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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
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www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:01.56)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Polymath World Channel where we're talking to academics and scientists and engineers and researchers and astronauts from all kinds of different fields about their discipline and about work on the frontiers of human knowledge. And I'm delighted today to be doing another one on philosophy with a new friend of mine who I've had the pleasure of getting to know just up the road from me in Oxford.
Dr. Amna Wiston, it's wonderful to be with you today. Thanks so much for joining me.
Amna Whiston (00:32.444)
Thank you so much, Sam, for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
Polymath World (00:37.304)
Yeah, I the pleasure of working with you last month and you did some debates with Professor Alex Carter on artificial intelligence. And it really struck me the breadth of your work in philosophy. And I thought we have to have this conversation. So why don't you tell us who you are and what you do?
Amna Whiston (00:57.03)
Well, I am a philosopher specializing in ethics and philosophy of mind. I have not always been philosopher or perhaps I should say I have always been philosopher because to illustrate my dear mother who sadly passed away two weeks ago used to say to me when I was maybe 10 or 8 stop philosophizing.
And what I realize now, as I go older, that she didn't mean to discourage me from philosophizing. On the contrary, she was recognizing the fact that I was doing it, even at that young age. But I did not pursue philosophy professionally till I was in my late 30s, actually. so my background is I'm from Sarajevo, which used to be
be part of Yugoslavia, now it's Bosnia and Herzegovina and I came to UK maybe something like six months before the conflict.
started in Bosnia and I had to just reorganize myself. I was studying economics, which I really did not like at all. And I completed the first two years and I decided to just to take a break and come to England. And the rest of the history is history. So I stayed here and I got married and had a career, publishing career. I had children and sort of publishing career, managing things, you
as best as I could and then suddenly sort of towards the end of my publishing career I was working in a publicity department, was head of PR department.
Amna Whiston (02:55.496)
My last book was a wonderful book by Stephen Law who you acquainted with and he was called The War for Children's Minds and he was kind of that kind of canting take on you know this kind of appeal for future generations to to take ownership of their own thoughts. And I was really pleased that that was my last book that I worked my last project that I worked on.
Polymath World (03:03.222)
What?
Amna Whiston (03:25.49)
During that time, lots of publishing houses, and this is in this case Routledge,
were undergoing transformations and mergers etc. So my department was made redundant and there was such a blessing. My whole department closed down because they obviously offered me quite a good deal and I was very happy to take it because at that very crucial point I realised that I can no longer run away.
from philosophy because it's just following me. And as I illustrated by briefly summarizing Stephen Law's book, The War for Children's Minds, I was fortunate in Routledge to work with lots of really good philosophers and inspiring philosophers, including the late Mary Midgley.
who was such a experience, publishing experience for me. Nonetheless, though, I moved across and I did two masters in two years at University of Reading. Sounds familiar to you, Sam?
Polymath World (04:42.05)
Yeah, love that.
Amna Whiston (04:43.528)
So the first one was political theory and the second one was philosophy and then after that I did PhD in philosophy which I didn't complete that long ago, seven, eight years ago, something like that. So since I've just been working full-time as a philosophy tutor and researcher and I'm very happy to be where I am.
Polymath World (05:11.598)
That's wonderful. So I got a couple of questions there. Firstly, were you one of those children that was just always asking, why, why, like, but why? You know, to the madness of their parents. That was sort of your philosophical child experience.
Amna Whiston (05:14.973)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (05:20.52)
you
Amna Whiston (05:31.054)
Yes, partly, but also now kind of thinking back, I think I always had this sort Hegelian thing in my mind before I even read any Hegel, that everything is and isn't at the same time. Today's, now it's like 11 o'clock here, but somewhere else it isn't. So that kind of dialectic was always...
tormenting in a sense, you know, that I could not really understand why am I puzzled with these questions? Why is the world in the way it is? And why we ask these questions that endlessly, that we just cannot have a clear answer to? And that's the beauty of philosophy, kind of to keep asking better and better questions rather than reaching the final destination and that's it.
Polymath World (06:18.946)
Yeah, it's...
