that is not overwhelming at all. Producing quantity of work has never been a problem for me.

...It's producing quality of work which is my difficulty! But even that is something which I can evidently do, based on some of my MA work, so quality is something that I can produce, given enough time - hopefully.

My issue is this: I don't know what I'm going to argue. Some people are setting out on their PhD journey with a clear understanding of what they are going to argue. For example, they're going to argue that abortion due to foetal abnormality is an act of hermeneutical injustice, or that the work of Chaucer helps us better understand Islamic radicalisation of teenage boys, or that machine-generated musical compositions can improve the overall wellbeing of people with autism. But I'm not in such a clear position. I know my PhD will establish (or attempt to establish) what consent is, and how an AI robot ought to conceive of consent - and the same for harm. But as things stand, I don't know how an AI robot ought to conceive of consent or harm. Hopefully that will come with time, because "I don't know; it's all a matter of opinion" isn't a good conclusion for a PhD thesis!

Massive thanks to M3C (soon to be M4C) for all the
lovely money and incredible opportunities to conduct
awesome research and make a difference in the world.

I'm starting out now, looking at some legal conceptions of consent (ie laws on sexual offences) and I'll read some articles on consent and take it from there. For me, the joy of philosophy is and has always been the search for answers, more so than the answers themselves. It's just as well really, as definitive answers in philosophy are as rare as rocking horse sh!t. But I am so excited to be starting out on PhD study, it really is like a dream come true for me. Having been to the M3C residential the other day and rubbed shoulders with people who are far younger and far more intelligent than me, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling a slight sense of impostor syndrome. But I guess somebody thinks I'm good enough to do this, so objectively, I probably am good enough. I am just so, so pleased that I'm being fully funded by M3C (I'm resisting the urge to say 'lucky' as it implies a randomness or lack of desert which is not a principle of AHRC funding). So for the next 3 years I get to study what I want to study: can there be anything better in life? I don't think so... well, except maybe chocolate!

Let the search for answers commence!!

Finishing off my MA thesis

When I was pregnant with my son, it was a problem-free pregnancy and I didn't mind being the size of a house and having a baby jumping around inside me. But as I reached my due date, I started to want him out; not just because I was looking forward to motherhood, but because I was just sick of being pregnant. A week after my due date, I was REALLY sick of being pregnant and I just wanted the pregnancy to be over with. He finally arrived 10 days after the due date, and although I'd enjoyed pregnancy, I was so glad it was finally over with. (Of course, I soon realised that motherhood was a thousand times harder than pregnancy, but that's another story!)

I feel the same way now about my MA thesis as I did about pregnancy: it's been fun, but I want it over with. On the other hand, it feels like there's just not enough time to get it finished to a really good standard, even though I've been working on it for an eternity. I guess that's another parallel with pregnancy: no matter how much preparation you do, you're never quite ready for it.

My argument has generated far more interest than I expected it to; I thought people might be squeamish about talking about sexbots, but I should have credited people with more maturity. My work has been a talking point among my friends, family, and other academics, so of that I am grateful. At least my work is not so obscure that it's impossible to explain to the lay person, and every couple of weeks I see a sexbot related news article or something that someone sends me via email. I've pushed "not safe for work" to a whole new level, with people sending me all kinds of grisly stories.

I'm hopeful (but not expectant) that my work can be published in a journal. There's very little work on sexbots in the philosophical literature, so that is a point in my favour, but novelty shouldn't (and won't) be mistaken for quality, so I'm still going to have to produce something of a really high standard if I want it out there on Philpapers. Hopefully my MA thesis is a reasonable quality, but I'm so close to it I just can't tell any more. I've spotted a couple of holes in my argument but I'm not sure whether they are insurmountable failures or minor imperfections. They seem glaringly obvious to me because I've been embroiled in it for so long. Maybe others won't really notice them... or maybe they will. I suppose that there can't be many philosophy papers - if any - which present an argument so perfectly that no one has any criticisms of it. (Gettier's paper is the only one I can think of which comes anywhere close to universal acceptance.) So maybe a flawless argument is an impossible, unachievable goal to strive for.

Anyway, it's due in tomorrow, so there's not a lot I can do between now and then if my work is rubbish. I might have to resort to crossing my fingers until I get the grade back.

Best. Conference. Ever.

A couple of days ago, I returned home from what was, as the title of this post suggests, the best conference ever. Now admittedly, I've not been to loads and loads of conferences (maybe 10?) so I don't have much frame of reference, but I think I can say with some confidence that this was the best conference ever. I fear that few or no conferences will ever come close to the very high standard which has now been set.

I shan't name names, because it may only embarrass those involved, and I wouldn't want them to be the targets of conference-envy (is that even a thing?!) Anyway, the conference was held in Portland, Oregon, on the west coast of the USA. I think America is a fantastic country anyway; I've spent around 5 months there in total, and have visited 8 States (Oregon is number 9!)

The 5-day conference is an annual event, meaning that several of the attendees have known each other for some time - some for as long as 25 years - although I didn't realise this until a few days in. As one might expect from a conference, it involved different speakers presenting papers on a range of related (ish) topics; presentations began at 9am each day, and some days continued on until 9pm (other days we finished earlier at 5, 6, or 7pm). So on paper it was a fairly gruelling schedule... but almost all of the papers were really interesting, and so it didn't feel gruelling at all. There were about 25 or so people there at any one time, and we ate lunch together, we went out for dinner together in the evenings, and for drinks afterwards, and they were so welcoming and so much fun to be around. Sometimes when there is an established group of friends, it all gets a bit cliquey and newcomers are sidelined (sometimes unintentionally) as old friends want to catch up with one another, but this really didn't feel like that at all: I was welcomed into the group with open arms, and it felt like I was meeting up with a group of friends I'd known for years. Ah, they were great people!

The people I met were - almost without exception - left-wing liberals, atheists, Trump-hating, anti-gun, immigrant-sympathetic, they believed that climate change is happening, and children should be vaccinated. The news (or is it "Fake News"??) would have me believe that Americans are none of these things. At any rate, no one expressed any right-wing, creationist, Trump-supporting... (etc) views. I guess I wasn't seeing a representative sample of the population, but I'm not complaining.

Conferences I've been to in the UK have primarily consisted of people clicking through a powerpoint and talking about it, but it would seem that the American style of presentation is somewhat different: "presenting a paper" can mean to literally read through an essay word-for-word (with the standard 30 minutes of Q&A afterwards, of course). My style of presentation felt somewhat at odds with this standard: I suppose that 14 years of teaching A-Levels has got me used to a more informal style of presentation which might appear low-brow or inarticulate to some viewers, so that was a concern... but thankfully my concern was unwarranted and a couple of other delegates described my presentation as "a breath of fresh air" and "the highlight of the week". A wife of one of the speakers said to me "I'm a non-philosopher, and I can tell you, I find so many presentations dull because I just don't understand them -- but I understood yours! It was great!" I'm taking that as a compliment.

Portland is a great city, and felt really safe. I've been to New York City and I did not feel safe there; once darkness descended I felt anxious that I might get attacked or shot! OK, I was 20 and it was my first time travelling alone, but still, there seemed to be a lot of gang members on the streets at night. But Portland was really lovely place, and I didn't worry at all about getting shot!

So overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I felt genuinely sad at the end of it. It's going to be pretty hard for any conference to top it. However, it's an annual event, so maybe I'll manage to attend again next year...? To quote my sister (who was being sarcastic when she heard I'd be travelling all the way to the USA to present my paper) "people must really want to hear about sex robots!"