Comments on: What Good is Philosophy Education?

By: se

se — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 04:18:05 +0000

Z, WTF! Who are these idiots? This ‘B’ is a real Christian man. A white man! I’ve met a few of them before. Praise the Lord, brother, and shut the fuck up. Close this post please, before I get all preintellectual on these assholes.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 03:21:02 +0000

Bellatrys, you whiner, my original statement was pretty much a joke. But yes, I’m a Yankee the way a lot of Southerners are Rebs. Deal with it. Since the South took over the Republican Party, and then after that the whole U.S., I’ve been more vocal than I was before, during the period when Southerners were all self-pitying losers like yourself, instead of strutting bullies like Delay, Armey, Lott, and the rest. Your self-serving little quibbles about the Reconstruction and American race relations aren’t really worth bothering with. During Reconstruction, black Southerners had the vote and the various rights that come with that. Afterwards, increasingly not. Your problem, not mine.

By: ruralsaturday

ruralsaturday — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:55:59 +0000

“fecal matter in; fecal matter out.” More illustrative than GIGO, and it does bring up the more realistic metaphor, of metabolism. Nutritious alimentation in; fecal matter out. Point of fact: “fecal matter in” more than likely results in “vomitus out”; depending on the orifice, of course. The only poetically sound use of this is to hint at the organic underlayment of the abstract question . The most accurate and the most thorough understanding of a primal conflict leads only to the threshold of resolution. The key additional ingredient is the insistence of the individual on being. That has no ethical priority, it can be encouraged, or discouraged, masked or exposed, but its presence is an act of will more essential than reason. This is indeed underneath some of the most popular and seemingly illogical, and unnecessary, controversies. Wilberforce to Bryan to Ashcroft, these men are the champions of people who are fighting for their lives, who have recognized the mortal threat waiting behind the acceptance of new, heretical, truth, and thus defend themselves accordingly. It isn’t embarrassment, or love of tradition that drives them, it’s extinction. The ethical strength necessary to sacrifice one’s comfort and security in defense of a more honest view of the world is rare enough – to consider making the ultimate sacrifice, because one’s position and success are founded on a platform of lies, must seem entirely alien, now. But that’s where it goes. The resilience and adaptability that would enable the “human race” to adjust to and incorporate more accurate understanding is a general thing. Like any other general shift in the population it leaves behind a measurable and identifiable portion. Permanently. Who or what that portion will consist of, as we confront the necessity of immediate, massive change in response to conditions beyond our control, is exactly what most contemporary conflict, intellectual and military, ethical and metaphysical, is about. Elect, or preterite – take your pick, take your place, and hang on!

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:21:30 +0000

Yeah, like the Reconstruction was about helping former slaves. Like the Reconstruction helped former slaves. Goddam carpetbaggers, you’re all the same. Last I heard, it wasn’t ex-Confederates’ descendents ruling the roost in Cleveland and carrying out race-based shootings. (I’ve been trying to figure out why so many of the AEI elite are ex-lefties from the old days. I’m coming closer and closer to the answer, and it ain’t pretty, and we’re seeing some of it there in in friend Zizka, and even more of it in those folks who go around moaning “It’s all lost, we’re doomed, the American sheeple deserve all they get” – that arrogance isn’t a quality of the Right, it’s a quality of humanity, but the Right has and is willing to abuse power more – hey Dave, maybe Zizka was only self-describing and projecting on all philosophy students there…)

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:24:29 +0000

More esoterica. Indoctrinating of the too young and too inexperienced to be in any of the univs. with use of too much money to do so. The archaic outdated univ system should have been changed forty years ago.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 16:43:19 +0000

Bellatrys, I TOLD you that I would restore your right to vote IF YOU ASKED NICELY. But you didn’t. No vote for you. Ladies and gentlemen of the thread, my statement he references was, in fact, somewhat hypothetical (I have studied analytical philosophy some). My point was that this country might be in a better place now if it had been the descendants of Confederates had been excluded from political rights, rather than the descendants of slaves (which is what actually did happen). Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment did in fact strip Confederate veterans of some political rights, though not voting, while making provisions to restore them at some later date. When their rights were finally restored in a backroom deal around 1880, they immediately got to work stripping ex-slaves and their descendants of all political rights, including voting. My opinion is that the reconstruction ended too soon.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 16:28:47 +0000