Polymath World (06:27.372)
Yeah, think in that sense, philosophy is just an innate human subject that it just comes naturally to children and we either squash it or we open it up. And thankfully for many of us it's been opened up. You also mentioned getting two masters in two years. Were you doing two full-time one-year masters or were you doing them simultaneously?
Amna Whiston (06:39.964)
Hmm.
Amna Whiston (06:46.396)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (06:53.224)
No, I was doing them separately. So one year, the first year was the political theory and the second one was philosophy masters.
Yes, I I kind of learned a little bit more after the first master, the masters that I really wanted to go further than just doing masters. And because I don't have an undergraduate degree in philosophy, it made perfect sense to do the second one, which then was sufficient to pursue the PhD.
Polymath World (07:35.544)
Yeah, so your masters in philosophy, was it quite broad? Were you studying multiple things within it and what did you do your dissertation on?
Amna Whiston (07:46.312)
So I was always interested in moral motivation and this debate about whether reason by itself can motivate action or whether on the contrary in addition to our cognitive capacities we have to be
also motivated by our desires, by our emotions, etc. Relatedly, that invites this question that cognitiveists and non-cognitiveists in moral philosophy have been asking for very long time. What does it mean to make moral judgement? Is moral judgement a kind of belief?
Polymath World (08:43.726)
Hmm.
Amna Whiston (08:43.752)
or is it more like a desire? So part of my masters was really focusing on that non-cognitivist debate. The second part of that debate obviously is the metaphysical one, is the question of whether there are more facts out there or whether perhaps as, know, error theorists...
Polymath World (08:46.712)
Wow.
Amna Whiston (09:09.23)
argue yes we are making moral judgments out of cognitive states, typically beliefs, but we're always misfiring so there are no such facts and we cannot just not think in this way because you know that's how we are made. yeah that was kind of the pretty much the focus on my second masters, the questions about the nature of moral judgment and motivation.
Polymath World (09:26.478)
Hmm.
Polymath World (09:39.63)
I can't wait to get into that. Reading is a wonderful university. I know I'm very biased. I'm there now. I'm not in philosophy. I'm doing DNA repair and genetics. But Anthony Blue was at Reading. A lot of great people have been there. It's a wonderful university to study and I really recommend it to people. Did you do your PhD at Reading as well?
Amna Whiston (09:44.891)
app sneaking.
Amna Whiston (09:50.161)
Yes.
I you.
Amna Whiston (09:59.184)
Yes.
Amna Whiston (10:03.792)
I did indeed, yes. So I was very fortunate to work with some very, very inspiring philosophers that include the late...
Philip Stratton Lake who passed away a years ago who was one of my PhD supervisors and my second supervisor is also a very very inspiring philosopher.
Max the Gainsford who specializes in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language but he who actually drew my attention to sometimes when you write you're not so much aware that you you're heading in a certain direction and that's exactly what happened he pointed out to me but look you know the way you write about
ethical issues is touching on the philosophy of mind questions, the nature of belief, nature of moral belief, nature of emotions and the role of emotions in moral conduct.
So subsequently, as I said, I was very fortunate to be guided by these two special philosophers who were my PhD supervisors. And my master supervisor, who left Reading, he's an air theorist, I should mention him, too, Bart Strohmer. He left the first year of my PhD, which is when Max Deggans' foot took over.
Amna Whiston (11:49.384)
So that was my PhD thesis was shaping in that way that it became sort of intersection between philosophy of mind, model philosophy, and a little bit of neuroscience because I was interested in that kind of scientific import and the new discoveries by neuroscientists.
most prominently, De Masio and his work. So yes, that was my PhD at Reading time, which was a long time because I was still working part-time and had two children and family, so it was slower than I wanted, but eventually I got there.
Polymath World (12:39.246)
Yeah, I'm in the same boat right now, finishing one at the start of another while having three children. I've to ask you here, I wasn't awarded my first degree until I was 35. I'm 41 now and I've got nine of them, so it's quite mad. I've got nine university qualifications, two undergraduate degrees.
Amna Whiston (12:47.75)
well.
Amna Whiston (12:56.135)
Right.
Amna Whiston (13:01.158)
You have nine watts, sorry.
Amna Whiston (13:06.792)
Wow. Congratulations.
