PHILOSOPHY Dr Alex Carter is Associate Professor for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Cambridge, Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) where he oversees all courses in philosophy and creativity theory. He is also a Fellow and College Lecturer at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He gained his PhD in Philosophy by the University of Essex in 2015. Alex was my tutor for my final year at Cambridge and we have remained friends ever since. Always eager to support his students' ongoing projects, he joins me for a chat about philosophy, higher education, lifelong learning, living and working near Wittgenstein's grave, and why critical thinking matters so much.
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Polymath World (00:02.287)
It's wonderful to be joined today by a dear friend of mine, Professor Alex Carter, who is the Academic Director at Cambridge University's Institute for Continuing Education. He is a philosopher. He teaches philosophy. He also teaches a lot of different things, like the general study skills module. he is at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University.
And you've done a lot, Alex, and I can't wait to get into it. But I just want to start by saying thank you for everything you've done for my career and for lots of people who've been through Cambridge. I owe you a lot for the encouragement and for being my mentor in my last year. And it's just really great to have you here on Polymath World.
Alex Carter (00:44.428)
So it's pleasure and it's never a chore.
Polymath World (00:47.407)
Well, I want to start firstly by digging into your journey of how you got into philosophy and what that looked like and how you ended up where you are.
Alex Carter (01:01.762)
Yeah, so I suppose the unsatisfying answer to the question how did you get in philosophy, everyone assumes there's this kind of exciting reason for engaging with philosophy. My main reason was apathy. Being a Gen Xer, you know, the kind of meh generation, I couldn't really be engaged in things in the way that most people were, a career, a house, a family, et cetera. I have all of those things now, but I...
didn't ever think that I would and I didn't want to. So I guess I was a free spirit, you might say, but I would say I was just a kid playing with Lego. And so there was this sense of apathy about being a serious person.
But there are serious questions that even will engage a childish person, someone with a childish mentality. And I was quite slow to develop when I was an 18, 19, 20 year old. I think we see a lot of this now as well with young men in particular, they're like struggling to find purpose. I found that purpose in philosophy. But it was a struggle. was, there was some teething trouble. Didn't have the greatest teacher in philosophy. I actually preferred my religion teacher. Very much appreciated his lessons. Mr. Salman, thank you very much.
for teaching me about Hinduism. That came into great use yesterday actually because you mentioned that I do study skills. Well I had an essay come across my desk which was all about Hinduism and I could apply my knowledge of Hinduism to that which was great. But philosophy didn't really do it for me at that time so I went into ancient history with philosophy as my minor but when I got to experience philosophy from a Wittgenstein perspective and I am a Wittgenstein still today and I'm a hundred feet from Wittgenstein's grave in my office at Cambridge and yeah it
it just grabbed me. I loved the idea that these classic debates about free will, do we have it, do we not have it, does God exist, does God not exist, could all just be punctured by saying you're asking the wrong question.
Polymath World (02:54.947)
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I often think of philosophy as essentially being the elementary questions of a child. Who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? And some of us just get more into those questions later on and some of us never grow out of them. And you were doing Lego, but you didn't end up becoming an engineer. You're a philosopher of Lego.
Alex Carter (03:18.478)
But I do love Lego serious play. And in fact, my definition of creativity, which we might come to later, is that of serious play. Although unfortunately Lego trademarked it before I did. But yeah, the idea of being serious about play and when we lose that, when we keep that. And I think philosophers keep it for a very long time, this idea of playfulness around ideas. William James says, philosophy allows us to break up our caked prejudices. We see the strange as familiar and the familiar as strange. And I've always been that way.
I've been immune to peer pressure because other people will do it because it's the familiar thing that people do and that I'm supposed to do it myself and I've always thought that is strange and yet strange things I'm always keen to do and always keen to play with so having weird ideas is where I like to go.
Polymath World (04:06.423)
I love that and it really comes through. We'll get to it later but you teach things like philosophy of humor, philosophy of sport, mean really niche philosophies but you can talk to anyone about them and they go, yeah, you know what, that's really, really interesting. But where did you go to study philosophy?
Alex Carter (04:28.77)
So initially, at university at least at a level, I was studying at University of Wales Swansea. I love Abertawe. Best place I've ever lived was Mumbles. Loved living in Mumbles. My undergraduate, as I say, was ancient history, but it had this minor philosophy. I had to then write my dissertation in ancient history, but obviously philosophy had stolen my heart. So I ended up writing it about, did Socrates commit suicide? There's various reasons for thinking he did. I argued that he didn't. I then went on to do my master's.
at Bristol, there was a lovely poster, or think it was a hand-drawn picture by one of his pupils of Wittgenstein in the main office of the philosophy department. I very quickly worked out that was kind of like a wanted poster, that I was not going to be popular in that department, which is absolutely fine. Wittgensteinians are not popular in most places. That is not an attack on Bristol at all. I love Bristol. It was a wonderful university. The people there were incredibly welcoming of me, but perhaps not so much the Wittgenstein idea. So I then very much lucked
out and landed on my feet after taking a bit of time out. went to do a PhD, very much applied to Essex because they allowed late applications. That's the reason I applied to Essex University and I was so lucky to land in that department which is a post-Hegelian department, very much more in the continental school and I found out this is the stuff that appeals to me about Wittgenstein is this idea that the idea of solving all the questions, right, analytic philosophy is you get a question, you analyze the concepts, you
resolve it and it's gone. It's a zero sum game. We're left with no more questioning. Continental philosophy is very much no no life is essentially problematic. It's not meant to be solved, it's meant to be responded to and that just gave me so much a sense of purpose and a sense of fit. So I loved being at Essex and I very much learned my teaching methodology there which is get students to feel the pain of the problem, get them to realize this is a problem that may not be soluble, it may just be
something you have to respond to but really getting them to respond to it and Essex was just like masterful at that and I just I loved being there and then it was on to Cambridge and I was very lucky to get a job again luck luck luck got a job one month before my PhD Viva which went well but but you know it could have gone badly and yet I still had a job in higher education which is rare and I got a job where I could teach the things that I wanted to teach or at least things that would get people through the door learning philosophy
Alex Carter (06:58.34)
often for the first time, things like philosophy of humour, philosophy of sport, philosophy as therapy. And those courses really appeal to people, especially when, yeah, as you say, when they get over that initial, what's all that about?
