Last weekend, I attended the British Undergraduate Philosophy Society’s annual skills conference where I presented a paper on vagueness and the denial of bivalence. It was a good event with a great selection of philosophical talks interspersed with skills workshops, mainly given by Ed Grefenstette, the current chair of BUPS, and Rab Charleston, its founder. The keynote was given by Professor Bob Hale from the University of Sheffield, who not only presented an excellent and very interesting, although rather technical, paper about the arguments for and against fatalism (the doctrine that future events are already predetermined or fixed in some way), but was kind enough to stick around for the rest of the weekend and attend all of the student talks, offering some worthwhile and insightful comments along the way. I was very impressed by this as I’m sure that not all academics would be prepared to give up their weekends for such a worthwhile cause!

Despite enjoying the conference and meeting some lovely people (there were less of us than usual, only 25 or so, but this worked well as it made it more focussed and easier to get to know everyone), I came away, as I often do from BUPS conferences, with slightly mixed emotions. On the one hand, it was great to spend a weekend with such a wonderful bunch of committed and enthusiastic philosophers talking about topics of common interest. On the other, I always tend to feel slightly — intimidated would be too strong a word, but it’s close enough — by the near encyclopaedic knowledge and almost limitless enthusiasm of these budding academics, both of which seem to be well in advance of my own not inconsiderable (even if I do say so myself!) abilities. Perhaps this is just insecurity or paranoia on my part, but I can’t help feeling that I am not entirely on the same level as these people as, despite having a great enthusiasm for philosophy, I am above all interested in thinking rather than the more obscure aspects of the subject as it is studied in academic circles.

I guess this comes partly from having had a long (16 years!) break from full-time education, during which time I was able to gain many invaluable skills and experience, but which has led to me having a rather different take on things from those who have been brought up (so to speak) within the academic tradition. To them, it would appear to be quite natural for talk within the tradition of contemporary analytic philosophy whereas for me, even after three years of study, it seems something of a foreign language. I find myself having to do a lot of ‘translation’ in my head between what I really think and what academic philosophers have to say about the subject, and the two often don’t match up at all. It gives me the feeling of having to either play along with a rather abstract (and possibly irrelevant) ‘language-game’, to borrow a term of Wittgenstein’s, or to concentrate my efforts purely on my own thinking. That said, in areas where I feel reasonably competent, I seem to be able to make as good an argument as anyone else, although this is often on the basis of what I intuitively feel to be right, backed up with the appropriate philosophical justifications, rather than being led purely by the philosophy, or what I have read. Perhaps this is the same for everybody, I don’t know, but I do feel that there is some kind of communication barrier beyond which I am reluctant to engage.

My own paper seemed to go down reasonably well, especially given the challenges of presenting a paper that is primarily on logic to a undergraduate audience. Although it’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, I wanted to see whether I could manage to give a clear and accurate account of the material, and hopefully to make it interesting and accessible to people who had perhaps never studied logic before, or maybe just a little during their first year (not that I’m much of an expert myself, although I did take a module on it!). The feedback I received was very positive, although there are a few aspects of the paper that could be improved upon, as well as a logical problem (pointed out by Professor Hale) with one of my suggestions, although I think I can get round this with reference to the assertibility conditions that are mentioned earlier in the paper. The feedback was especially useful given that this paper is actually one of the essays for my logic module and although I’m not sure whether my lecturer is going to think much of it in any case, at least it helped me understand the material better, as well as clarifying a few points that I could have expressed better.

All in all, the conference was a very enjoyable experience, and it’s heartening to see so many highly motivated and capable individuals, many of whom will no doubt go on to successful graduate and academic careers. As far as my own career goes, that’s very much a topic of deliberation at the moment. On the one hand, I feel like I have something positive to offer, both in terms of philosophical ability and for future teaching and research. On the other, I find myself increasingly at odds with the academic style and approach, which seems to encourage engagement with literature much more than it does original and creative thinking, which is what primarily interests me, although of course if you can do both then all the better. I guess it’s down to the difference between being a good academic scholar and a good thinker. The two don’t always (in fact, quite rarely) go hand in hand, although they are not mutually exclusive by any means. However, I do tend to find the latter much more interesting and on many occasions find the conventions, restrictions and traditions of analytic philosophy quite frustrating in terms of trying to achieve this goal — a goal that, you might think, is absolutely central to a philosophical education.