Polymath World (13:08.258)
Two undergraduate degrees, four masters, two PhDs, two certificates. no one should do that. No one should ever do that. That's too much. yeah, we're the Polymath World channel for a reason. But did you find the experience of studying philosophy much richer coming to it later in life than perhaps you might have if you just went in as an 18 year old?
Amna Whiston (13:13.69)
Wow! Wow! And you're only 41!
Amna Whiston (13:24.444)
Right.
Amna Whiston (13:38.864)
I think that is right. mean, opinions vary. Some people would say, well, the young minds, you know, they are not fully shaped and formed, so they absorb more and they are just in a better position epistemologically to achieve, you know...
achieve whatever they want to achieve philosophically, academically, than when you start like myself and you, although you started earlier in terms of know how old were you when you gained you know all of these nine qualifications. But I feel that this is right for me so perhaps it is partly subjective.
There's no kind of all fit one formula. So perhaps for people like me and you, it is better to more seriously pursue this kind of career later in life than earlier. I mean, you might.
Polymath World (14:48.31)
Yeah, and you work now with Stephen Law at Oxford University in the Continuing Education. Do you do work elsewhere as well or is it, I can't say is it just Oxford because it's Oxford University, one of the best universities in the world, do you also teach elsewhere?
Amna Whiston (14:54.716)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Amna Whiston (15:11.494)
Yes, so in addition to Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, I work with Alex Carter in the University of Cambridge Continuing Education, now Professional and Continuing Education. And I typically, I supervise the students who are doing their diplomas, certificates in the research.
Polymath World (15:27.32)
Yes, pace.
Amna Whiston (15:40.232)
and art and research and theory and practice. So that is a really nice job to do. It doesn't occupy more than maybe 20 % of my working time, but it is nice to do that. As a third thing, I work for an organization called Oxer Prospects.
and they are facilitating the study abroad program mostly with higher education institutions in China in the UK. I have done...
set over the probably past seven years maybe, I've done lectures, seminars, online tutorials, face-to-face lectures because they have some programs as well.
But when I first started working for them, I was approached following the lecture on, I can't remember what the lecture was on, I was approached, that was probably just a year after I did my Viva, and they invited me, that would have been a post-doc, which I...
you know, didn't have. They invited me to Jilin University in China to teach undergraduates Kant's philosophy for six months. And I was very happy to do that. during the process of them sorting out my visa application, we reached the point when they were just about to book my flight.
Amna Whiston (17:30.706)
to gilling and guess what happened just before they both died? It's a lockdown, the first lockdown. So I never went, but you know, had they done all of those maybe four weeks earlier, I would have ended up in lockdown in China, which yes, it's just really strange how it happened.
Polymath World (17:34.542)
COVID?
Polymath World (17:50.926)
Gosh, yes.
Polymath World (17:56.302)
Yeah. Well, this is really great. mean, you're teaching as a tutor or a lecturer at both Oxford and Cambridge in the continuing education. So you're teaching mature students, which is wonderful. It's great joy, a great experience. And so we've been through your career journey. I'd like to talk about your research and your research interests now.
Amna Whiston (18:06.994)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (18:14.182)
Yes, absolutely.
Amna Whiston (18:24.786)
Mm-hmm.
Polymath World (18:25.23)
They're very clearly set out in ethics and philosophy of mind I'm quite interested in in the areas of intersection that you might have there, but Could you you've already told us a little bit about your the moral motivations aspect? But could you tell us a bit about your research on ethics?
Amna Whiston (18:35.974)
Yes.
Amna Whiston (18:41.896)
Mm-hmm.
My primary question is about the role of emotion in moral conduct. That brings a preliminary question, namely the question about the nature of emotion itself.
Now, as we know, Plato has left us for many, many years and centuries, in fact, with this kind of devastating possibility that emotion is just a feeling that can overwhelm us, that we need to be in control of, we need to, to the extent that we are rational, we control our emotions according to Plato's philosophy.
Of course, what happened much later on the part of philosophical research as well as scientific research, people that I mentioned before, most prominently, the Masio, have discovered the way in which the emotional and reasoning processes are intertwined, inseparable, in other words.