Polymath World (07:10.785)
Yeah, so what a rich experience. Four, that's four, isn't it? Four different universities that you got to work at or study through. each with its own emphasis and because philosophy is such a broad world, I don't know that you can really just study philosophy because you're always going to end up picking bits. And it's massive. I thought it was interesting you said that your first attraction to philosophy came through studying Hinduism. And
Alex Carter (07:40.332)
I still say I'm a philosopher of religion by background and I am. Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion is very interesting. It's where I go to for my of my sense of purpose. Also Simone Weil, a theologian and a Marxist. Very interesting character. People aren't familiar with Simone Weil. It's W-E-I-L. Wonderful, wonderful theologian. She was one of the first women to be admitted into the Ecole Nommale Supérieure along with another Simone, Simone de Beauvoir. Much more famous but Simone Weil came first in class. Simone de Beauvoir
came second in the class and 34 men behind them. So these were these were the brightest of the bright in France. Simone Weil was asked to write a new constitution for France, things like that. So she's this huge figure in the history of philosophy but kind of not as prominent as perhaps she should be.
Polymath World (08:15.15)
Yeah.
Polymath World (08:27.501)
like criminally underappreciated, criminally under unknown. Yeah, I fend it to the 34 men competing with those two simones was gonna be hard.
Alex Carter (08:34.508)
Yeah, but very much consistent with what you're trying.
Alex Carter (08:41.344)
Always, yes. But I found out that one of my sort of passions is for philosophers who are lapsed Jews. You've got Spinoza, Wittgenstein was a lapsed Jew, Henry Bergson, Simon Wey and of course Jesus Christ.
So you've got these figures who are philosophers who had a background in the Jewish faith, but sort of either turned to Christianity or to semi Christianity or something like it. And that's not really what appeals to me. There's just something about them, presumably that just describes me. I can't yet work out what it is. So don't ask me, what is it about LAPS Jews that makes their philosophy interesting?
Polymath World (09:15.545)
Now,
Polymath World (09:25.625)
So I just got to stop for a second because we keep losing your camera in particular. Your webcam is freezing a lot and then the audio sort of catches up.
it's back now.
Alex Carter (09:41.046)
I think that might be your end, Sam, because at my end, all's fine. It is recording everything and it does say uploading and it says everything again. I think it's... Yeah.
Polymath World (09:49.849)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's telling me it's uploading fine so it's capturing everything. It's just freezing your webcam quite a lot. I'm in the office so I'm not at home so the WiFi is good. It comes back but I think it's being temperamental. No worries, this bit can get chopped. We'll just carry on and it will get sorted in the edit. Yeah, and the audio will be fine.
Right, so just a few seconds of science and I'll come back in.
Polymath World (10:32.793)
So you ultimately end up as a Wittgensteinian by the time you arrive as Dr Alex Carter. Now as an old Wittgenstein and a later Wittgenstein, can you explain that for us and what it is for you to be a Wittgensteinian?
Alex Carter (10:52.332)
Yeah, it's definitely not like Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. This is the same person. So the early Wittgenstein and the later Wittgenstein is how he's referred to. is also, to complicate matters further, people refer to the middle Wittgenstein. I don't buy into that myself. So Wittgenstein actually has a lot of consistency across his philosophy, in particular his use of pictures and his interest in language and the fact that language limits how we can think about the world.
So the early Wittgenstein very much thought he was solving all the problems of philosophy like that analytic mode of philosophy I was talking about. We solve all the problems and it's a zero sum game. And he even said at the start of the Tractatus, which was his first work, which got him to come to Cambridge as a professor because it was his thesis submission. Bertrand Russell loved this document, by the way. He didn't like his later work, but he loved this document. And in this document, Wittgenstein opens by saying, I've solved all the problems of philosophy or I've shown you why
they weren't problems to begin with or why they didn't matter or why they were unimportant. These were these this is a waste of time essentially all this philosophizing about things that aren't philosophical and his answer was essentially the language language limits our world and what philosophers are trying to do is go outside of the limits of language and when we do that we're getting things wrong we're making mistakes so what I need to do is draw a boundary to language but actually I can't do that because in order to draw a boundary I'd have to step outside of language and then describe it which of
I can't do because I'd be describing it in language. So Wittgenstein's tractate is actually quite performative. There's an element of mysticism baked into the text whereby we're transformed through reading it because he says you now know that this can't be true but you only know it because I told you it was true. So there's a kind of inversion, an indirect communication as Kierkegaard would call it.
And that's the early Victor's notes. There is this element of mysticism in there, but this comes much more into his later philosophy whereby he doesn't now think that philosophy is done with. In fact, he's given philosophers a job for life. And that job for life is catching people misusing language and telling them why they need to stop doing it. So essentially correcting our language, because what we often do is we overthink things. So we ask a question like, do we have free will? And we take a concept like freedom and a concept like determinism, and we analyze these two concepts.
Alex Carter (13:15.226)
We sort of elevate them up. We look at them from the level of thinking and then we try and reinsert them back into the world and they just don't fit. We've done something to them. We've inverted them or mangled them in some way that they won't fit. That's not how we talk about free will. You've taken this concept of freedom and you've applied it in the wrong way. Just to give you a very quick example. When do you feel your freedom most? When you don't want it.
that's when you feel your freedom most. So how can it possibly be this wonderful boon to us that we have this freedom? Existentialists say, you know, we're condemned to be free. So that was a very long-winded answer, but essentially Wittgenstein takes his more simplified solution to all the problems of philosophy and he complicates it to the point where we have a job forever, I guess, which is good news for me, I guess.
Polymath World (14:01.825)
Yeah, good news for you. And I love the fact that you're studying him and now your office is just a 100 yards from his grave. I guess that's Cambridge for you. You've got a lot of famous graves around. But a very nice...