I was not talking about the philosophy Jane Boatler took in the 50’s, but the analytic philosophy being taught today. My objection is not to Philosophy, which I read a lot of, but to today’s schools. The contemporary academic philosophy I read seems to be very heavy in ingenious, far-fetched, context-free hypothetical arguments. Rorty said (Mirror of Nature or Consequences of Pragmatism) that philosophy now essentially produces technicians of argument, with no substantive doctrines proposed by anyone except as cases for discussion. He thinks that’s fine, but I don’t. The analytical, argumentative strength analytic philosophy teaches needs to be matched with a strength in seeing and defining contexts, and an awareness of contexts, which isn’t really taught anywhere in the contemporary university, but especially not in philosophy classes. Matt has that skill to a considerable degree, but he got it from elsewhere. The harm I see in contemporary philosophy is an opportunity-cost kind of thing. My criticism is philosophical, but based on philosopher who are seldom taught any more. Analytic philosophers were pretty effective in achieving total domination by the normal methods of bureaucratic and factional realpolitik. The worst effects of philosophy (or economics) are seen, not in professional philosophers, but in someone who has taken a few courses and has effectively been told that it’s OK for him to assert his own prejudices and interests as aggressively as he wishes, as long as he’s able to make good arguments and knock down the other guy’s arguments.

By: se

se — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:13:37 +0000

Bob, “Call this a cry for help, a plea to academia for better weapons against the Right. The current armament hasn’t been effective.” If you think more logic is needed than what we already have, you really miss the point, and you haven’t been reading the polls. Your ignorance of the the realities, of fear and insecurity in an uneducated populace, make you ill suited for a discussion of human values and behavior. Bellatrys, “(The back-patting smugness of elitism is not limited to LGF and Free Republic.) Some people wouldn’t know a syllogism from an enthymeme if it bit them.” The arrogance and smugness of the boorish and uneducated doesn’t bother me, except in as much as it rules over those equally uneducated but willing to follow. I’m more troubled by the arrogance and smugness of technicians who associate intellectual parlour tricks with wisdom. Statistics is a tool. But as they say: If “shit goes in shit comes out.” Scholastic philosophy, whether today or half a millennium ago, would say otherwise.

By: harry

harry — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:26:09 +0000

Neha—take ‘informal logic’ and or ‘contemporary moral issues’ (or cognates) in the Philosophy department (but check out professors first). Take Economics 101, etc. And some serious math courses (not the ones named ‘the way to fulfil the math requirement for people who can’t count and don’t care about counting’). tom t: ooo, it would be such fun to speculate. Almost all of the rest of the humanities, perhaps? Plus half of the social sciences?

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 13:48:58 +0000

David, don’t bother with zizka, gtst was just arguing on deLong’s that all us who are descended from Confederates ought to be summarily disenfranchised to improve the quality of American voting. To go, I guess, with the ever popular assertion in Left Blogistan that all us Christians ought to be likewise stripped of our right to participate as citizens. (The back-patting smugness of elitism is not limited to LGF and Free Republic.) Some people wouldn’t know a syllogism from an enthymeme if it bit them.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 07:55:33 +0000

Yeah, well, having just watched the well-trained minds of the left blogosphere virtually without exception get rolled by the likes of Charles Johnson at LGF like rubes in a 3-card-monte game…I suspect something lacking in their education. Call this a cry for help, a plea to academia for better weapons against the Right. The current armament hasn’t been effective.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 05:43:05 +0000

…or simply rude.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 05:37:21 +0000

I prefer that the study of ethics be attached to subjects that make their centerpiece a reference to the world: history, law, psychology, and (cultural) anthropology. Philosophy will teach you arrogance, but not to recognize when it is unwarranted.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 03:26:40 +0000

“There is no ‘science’ of ethics.” Well, Sedgwick calls it a “study” in the cited paragraph, and contrasts it with the “positive sciences”, and I suspect that defining what is or is not a “science” would be outside the scope of physicists and chemists, but also way beyond my pay grade. I guess my question for the thread above is whether logic and critical analysis are tools of philosophy, rather than part of philosophy itself. Are we really back in ancient Athens with the Sophists, just learning to argue with refined skills but no purpose?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 12 Sep 2004 02:28:28 +0000

I think Matthew really nailed it, there. One of my favorite undergrad philosophy professors once said (probably paraphrasing Carl Sagan): “my hope is to turn you all into excellent bullshit detectors; because the world could always use some more of those.”