And that kind of forced philosophers, at least some philosophers, to perhaps revise the conceptual schemes and to kind of take into account this new research from scientists about the way in which reasoning and emotional faculties are actually working together rather than in opposition. So...
Amna Whiston (20:32.144)
And that raises further questions about whether perhaps in epistemological sense we miss a lot if we are emotionally closed off. And so the reason why we don't do the right things is perhaps because we're just not open in the right way emotionally.
Polymath World (20:58.242)
Hmm.
Amna Whiston (21:00.616)
So that's kind of, I want to work more.
Polymath World (21:00.877)
Would you?
Amna Whiston (21:06.312)
So the circumstances under which we can say that we are emotionally better equipped to deal with the ethical issues. Because we know that emotions are motivating, just like desires. But what makes emotion appropriate? What makes our emotional response right?
It's not the same like if we have a belief then belief can be false or true But emotions are more mysterious more unique kind of mental state
Some philosophers who work on the philosophy of emotions would not even still now recognize that emotion is a third category in addition to two types of mental states, namely beliefs and desires. So some philosophers will say, well, emotion is just maybe perhaps combination of the both.
Polymath World (22:05.472)
Amna Whiston (22:06.12)
But my way of thinking is that emotion is a third category and although it is challenging to carve out that region that we call emotion, ultimately it is a sugenery kind of mental state. So that's my kind of, if you like, theory of emotion that I work with when I approach these questions in ethics.
Polymath World (22:33.518)
I don't know many people who subscribe to it. In fact, to be honest, think I've only ever met one. But I've got to ask you about emotivism here. BF Skinner, I believe it is. The idea that morals and ethics are just an emotional reaction. Like when you're saying that murder is wrong, you're basically just saying, murder. What do you think about that?
Amna Whiston (22:45.339)
No.
Amna Whiston (22:54.514)
Yes.
Amna Whiston (23:00.338)
So, emotivism is the original form of non-cognitivism. So, non-cognitivists argue that moral judgments are non-cognitive states, typically desires and emotions.
And AJ Ayer is the proponent of this kind of school, of non-cognitiveist, emotive school, that kind of makes sense of the motivational story, because then if you subscribe to that kind of theory, then you are better equipped to explain moral motivation.
Nonetheless, and cognitivists who argue that moral judgments are beliefs have more difficulties with explaining the nature of our motivation because ordinary beliefs don't typically motivate us. So if moral judgments are beliefs, what makes them so special? What makes them different from ordinary beliefs?
So, but cognitiveists, think, have an upper hand in accounting for the objectivity of moral thought, the fact that we have and continue to converge on certain ideas. The nature of this disagreement, moral disagreement, drives us more towards realism, towards cognitivism, et cetera. And also,
As the non-cognitivism debate has developed, more more philosophers are gravitating towards cognitivism.
Amna Whiston (24:52.712)
Timothy Hogan for example, his philosopher who calls his philosophy, cognitiveism, cognitiveist, emotivism or something like that. So in other words, the new non-cognitivists and that includes Simon Blackburn.
for example, they are trying to accommodate or incorporate some ideas that cognitivists have put forward in order to improve on what is otherwise the initial stage of non-cognitivist development, namely the Ayers' emotivism, which has met several objections.
Polymath World (25:42.348)
Yeah, it seems a little mad to me that my objection to child abuse would be just an emotional reaction. You know, it's nothing wrong with it. I'm just getting emotional about it. It's just my personal dislike. Yeah, I really struggle to reconcile that with the real actual world we live in. But I know we could talk about ethics and this all day. I want to make sure I give some due time to your work on philosophy of mind as well.
Amna Whiston (26:02.097)
Mm-hmm.
Polymath World (26:11.214)
something a little closer to my world. But if you have something to add, we're going to...
Amna Whiston (26:11.687)
Yes.
But if I could just interrupt you, so I mean, but that is what you say is consistent with cognitivism. So if you see, you know, child abuse, this is how you respond. Introspectively, you know very well that this is your emotional response. But then, like I said before, doesn't that just tell us something about the cognitive aspect of emotion itself? It's not all about subjective feeling.
know, emotions might have, you know, sometimes or even often misguide us, but ultimately they are, they can be appropriately identifying their object, in this case, the abuse. So it is not just that you have this response, there is a reason why you have this response, because your emotions are, in this case, guiding rather than misguiding. Sorry, I just wanted to...