Alex Carter (14:04.942)
you
Alex Carter (14:20.066)
Yeah, on your way to Pee-Bick, you pass by G.E. Moore and behind him is Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geech and Frank Ramsey's over in the corner and yeah, there's lots of very famous people in that particular cemetery and then of course there's lots of other people buried all over the place as well.
Polymath World (14:35.053)
Yeah, yeah, I was, my history and philosophy of science PhD is on Arthur Eddington and Eddington has recently been honored by Cambridge with his own suburb near the Institute of Astronomy. And I just thought how proud Eddington would be to know that a hundred years later he has his own Sainsbury's and student accommodation.
Alex Carter (14:59.052)
Yeah, he might be horrified by the design and the architecture and that sort of thing, but it's wonderfully modern. Actually, I think they're beautiful buildings, but I'm not sure he would think so.
Polymath World (15:07.471)
You end up, despite all that, at Cambridge now doing Philosophy of Humour, Philosophy of Sport, as well as being the Academic Director overall for the Institute for Continuing Education. oversee, correct me if I'm wrong here, but there's undergraduate certificates in Philosophy that people can take, which is wonderful.
People of any age, background, regardless of how smart you think you are, can get a Cambridge University certificate, go to beautiful Mattingly Hall on weekends to study philosophy. It includes philosophy of mind, ethics, philosophy of religion, epistemology. What am I missing? Anything I'm missing there? Political philosophy, think.
Alex Carter (15:57.292)
history, philosophy, logic, language, metaphysics. Yep, absolutely. Yep.
Polymath World (16:03.723)
And you do a postgraduate certificate as well, don't you, in philosophy?
Alex Carter (16:08.846)
So we have every level of undergraduate study and then postgraduate study as well. So when I first started, we just had the undergraduate certificate and advanced diploma. So that's first year and third year. Essentially, we've added a second year qualification for people so they can have a progression route. We're actually building on this as well to create more courses, more progression routes so that people have options. They don't necessarily want to have to take this particular course to progress with their studies. Although, of course, you can go to other universities. One thing I
Polymath World (16:23.746)
Brilliant.
Alex Carter (16:38.8)
love about the certificate course, in particular the undergraduate certificate, is that it's open entry. You do not have to have studied philosophy at all. A level GCSE, nothing. You don't have to have done it before. You could have just watched YouTube videos and been interested and we will work you up to the point where you can submit essays that are written in an academic philosophical way. And yeah, it does cover a lot of ground and I think a lot of people apply for the postgraduate certificate who have a degree thinking, well you know I've got a degree I should do something postgraduate. They then come back to do the undergraduate
difficult they go actually this stuff's just as difficult but it's not assessed in at the same level so you're more likely to just be able to have freedom to explore and move around and that's quite nice as well but yes we work all the way up to postgraduate level where students can get a master's level qualification from the University of Cambridge in philosophy and it is rigorous it is difficult but it is weekends at Mattingly Hall as you say so that's there are perks to that.
Polymath World (17:33.613)
Yeah, absolutely. So Mark Twain said that all men are philosophers. The floor is yours, Professor Alex Carter. Why should people study philosophy? Especially people who've got no background in it at all.
Alex Carter (17:53.41)
So I think everyone should study some philosophy. I do, however, think there are too many philosophers. The kind of too many cooks mentality applies with things like working things through, because I get quite frustrated with philosophy quite often when it's...
endlessly pedantic. And I remember there was a colleague of mine who tweeted out, know, philosophy is incredibly pedantic. But when I read other subjects, they seem quite sloppy. And again, that wasn't so much a slight on other subjects as it is just there is this imbalance between philosophy, which is incredibly technical. People think it's just relativistic and subjective. Very quick example of this, right. And this isn't even philosophy. This is music. Students in music at Cambridge are asked a question early on. They're asked, is the quality of
music subjective and today every student says yes to which the lecturer responds then there's no such thing as quality
and suddenly the students are thrown back on their back foot and they say, so it is more complicated than this. It can't just be if I like it, it's good. That's not what it comes down to. So the same with philosophy. It's not just you can fall into logical fallacies where you know that the person is wrong. can you can contradict yourself. And that means that you must also be wrong. You can invite infinite regress. You can even have truthful ad hominem fallacies. For instance, people often say the ad hominem fallacy is when you accuse the person of
being wrong and therefore their ideas are wrong. But I think there are some interesting examples when the person speaking does matter. So I have nothing against King Charles, but when King Charles, when he was Prince Charles said, people need to get it out of their heads. They can be born to be famous. said, that's a true sentiment, but not from you because you were literally born to be king. I'm sorry. You can't say that, but many other people could say that and be correct. So even like playing with the idea of what's an ad hominem fallacy, what's correct, what's what's justified, what's not justified.
Alex Carter (19:52.512)
these sorts of things aren't
subjective and they're not relativistic. What they are is conditional. If you accept me on this then you must accept this and then you must accept this but they might not accept you on your first premise in which case the argument doesn't follow. But at least you've got a valid and sound argument for those people who do accept the first premise. So my point is learning all of that stuff is essentially learning how to think and that sounds really arrogant and I don't like arrogance and philosophy. Bertrand Russell famously said people would rather die than think and most people do and I
find that incredibly distasteful. It's funny but unpleasant and I would much rather say no no everyone can learn how to think better and and just going back to our point about questions Slavoj Žižek says philosophy is the art of asking the right question and he gives one really wonderful example he says should I be racist or tolerant?
And he says, neither. It's a false dichotomy. Tolerance implies you were racist once and then got over it. You should just not be racist. So we just don't. That's a false dichotomy. So just even pinpointing that and being critical and exposing ideas for what they really are might mean that you're kind of you seem like you're rejecting more than you're accepting. But there are things that you can accept and there are things that will survive that onslaught. And eventually you start to arrive at things which you can hold on to as as certainties.
Thanks.