Polymath World (27:07.436)
Yeah, okay. No, no, that's very good. That's very good. Yeah, I mean, I did a theology degree and I did a theology masters, but I haven't spent a lot of time in ethics outside of that. And it's hard to sort of break down what's instinctive and really understand it. But this is why everyone should do a bit of ethics as part of their philosophy training.
Amna Whiston (27:32.477)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Polymath World (27:36.858)
Everyone should do some philosophy of mind as well. You've brought up neuroscience as well quite a lot, is informing a lot of your research, which is wonderful. I love where these things converge. So please tell us a bit more about your work on philosophy of mind and your areas of research.
Amna Whiston (27:39.72)
Thank
Amna Whiston (27:44.603)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (27:57.256)
Well, like many philosophers and I think Alex Carter in the other podcast mentioned that too. lot of philosophers start by this kind of being enchanted or puzzled by the Cartesian philosophy, which is so important as a starting point, I think, for anyone interested in philosophy of mind and at the same time so objectionable.
And the kogito itself, I think therefore exists, is subject to...
lots of objections, including questions whether it includes fallacy, for example, just because it is true that my thinking is the essence of my existence, you may not follow, that an entity that doesn't exist doesn't think.
But that's just a very brief illustration of these kind of debates, continuous debates about the merits and disadvantages of Cartesian philosophy. The key problem obviously is the interaction is the problem. If they can't thought, mind and body are separate existences, then what explains their interaction and so on.
you
Amna Whiston (29:31.752)
So there are lots of reasons to move beyond Cartesian dualism and subscribe to something like, perhaps, property dualism. But property dualism is not really satisfying when we think about the issue with location. So you're just locating problem somewhere else, which is the relation between properties.
So if it's not the substance then it's how the properties of you know, the mental and material properties interact. So that doesn't seem satisfying. Then we move on to something like epiphenomenalism according to which well, yeah, we shouldn't deny the existence of mental properties. It's just that they don't have a causal attraction. Well, why are you in the business of talking about it? You know, what's the point of
talking about something like mind if mind doesn't really have any causal role to play.
So the monist positions are, I think, something that might be comparatively more plausible. But how to articulate this monist position is a very complex question. What I would like to stay away from, and I think that it's unlikely that I will stray in that direction, is the physicalist, the kind of this ultimate physicalist position.
the place occupied by philosophers such as Churchlands.
Polymath World (31:22.178)
Yeah.
Amna Whiston (31:22.2)
for in particular Churchland who have this kind of very attractive idea that the mind as we conceive of it, it doesn't really exist. So we talk about mind because it helps us navigate our way through the world. But actually it's just a psychological concept that we're gonna eventually have to get rid of because the science will explain everything.
including kind of this puzzle, just like the science can explain now why our conception of witches was misguided, something like that. And I think that is the devastating prospect. And why it's devastating? Because it will just not answer the question of meaning.
what things mean for us is one thing and what the thing is is quite another. In other words, we can have this expalatory level, physicalist level, they can have all of that, you scientists should be credited for doing your job. But that will still leave the question about what things mean for us.
separate from these kind of possible achievements in all the scientific or philosophically scientific level. So that's kind of a brief overview of how I see the mind and consciousness. As you could probably gather, I haven't made up my mind.
Polymath World (32:43.531)
and
Amna Whiston (33:05.424)
So I know you asked me a very kind of specific question that unfortunately I'm not in position to give you articulate full-fledged answer to. Other than saying it's somewhere between property dualism and monism.
Polymath World (33:08.141)
Ha
Polymath World (33:24.472)
Hmm. Well, if I can press you on what you might expect the outcome to be when it comes to consciousness, there seem to be two extremes, if I can call them extremes. On the one hand, there's the expectation that consciousness will just end up being an emergent phenomena from a byproduct of physical processes.
Amna Whiston (33:33.66)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (33:49.81)
Yeah.
Polymath World (33:53.782)
and maybe the emergent phenomena is mind or is ultimately physical. I'm quite skeptical on that. But basically it's just a byproduct, an emergent property. Or, the other side, consciousness is fundamental to the universe and you end up perhaps in a panpsychism position much like Philip Goff or others in the past, including Arthur Eddington who I did my doctrine on that.
Amna Whiston (33:53.896)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (34:06.856)
you
Amna Whiston (34:11.386)
now.
Amna Whiston (34:15.387)
now.
Galen Strassen.
Polymath World (34:23.426)
The consciousness is the fundamental background to reality. So, I mean, I'm not asking you to pick a camp, but where would you place yourself, maybe, and what do you expect the answer will end up being?
Amna Whiston (34:32.006)
Yeah.
Amna Whiston (34:38.632)
in the former camp, the consciousness is the immersion property. And although I'm very much, you know, I have very much...
sort of not intellectual affinity, but I recognize how powerful that kind of argument given by.
Philip Goff and Gailen Strossen about panpsychist argument. I recognize the intellectual pull towards that kind of argument because it just kind of offers this holistic picture. You can't just split the universe into, here is consciousness and now kind of in this stone there isn't that kind of thing. So it is very attractive as a position but only intellectually I think.
different kind of intuitions drive us also and think and reasoning processes so I'm more inclined to think that perhaps the consciousness understood as an emergent property is more likely.
Polymath World (35:41.102)
Hmm.
Polymath World (35:59.116)
Interesting. Yeah, I don't know where to end up, but I'm very skeptical of the idea that consciousness... I get more skeptical by the year that consciousness could be explained purely by physical processes or how you could test or measure it being an emergent property. You we have no idea what thoughts are. If we're talking about the redness of an apple, I can't cut up a bit of the
Amna Whiston (36:13.746)
Yeah.
Polymath World (36:27.97)
grey mush in my head and pointed it and go that's where the thought of the redness of an apple is. It's, you know, if I talk about a pair of mice wearing leather jackets juggling cheese, you know, we can pick that in our heads, but there's no gene sequence or, you know, quantum fluctuation or epiphenomenal, sort of epigenetics sort of thing.
Amna Whiston (36:44.466)
Yeah.
Polymath World (36:57.794)
like cellular process, I can say that's the code for thinking about two mice wearing leather jackets juggling cheese. That's it. So I'm very skeptical on that front, but you're the expert. Do you think we're quite close or still a long way away from finding an answer?
Amna Whiston (36:57.981)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (37:09.266)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (37:13.383)
Hmm.
Amna Whiston (37:21.864)
finding an answer to the question of what consciousness is.
Polymath World (37:28.29)
Yeah, the hard problem of consciousness.
Amna Whiston (37:31.4)
No, I don't think that we will ever solve that problem and I don't think we should. We could have, we can approximate it better.
Polymath World (37:40.293)
Could you elaborate on that?
Amna Whiston (37:46.564)
Because like with everything we keep moving in some kind of direction, whether we can call it progress. Some philosophers don't even believe in progress. But we keep moving and we are reformulating, reshaping.
know much more than we used to, thanks to the sciences, not just philosophy. But we might just rethink and re-conceptualize in order to just make sense of what we've learned. So we will learn more and then we have to make sense of whatever it is that we learn. And we will call it, this is consciousness.
Polymath World (38:30.926)
Hmm.
Polymath World (38:35.148)
Are there any other big open interesting questions in philosophy of mind that you look forward to or have piqued your interest?
Amna Whiston (38:48.808)
So one of my research projects is on happiness, the nature of happiness. It's such a kind of a widely discussed topic. And one of the reasons that I'm interested in that phenomena is that...