Polymath World (21:17.955)
Yeah, I love that. And I mean, we can acknowledge as well that Bertrand Russell wasn't the sweetest guy in the world. Yeah, hanging out with the two of them must have been... Well, there are stories, aren't there? What is philosophy of sport?
Alex Carter (21:25.59)
Neither was Wittgenstein. There weren't many nice philosophers.
Alex Carter (21:38.526)
great question. So I often get this question. So I'll tell you the story of how my course evolved. It's quite a funny one. So I ran the philosophy of sport course for the first time and it so happened to fall on the day of an England World Cup match.
So we had no one in the class. We had five people because it was a day school. had to turn up for the whole day. had five people in the class. Luckily, one of those people, wonderful colleague of mine, he invites 50 sports lawyers to come to Cambridge every year. It's going up to 80 next year, we think, to study philosophy of sports as part of their sports law education. And these are master students. These are the people who are going to be the lawyers for FIFA and for the Olympics Commission and for all these sorts of things. So interesting.
Polymath World (21:53.305)
Hahaha
Polymath World (22:13.593)
Wow.
Alex Carter (22:21.008)
asked me this question, like hang on philosophy is for what? And there isn't a lot of overlap. think the lovely bit of overlap is Albert Camus who was a goalkeeper for Algeria, so he was a footballer and he said I've been to two universities in life. One was an actual university where I learned barely anything and one was the football field where I learned everything that was important about human beings. So his existential philosophy was rooted, he thought, in a kind of engagement with football. But that's not what we do. In philosophy
really what we're interested in is questions like what is a rule? What is a game? Does increasing accuracy increase fairness?
Should we have gender segregation in sport? Should we allow gender segregation in sport? Would forcing all sports to allow both genders to play together, would that be more equitable? And by the way, I know what everyone is thinking at this point. They're all thinking boxing. Well, I'll solve that one right now. Two rings, two men boxing in one ring, two women boxing in the other ring. Who wins out of each match and who scored the most hits on the person or alternative body armor. did it. Yeah. American football is rugby with body armor. Well, we could have
boxing with body armor. You know that sports are made up, right? They are malleable, therefore we can bend them and fix them the way we want to fix them. So there's nothing, nothing stopping us making sports inclusive of both gents. The question is do we need to? Do we want to? And on that I leave it up to students to try and work out where we should go with that, especially the sports lawyers.
Polymath World (23:53.309)
Yeah, I bet you get a lot of interesting answers. What about philosophy of humor?
Alex Carter (24:00.942)
So philosophy of humor, there are different theories of humor and they also succeed and fail in different ways as well. the classic old, so let me start with a bit of history here. So.
In the West in particular, humour has not been treated by philosophy at all. There's very little on humour at all in all of philosophy. And that's surprising when you actually think about it, because when you think what's important to people in their lives, well, humour comes quite high in the list. It's always in the top 10 of things that people find important in life. It's number one for things we look for in a partner. And yet philosophy is supposed to talk about meaningful things, important things, and yet we've ignored it. We've just completely ignored it for millennia.
Why have we ignored it? Well, one reason that is suggested is that Plato blamed Aristophanes for making fun of Socrates and that leading to his trial and ultimate execution. So essentially, comedy killed philosophy. There is also an example in the Theotetus, which is one of Plato's dialogues, where Thales, who was a very famous Ionian philosopher, was walking along debating what's the universe made up of and he fell into a well. The joke there being, by the way, that Thales said everything was water.
So the joke being he fell in his answer, but he was laughed at by someone who was there who saw him fall in this one and laughed at him. And Socrates says, this is the lot of the philosopher. You said earlier, philosophy is slightly childish. It has a childlike quality. So we get laughed at for our silly questions. But some of those silly questions highlight silly hypocrisies that we have in life and silly things that we do. Breaking up our caped prejudices, seeing the strange as familiar and the familiar as strange. Comedians do the same thing. So observational comedy and this sort of thing.
But then what happened? Well, the Christian Church adopted Aristotle as its philosopher and Aristotle had written about comedy and if you the wonderful Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, he talks a lot about this, book that Aristotle had written about comedy which the Church kept hidden at all costs because the one thing you mustn't do is laugh at God. And indeed, even Kierkegaard, hundreds of years later, said that the one thing you can't laugh about is religious suffering, at least not maintain it as religious
Alex Carter (26:15.376)
suffering and laugh about it which is just an interesting phenomenon that he's pointing out. I think that's a very important point.
But essentially then what happened, we got the enlightenment. And you know what? Just as Plato didn't like Socrates being laughed at, no philosopher liked it. Kant didn't like being laughed at. Descartes didn't want to be laughed at. They wanted to be taken seriously. And seriousness and frivolity don't seem to go together. So they just didn't become very good bedfellows. And the two were exos. And then 1901 happened and Henri Bergson writes on laughter, the first, I would say, serious, proper engagement with the philosophy of humor. Bertrand Russell, who we just said,
Loved humor though very funny man very witty man didn't like the book although I have suspicions that he didn't even read the book or the essay I should say But essentially dismissed it out of hand very casually by saying that that humor is too important to philosophize about Meaning you can philosophize about logic truth God free will but not humor
And I couldn't tell if that was a joke or if that was him genuinely thinking this. anyway, there's something very strange about that relationship. But since then, we've had a much more interesting engagement with the philosophy of humor. We've got these four different theories. Very, very quickly, the idea is either it's laughing down at someone, the kind of Nelson Muntz, ha ha, kind of thing, right, the superiority thesis. The next one is the relief theory, which is a very psychological theory, which is the idea that we laugh because we're releasing a nervous tension, right?
the tension with a joke and then you puncture it with the punchline. The problem with that is you can often do the reverse. The problem with that is also that it doesn't actually explain why we laugh, it just explains that we laugh. It's just another description of the state of affairs. A better theory is the incongruity theory, which is the idea that putting two incongruous elements together is just funny. It's just funny to have two things that shouldn't be there put in the same space. Again though, that doesn't necessarily pull it out. One I quite like though is this idea of play theory. The idea that
Alex Carter (28:14.86)
humour is a certain kind of playfulness, playing with words, playing with the rules of the game and doing it in interesting ways and if you'll bear with me just one last example, one of my students who did the course for the very first time, he was in his 60s and he said when I was a little kid my dad ran a menswear shop and he would say, I always used to laugh when he'd say we've run out of green men's socks and I said is that because no green men came in the shop and he went that's why it's funny.
So for 50 years he'd laughed at it, but he hadn't understood why it was funny. Now, I don't think I taught him anything. He just hadn't thought about it. He just found the sounds funny because green men's socks, whilst actually grammatically correct, sounds weird, right? Cause it sounds like they're socks for green men. So it's that playfulness, that kind of bending of the rule of, of, of a joke. It's so subtle because it's not incorrect. It's just this subtle twisting and seeing that he laughed, but you can get a joke therefore without
Polymath World (28:59.374)
Yeah.
Alex Carter (29:13.072)
Understanding a joke and I think that's a really interesting phenomenon as well
Polymath World (29:17.007)
I love that, you know, and and and it's just an encouragement that It's not just sports lawyers and comedians who should study these topics, know, everyone everyone benefits from thinking thinking about it I particularly love that you had this 60 year old student as well and and this is a big value of this channel is is lifelong learning is learning multiple disciplines is pursuing excellence in multiple fields
That's like a core value for me. It's a core value for us. So I'd love to shift now to just talking about lifelong learning because you run this for Cambridge University, the best university in the world, in my very biased opinion. It's just wonderful that you can get people who are like 19 and then people who are, well, what's the oldest student you've ever had?
Alex Carter (30:13.016)
think the oldest student I ever had was 97 and it was a was a philosophy of humor course and in the philosophy of humor course by the way we do talk a lot about mortality because laughing at death is a very big part of it and I remember this acutely because I said to the 97 year old I'll probably run the course again if you need to come back and you want to study it again she was finding it quite challenging and she said no love I won't be here then
And just flatly, just very accepting of it, very sanguine, very just, no, no, no, no, no, I can't be here for next year, I'm dying at that time. You know, it's like I've got a train to catch. It was just so...
It was actually quite uplifting because it was just this total honesty. We all have to die. It's something we all have to do. But to be able to talk about it in that kind of almost carefree manner was just was very engaging. But clearly that masked something because the reason she was doing a course like this was likely because wanting to deal with these kind of existential questions at that time in life. I remember when I do a course on the afterlife, I remember I get a couple of comments from people where they say, this course is a bit more urgent for me than it is for you.
I said, you don't know that, but yes, I take to that point.
Polymath World (31:26.925)
Yeah, I did genetics, evolutionary biology, did the advanced diploma. I also did immunology and a consistent through every year that I did at Cambridge was my friend Peter. And Peter's is pretty old. And he just kept kind of everything and his background wasn't science and he wasn't looking for a career change into it.
Alex Carter (31:52.418)
We have to now create new courses just for Peter because he's done every course at the Institute.
Polymath World (31:56.208)
He probably has done everything. Yeah, I mean, Peter must be one of the most educated, like true polymaths on the planet in terms of all the disciplines he's done. And I love him to death. And it would have been very weird being there without him. But, you know, right at the beginning, I said, you know, Peter, why are you studying this then if you're not doing a career change and if you're retired? At first he joked, he's like, well, I'm, you know, gonna...
fight off and hold off dementia, you know, because in my age I'm just going to keep my brain going. But also is just like just interested in everything and I want to know stuff and that that's just such a beautiful value in itself, like just learning for its own sake. So, you know, what's what's the what's your case for lifelong learning and for adult education? Just
Alex Carter (32:46.953)
Thank you.
I have two cases and you're going to guess my preference but not because of a bias. I think there are two reasons why people do lifelong. One is to confirm beliefs that they hold. It's confirmatory. I want to know even if it's through triangulation, so I believe this based on my background in whatever, but I want to come at it from different angles and I want that to confirm that I'm right. Actually, those people can be quite disappointed if they find out that maybe they're not right and that they have to throw certain things out.
that they will typically perhaps direct things a certain way. We do see this a lot in professional studies as well where theses for instance will be this is why I'm right, this is why I'm right, this is why I'm right, this is why I'm right and I'm constantly thinking that this is why you're wrong, but this is why you're wrong and you haven't considered those possibilities. And it's not all negative. I mean, it's not like we're attacking, but unless you at least acknowledge where the weaknesses are in your position, your research will always go wrong. You have to keep asking that question as a researcher, why might I be wrong?
It's the for a student and also the same for a teacher. So it's the confirmatory line. By the way, that would be my line. That's why I'm saying I'm not biased because my actual favorite though is the disconfirmatory people, the people who are going into lifelong learning because they want to be challenged to discover new things and genuinely see beyond the horizon, which they thought was the end. So I had two students actually that reflected exactly this in a class that I delivered. It was called Science, Superstition and Religion. And I won't lie, I put science
as the first word because it was Cambridge and I knew that would get bums on seats and yes the class was full. It did also mention that we were talking about superstition and religion as well so that brought them in but
Alex Carter (34:27.68)
It was meant to be looking at all three. What are the different things that go on in each? So science is an empirical study to try and find answers based on evidence. Superstition is a bad version of that, right? It's pseudo scientific. It's if you do this, then you'll get this, but it's still causal. Religion, I argued, was neither of those things. It is not an attempt to explain. And again, very quickly, the example that I use is Statue of the Virgin Mary weeping blood in a South American village. Three people give responses. One is a theologian who said, God made
it happen. The second is a scientist who said no no no the priest of the village made it happen to bring people to his church or it's rust dripping from the rafters. Notice both of those are causal but the third position is a woman who just said and this is true she really did respond to this way to a journalist when asked why shouldn't the Virgin Mary weep for the sins of the world?