There is so much around that seem to me seem to be conflation between you know phenomena related phenomena such as well-being, flourishing, welfare and so on. And these you know terms are sometimes used implausibly interchangeably and
not just in philosophy but in areas such as policy making and...
health institutions. And I think that we as philosophers have a job to do, is, and has been, a lot has been written that I much admire. Fred Feldman's book on happiness, example, which attempts to disentangle these concepts that I've just mentioned. And my position is that somehow, not many philosophers think that happiness is an emotion.
some but not very few and this is my way of approaching the topic that in order to make sense of that very phenomena called happiness we need to distinguish it from attitudes for example so if I ask you are you happy then you might go through your mind and think like well I've achieved this I've done that so my attitude is positive
Amna Whiston (40:36.36)
But what you're telling me is that you should essentially be happy. But it's a further question whether you really are. Then you need to ask yourself, but do I really feel happy? And so then if you feel happy, even though you don't think you deserve happiness, then it seems well, happiness could be just a feeling. Or if you think you have reasons to be happy, then you have a sense of...
Polymath World (40:41.464)
Go.
Amna Whiston (41:03.932)
well-being but well-being is not happiness and so on so forth and so the way that I think about these issues is to characterize happiness as an emotion and like with every other emotion if
If you subscribe to this idea that emotion is combination of thought and feeling that cannot be separated and pulled apart, then you would also have to accept that happiness cannot equate to Aristotelian flourishing because that is just thinking without necessarily feeling.
Polymath World (41:51.096)
That's really interesting and I really like that. And again, it's another example of studying philosophy and researching philosophy that everyone can engage with and is so current and real world in its application, universal. So I'd like to give you the floor here just to make your case as to why young people and older people should study
Amna Whiston (41:54.6)
Mm-hmm.
Amna Whiston (42:10.824)
you
Polymath World (42:20.814)
philosophy academically, or at least read more of it.
Amna Whiston (42:26.672)
Yes, so I will briefly mention Stephen Law again because in that book that I mentioned, The War for Children's Minds, he amongst other things mentioned the fact that in Australia children are taught philosophy at an earlier
age and age and that kind of is important because you know it's they're well placed to develop their critical thinking skills they better place to face some kind of things later in life that unless you're of philosophically minded you're struggling I struggle because I
I worked on books, I worked with lots of politicians and I regularly attended meetings, went to House of Lords and House of Commons, but I was always kind of, I just could not believe how much nonsense is being said and accepted.
how much nonsense people accept uncritically without questioning, accepting the conclusions without questioning the premises that lead to this conclusion. And so I wish, in that sense, I wish I philosophy.
Polymath World (43:42.606)
Thank
Amna Whiston (43:50.586)
much earlier because the sooner you start confronting these things the better you're equipped to be a better voter for example. As citizens we should take responsibility for what we vote for.
But voting, ultimately, the quality of your vote, and I'm not very democratic about, I'm afraid to say, that everybody's vote has equal weight. But ultimately, we have responsibility for voting well.
and which in turns requires us to be at least a little bit philosophically minded. So to that extent, yes, I think that there is a reason for everyone to study philosophy, at least a little bit.
Polymath World (44:50.638)
That's very good. Yeah, we know Plato and Socrates weren't big fans of democracy. They just thought philosophers should rule the world and maybe they're onto something.
Amna Whiston (44:58.044)
There we go.
Yes, yes, I had a recent conversation with another excellent philosopher at Reading University, Professor David Oderberg, about this, I'm relieved when I speak with people like him, who are also not very receptive to the value of democracy, something that we shouldn't necessarily worship.
Polymath World (45:30.092)
Yeah, it definitely... yeah. Well, we won't get into that here, I think. Not at this point, but... If people want to know... Yeah. If people want to know more about you or find your research and... or if they want to know more about studying at Oxford or Cambridge, where you teach, where should they go?
Amna Whiston (45:38.012)
So wise.
Amna Whiston (45:49.18)
Yes.
Amna Whiston (45:52.936)
It's very easy to find me on the main webpage of Continuing Education as a tutor. Obviously I have the Academia EDU site where you can see my published work.
And then also a little bit on Cambridge University also. There is a link to my profile on their department or institute for continuing education. So it's very easy to find me.
Polymath World (46:29.582)
Excellent. Thank you so much. I've loved working with you and I'm looking forward to doing so again next year and thank you for taking your time out to speak to us today about philosophy. Really appreciate it.
Amna Whiston (46:37.861)
Excellent.
Amna Whiston (46:42.524)
Thank you so much, Sami. It's been a really, really great pleasure.