And that is not an attempt to explain. it's not a notice, by the way, if it was the Statue of Liberty dancing, you'd get the first two answers, but you wouldn't get the third because the third is a domain of discourse that has much more kind of organic sources. It's like it's historical. It's semantic. It's it's got it's a lived world. It's a form of life as opposed to a practical way of understanding the world. Anyway, so I taught this course and two letters came in one of complaints and one of
Thanks, the one of complaint said you had an agenda You didn't tell me you didn't tell me that and I said I did tell you that it was the very first slide of the very first lecture I told you I am here as a philosopher of religion to show you that The traditional viewpoint that science and religion are in opposition is a mistaken one And actually there's this much more interesting kind of Vick and Shtinian take you can take towards it There was no way I wasn't going to talk about that. I'm a Vick and Shtinian. Obviously I was going to tell them that But I understood where he was coming from and that was a confirmatory person who didn't like the challenge
of I have to think in a completely new way. And again, I have nothing against that person. That's me. If I'm sitting in a room, that's me. The second person, though, wrote a letter to me. He said, I've been an eye surgeon for decades. I'm in my 70s. I've always been a scientist and I've always thought the world was black and white. And you've shown me the possibility that there are shades of grey. And he just thanked me for this and was just really glad. I've never heard from that student again. And I have no interest in doing so because I'm sure he's gone off to study.
Alex Carter (36:46.336)
more interesting things and find better teachers who can teach him more interesting stuff. But the reason I mention it is because again it's not a credit to me, it's a credit to him. Again my teaching was the same in both cases. I didn't reach the first one or rather I reached him in a different way. What's different is that that second student's attitude was one of sheer open-mindedness. This stuff that I hold so close to my heart I can just throw it away. I would never be able to do that and I will it I would
I might be able to do that, right now I don't think I could just take Vic and Shani so easily with one argument, just throw it away. I want to defend it. I want to hold onto it. I'm not dogmatic about it, I wouldn't want to just...
just lose it with one person's cutting argument that destroys it. I want to try and find why why might I be still right? That's my my impulse is to do that and I've questioned that because of teaching. I've realized that there are nicer attitudes to have to learning.
Polymath World (37:47.054)
I have absolutely no idea how someone could reach this statistic, but I did read a few months ago and it stopped me in my tracks that at any one time, 20 % of what someone believes is false. Like they're carrying 20 % of false beliefs. I don't know how someone could measure or find that. It must be a made up statistic, but it did make me think like, you know, we are, there's gotta be truth there that we are always.
Alex Carter (38:04.982)
including that statistic.
Polymath World (38:14.787)
Believing certain things that are false and we must be prepared to to know that at some point right now We're always carrying a lot Sorry
Alex Carter (38:22.83)
So Sam, the other thing that I teach, the other very popular topic that I teach right now is post-truth.
And I make this point, right? So there's an element of truth in it. So if I tell you, for instance, 80 % of security alarms don't work, they're just boxes on walls to make it look like you've got a security alarm, right? You would believe me. I've literally just made it up, just made it up, totally made, but it's got truth to it. But what's interesting about Wittgenstein's take on post-truth is he says, at the end of all well-founded beliefs, so at the end of all beliefs that we have justifications and reasons for holding, are beliefs that are not founded.
And he doesn't mean unfounded. He doesn't mean they lack a foundation. He just means they don't have one.
And if you think about it for a second, it makes perfect sense. It can't be explanations all the way down. can't just keep asking why, why, why. What do we do to a child or to a philosopher when they keep saying why? We say, it just is. And Wittgenstein says that. He says, at some point you just have to say it's there, like our life. So there are positions that we take which are based on nothing, but not because they lack a foundation, but because they aren't the kind of thing you can have a foundation for. Like, why do we justify ourselves?
Well, I can't have a justification for that because it would be a circular claim to say, the justification for having justifications is that they're justified. So that wouldn't tell me anything. The reason I bring that up is because what happens in post-truth, so that's normal. What happens in post-truth is that people will draw a line, even though there is a justification beyond it, where they'll just say, it just feels, it's just feel that I just believe this because I feel it.
Alex Carter (40:00.61)
and they don't really want to interrogate the reasons or they don't want to tell anyone the reasons why they believe it. So you get politicians doing this quite a lot where it's not ideology that's driving their claim, it's just, or rather it is, but they won't explain the ideology, they'll just say, I just feel it very strongly. And that's an attempt to just bring it to an end. I call it a levitation trick because it's pretending there's no foundation when actually there is a foundation, but you're not going to tell me what it is.
Polymath World (40:26.735)
Wow. Yeah, and it's so, so important that people reckon with their claims and their beliefs and their positions. I don't know that perfect objectivity can ever be reached. But I'm very opposed to dogmatism. I'm very opposed to fundamentalism. But then I know I'm very dogmatic about my opposition to dogmatism and I'm a fundamentalist in my opposition to fundamentalism. So I just sort of have to...
bare that cross I guess.
Alex Carter (40:56.302)
I the phrase this morning, extreme centrist. Can you be an extreme centrist? Is that possible?
Polymath World (41:00.879)
That's it, I'm an extreme centrist.
Alex Carter (41:06.7)
What's interesting though in philosophy people often throw up the example of the golden mean which is an Aristotelian idea that between two extremes is a golden mean that's what we're aiming for. everyone assumes it's the middle. It's not necessarily. What he says is you have to moderate yourself and moderate I don't think means find the middle or moderate in the way that Methodists, I was born and raised Methodist, the way in which Methodists would moderate their behavior. Don't drink to excess, don't laugh to excess.
don't move to excess but it was what he was talking about was more the moderation of a debate
You have to moderate the debate in yourself. have to be able to move things out. what was so interesting is Wittgenstein made a similar point when he said the ethical person is the person who can hold up as many different ethical pictures, even if they contradict each other. So if I'm inclined to blame someone for their actions, I'm probably holding up the image of them at a crossroads, choosing to go in a particular direction. If I'm not inclined to blame someone, it's probably because I'm thinking of them as like falling down a mountainside and thinking, how could they help themselves in that situation? Wittgenstein
Polymath World (41:45.519)
Mm.
Alex Carter (42:12.784)
says, when you're inclined to blame someone, hold up the image of the mountainside. When you're inclined to not blame someone, hold up the image of the path. Because the whole purpose to live ethically is to live intention between these poles and to moderate them yourself. It throws you upon your devices. It's very existential in that respect that you're thrown on your own devices. And it's like, I have to make this choice. That's the only way to make an ethical decision ultimately. Because if you solved an ethical dilemma, it would just mean there was no
to begin with. You just didn't know all the facts.
Polymath World (42:46.691)
You're very, very fortunate in that you get to teach such a breadth of philosophy topics at Cambridge and you get to engage with so many ideas. But do you have a favourite? You described yourself as a philosopher of religion first. But obviously your doctorate and your research was in Wittgenstein. Do you have a favourite thing to teach or a favourite thing to study?
Alex Carter (43:13.966)
I actually really liked teaching Descartes and it's because I hated teaching it first. this goes back to Essex. So the very first class I had to teach was the Conceptual Foundations of Modernity. And we were looking at Descartes' meditations and I remembered my undergrad days and being kind of so disappointed in Descartes. Just, oh, this is what really is this why we believe that we have a mind and a body? This is so...
Silly really that the arguments are not buying any of these Then someone came to me said did you know that his epitaph or one of his epitaph sits on a mausoleum more than on his grave? but it says those who live well hide well and This suddenly threw me onto the realization that Descartes was writing at a time when Galileo his friend was under house arrest by the Spanish Inquisition. Yes them and Descartes is writing basically think for yourself
That's what the meditation says. says don't accept anything that comes to you from any other source. Think for yourself. Throw yourself on your own devices like I was just saying. And any student can get behind the idea of think for yourself. But everyone should also get behind the idea that Descartes is writing this at the most dangerous time you can possibly write this. So I suddenly started seeing Descartes the person beyond Descartes just the simple ideas. And I started getting really interested in his philosophy. And there are other really fascinating elements of it. But this
That central core of it, this idea that we have to challenge the received wisdom that we're getting, is quite an old one in philosophy. Plato did the same and many others have done the same before.
But it's just, it's a much easier selling point. And of course, it's quite nice to be able to say to students, and this is my typical line, again, get them to feel the pain of the problem. I say to them, you're gonna read Descartes, you're not gonna like it. That's not Descartes' problem, that's your problem. Why? Because you're a Cartesian. Because you believe that you have a mind and that you have a body and that they're separate things. And now you're reading the philosophy that tells you that and you don't agree with it. So what are you gonna do?
Polymath World (45:15.119)
I can understand that. It's certainly an experience in rich provocation, I think, being in your classes. But people need that. I can't help but ask you here. It can be easy to feel there's a crisis of critical thinking. The social media, algorithms, all of that, it's feeding great divisiveness and narrowness. And there's this
I- I- no, I won't even call it hyperskepticism, because that gives it too much credit. There's just a mass of conspiratorial thinking. So- so I get it pretty bad from two camps, in my life. I get the creationists telling me I'm going to hell, and I get the flat earthers telling me I'm one of them. I don't know who they are yet, but, I- got confronted by a flat earther the other day. He was like, you know, just said- said to me, like, people are waking up, just so you know, people are waking up.
you're not going to get away with this. I'm like, get away with what? One can easily fall into despair with this. But what is the answer to the crisis of conspiratorial thinking and lack of critical thinking? Is it just more people study philosophy?
Alex Carter (46:34.094)
you
Possibly possibly, but so I think one thing I'm not going to contradict anyone's claims about this in terms of you know It's social media or it's you know, the politics of the day. I don't disagree with any of that necessarily But I think one thing that hasn't been talked about enough is The meaning crisis that we find ourselves in so that you're kind of I think John Vivek He calls it a meaning crisis or a meaning famine or this idea that the demand for meaning has increased But the availability of people who can actually provide it has decreased so you've got
increased demand, reduced supply, that is literally a kind of famine. It's not just I'm hungry, it's I'm hungry and there's no food available. the
problem that I think that that's, you know, and the reason that leads on to these kinds of conspiracy theories is because anyone will look to find meaning anywhere. Like, and we're bookending our conversation because this is where I began philosophy, right, was with apathy, with a lack of meaning. And I found it in philosophy. And I'm hearing this a lot from people we interview when they're applying to do the courses at the Institute. Again, we only interview for the postgraduate courses, but they'll often say, I've had a lifetime in this career, know, finance career, whatever it might be, and say, and I just haven't got a
any purpose or sense of meaning but I feel like I'll find that in philosophy. Now, will they? I don't know because it's not like people who had meaning 50 years ago had found it in a source that was in philosophy that we've sort of been harvesting and keeping just for ourselves. So I don't know if the answer is to come from philosophy. I feel like understanding the problem would come from studying philosophy. Understanding how you might find meaning in your life though, firstly I don't think
Alex Carter (48:17.891)
anyone should ever tell you. secondly, I don't think that...
Many philosophies offer this. Most are quite nihilistic, in fact, quite a few anyway. And philosophers aren't exactly the most joyous, you know, kind of, although as Wittgenstein said, I don't know why we're here, but I'm pretty sure it's not to enjoy ourselves. And I have to agree with that. I always am slightly disappointed when a parent says, I just want my children to be happy. Cause I think you've set the bar very low, very low. Happiness is an easy thing to attain and quite, you know,
Polymath World (48:27.043)
Mm.
Alex Carter (48:52.592)
and frivolous and maybe that's part of our problem is that we've lost an ability to be bored, we've lost ability to tolerate difficulty and challenge so you'll definitely get those things from philosophy but whether it's the loss of those tolerances that is the loss of meaning I don't know but I don't see it being offered by anyone by the way not by the church, not by politics, not by anyone. No one is, everyone's feeding off this lack of meaning but no one's really satisfying the hunger.
you
Polymath World (49:23.439)
I guess the counterbalance is that there is a greater interest in thinkers like, you know, there's shows that are doing exceptionally well, people are doing exceptionally well, like for whatever people think about him as a philosopher or a political figure, there's been great attraction to people like Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris, you know, particularly from young men.
And so there is also an attraction to think better, which isn't easy. mean, someone like Jordan Peterson, he makes quite strong demands on men, young men to take responsibility and to grow up. It's not an easy message. But is that really the heart of it? People are joining Flat Earth and believing crazy stuff because it gives them meaning? Is it that simple?
Alex Carter (50:18.862)
So I think the demand is the most important thing. remember and again, this is an offensive analogy and I apologize in advance for it, but I think it's an illustrative one. My nephew was crying because my other nephew was given an ice lolly and he got really upset about this. Do you know how I stopped him crying? I said, it's much worse than you think. I'm going to go and buy another lolly and I'm going to give him a second one.
Right? He stopped. Immediately stopped. By the way, I never did that. Obviously I didn't do that. But the point is, saying it to him made him realize, yeah, like him having something doesn't cost me anything. This idea, know, like the, you I can lose and, know, but so like throwing it back on your own device, inverting something and saying, you want this? Well, actually it's much worse than that. Cause you, you're wanting the wrong thing. So not only am I not going to give you the thing that you want, but you actually need to start wanting something else.
That kind of challenge and demand, think, is satisfying to us. Here's a much better example, it's almost whiplash to go to this, but the book of Job. What did actually console Job? Because he has all of his consolers come to him and they say, you did something wrong, you needed to do this. If you do this, you'll be fine, and all these sorts of things. None of it consoles him. If Richard Dawkins came to him and said, there is no God, it wouldn't console him. And consolation, again, isn't the most important thing. But what did console
Joe was him meeting God and saying why did you do this to me and God saying why shouldn't I?
Why is there a Friday? Why does rainfall? I don't know what you want from me. Why do you expect an explanation here? And GK Chesterton puts it this way, says, the riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. And if you don't like the God bit, can just say the riddles of the mysteries of the universe or whatever you want to call it are more satisfying than any solution you're going to find out there. But if you live in a gratification culture, you're always looking for solutions. You're never looking for an interesting problem to deal with.
Alex Carter (52:17.52)
So I gave my nephew an interesting problem to grapple with. What would this mean? How could such injustice happen? Extra injustice on top of injustice? How does that happen? I gave it to him and again it was enough to get him to think rather than cry.
And maybe what we're experiencing now is a crying culture and we need a thinking culture. But I do actually... People are going to find things online where I'm saying thinking is the problem and now I'm suggesting thinking is the solution. What I mean is pause to think, reason to think, a problem to engage with, which isn't necessarily solved by thinking conceptually and endlessly about problems, but actually responding to them, living in a certain way.
Yeah, but I realize I'm talking in very abstract terms. Maybe when you call me back for the next one, we can get into detail.
Polymath World (53:04.303)
This is what we do. I just love giving space to talk and put it out there. I hope people feel like they're eavesdropping in on something special. Where can people find you and the Institute of Continuing Education at Cambridge? Obviously, you had a fantastic debate with Alex O'Connor last year. That's probably where people will find you most on YouTube.
Where can people find out more about you and about studying?
Alex Carter (53:35.98)
One of my students at college stopped me in the corridor the other day and said, I watched the debate with Alex O'Connor because I follow Alex O'Connor. And it was like seeing my teacher at the supermarket. He said it was just like worlds collided. It was really weird. Anyway, that was nice. Yeah, and I really enjoyed that debate and I really like Alex as well. He's, yeah, he definitely won the debate, I think, but then he had the room from the minute he walked in, I think, but wonderful debate and really interesting.
Polymath World (54:02.896)
A room full of teenage girls. I think he sort of had the edge there.
Alex Carter (54:06.702)
Maybe, maybe. But he, I remember there was lovely comments afterwards about who just said Alex was right. That was funny. That was funny. So.
Polymath World (54:13.391)
Yes, Alex won.
Alex Carter (54:17.966)
What was it? where can you come find it? So ICE is actually changing its name or ICE is changing its name to PACE. So if you go to the University of Cambridge and look for continuing education, you'll find our courses. If you Google Alex Carter ICE or Alex Carter continuing education, you'll find me. A list of my courses will be there usually where you can sign up to whether it's a weekend course or an award bearing course that lasts a year or whether it's a postgraduate course that goes on for longer. So.
You can easily find us and we can even put the links, I suppose, in the description to this video, perhaps to help people out and finding places to go. But drop me an email as well. My details are on those websites usually, or you can send an inquiry through to the Institute and they'll get in touch with me. But it's just really what I'm keen to do is find the right course for the student.
So many people think, it's this. And I say, well, actually, don't you think this might be a good fit? And they'll say, oh, yeah, OK, maybe that's right. So often it's just about finding, pitching it at the right level, finding the course that will interest people. And hopefully I can do that for them.
Polymath World (55:23.021)
Yeah, and it's not just the award-bearing courses. There's such a wealth of online courses. There's the summer school. There's the short courses. I just encourage everyone, wherever you are in the world, you can do this. You can study at Cambridge. You can learn some really amazing stuff. And it's just so good for your life.
Alex Carter (55:39.872)
Everyone wonders with their first assignment, is it going to pass? And by the time of their second assignment, they're thinking, okay, I've passed. How am going to do better? What, how can I make my grade higher? That's everyone's experience typically of what's going on at the Institute. If you are thinking, am I going to pass? We've just pitched you at the wrong level and we've put you in the wrong course. So that's all on us. So get in touch, find out what works for you. And we've got open days that are linked out on YouTube as well. So you can, you can watch our open day videos, which we recorded. So they.
explain the courses to.
Polymath World (56:12.427)
Amazing. Alex Carter, thank you so much. can promise as long as you're willing to come back We'll be seeing a lot more of you here on polymath world, but thank you again for everything Personally, and thank you for joining us here today
Alex Carter (56:25.25)
Thanks, Sam. We didn't even get to talk about polymaths. We'll definitely do that next time.
Polymath World (56:28.783)
Next time, definitely that will be a next time. Thank you.
