Category: Academia

Is College for Everyone?

When I was in the 7th grade my teacher told me I was 'college material,' the implication being that not everyone is.  She was right on both counts.  I was and not everyone is.  But times have changed, and pace Obama, change is not always for the better.  Part of the change for the worse is that the very phrase 'college material' has fallen into desuetude. 

The conceit that everyone can profit from a college education is of course foolish – which is perhaps why it is is so warmly embraced by liberals, those whose egalitarian instincts are rarely constrained by common sense.  It was foolish when college was affordable and it is multiply foolish now when it isn't.

I now hand off to 'Professor X' whose Atlantic piece, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, is one of the best things I have read on this topic. 

Philosophy Under Attack at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Start with this piece by Todd Edwin Jones, chairman of the UNLV philosophy department:  Budgetary Hemlock: Nevada Seeks to Eliminate Philosophy.  The original plan to eliminate the philosophy department entirely has apparently been revised.  See here. Excerpt:

UNLV’s College of Liberal Arts received news Tuesday from its dean of a revised budget-cutting plan that includes the elimination of non-tenured professors in the philosophy, anthropology and sociology departments.

This is a departure from the college’s previously stated plans, which recommended the philosophy department be cut entirely. The women’s studies department, also previously slated for elimination, is still on the chopping block. Women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology and sociology have the least amount of majors within the college, which also includes political science, psychology and English.

Professor Jones' defense of philosophy's role in the university curriculum  takes a familiar tack:  philosophy is useful because it teaches critical thinking.  Jones writes,

. . . people think of philosophy as a luxury only if they don’t really understand what philosophy departments do. I teach one of the core areas of philosophy, epistemology: what knowledge is and how we obtain it. People from all walks of life—physicists, physicians, detectives, politicians—can only come to good conclusions on the basis of thoroughly examining the appropriate evidence. And the whole idea of what constitutes good evidence and how certain kinds of evidence can and can’t justify certain conclusions is a central part of what philosophers study.

Now I don't doubt that courses in logic, epistemology, and ethics can help inculcate habits of critical thinking and good judgment.  And it may also be true that philosophy has a unique role to play here.  So, while it is true that every discipline teaches habits of critical thinking and good judgment in that discipline, there are plenty of issues that are not discipline-specific, and these need to be addressed critically as well.

What I object to, however, is the notion that philosophy needs to justify itself in terms of an end external to it, and that its main justification  is in terms of an end outside of it.  The main reason to study philosophy is not to become a more critical reasoner or a better evaluator of evidence, but to grapple with the ultimate questions of human existence and to arrive at as much insight into them  as is possible.  What drives philosophy is the desire to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  Let's not confuse a useful byproduct of philosophical study (development of critical thinking skills) with  goal of philosophical study.  The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary.  Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that will prove handy in law school. 

Philosophy is an end in itself.  This is why it is foolish to try to convince philistines that it is good for something.  It is not primarily good for something.  It is a good in itself.  Otherwise you are acquiescing in the philistinism you ought to be combating.  Is listening to the sublime adagio movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony good for something?  And what would that be, to impress people with how cultured you are?

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such reponses are lame.  (Doesn't Professor Jones' apologia for his way of earning his bread strike you as slightly lame?)  You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school."

Admittedly, this is a lofty conception of philosophy and I would hate to have to defend it before the uncomprehending philistines one would expect to find on the Board of Regents.  But philosophy is what it is, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.

From the Mail: What is a Degree in Philosophy Worth?

This just over the transom:

My name is Bryce. I am a freshman uni student, studying philosophy. I have a question I believe you are well-suited to answer, considering your vast life experience and knowledge in philosophy; is it worth it to get a college degree in philosophy?

I am academically unaffiliated by choice, having resigned from a tenured position at a university.  So I am not an outsider to academic philosophy, but neither do I have a vested interest in recruiting philosophy majors.  So I am in a position to be objective.  But I advise you to solicit opinions from a variety of people both in and out of academic philosophy.  I have enabled Comments for this post in the off-chance that some readers will offer you some helpful suggestions.

If you are asking whether it is economically worthwhile to pursue an undergraduate degree in philosophy, then my answer is that it is probably not unless you have in mind to study law or journalism.  In that case the philosophy training could be very useful assuming that you are studying in a department that is analytically as opposed to Continentally oriented.  But studying philosophy as preparation for L-school or J-school  or some other professional school would not be a reason to study philosophy as opposed to economics or political science, say.  Of course, you might have an interest in the foundations of the law and so study philosophy of law as an undergraduate in preparation for law school. 

If you have an all-consuming passion for philosophy and are really good at it, then you might consider going into academe to make your living from philosophy. But this is a long shot.  Good tenure-track positions are hard to find, competition for them is ferocious, and the market can be expected to worsen.  And I presume that you would not want to end up an academic gypsy traipsing from one one-year position to the next or end up an adjunct  teaching 12 courses per year for slave wages at a community college in [insert name of least desirable locale]. 

So, from a purely economic point of view, you ought not major in philosophy — or in English or in Women's Studies, or . . . .  This is especially the case nowadays when the cost of a college education is vastly in excess of the value of what one gets for the money and many assume onerous debt to finance it.  By and large, the old adage holds: "Philosophy bakes no bread."  There is no money in it, nor, in my opinion, should there be: the lack of earning potential tends to keep out those with the wrong motivations.

The other side of the issue, of course, is that "Man does not live by bread alone," this New Testament verse being my stock response to those who say that "Philosophy bakes no bread."  Surely it is only the stunted mortal who views everything in economic terms. Philosophy is a magnificent and noble thing and the best have always pursued it for its own sake as part of a spiritual and intellectual quest for ultimate understanding, wisdom, and true happiness.  In my opinion, philosophy is the highest quest a human can embark upon.  The life of the philosopher is the highest life possible to a mortal.  But be aware that what I just wrote will be violently contested by many.  (Their contesting, however, is just more philosophy in the guise of anti-philosophy.)

And this leads me to a final suggestion.  If you agree with the spirit of the preceding paragraph and want to study philosophy for its own sake, then you might consider double-majoring in something 'practical' such as Information Technology so as to have a latter-day equivalent of lense-grinding by which to support yourself.  (The allusion is to Baruch Spinoza, patron saint of maverick philosophers, who was academically unaffiliated by choice and who supported himself by grinding optical lenses.)

Infinity and Mathematics Education

A reader writes,

Regarding your post about Cantor, Morris Kline, and potentially vs. actually infinite sets: I was a math major in college, so I do know a little about math (unlike philosophy where I'm a rank newbie);
on the other hand, I didn't pursue math beyond my bachelor's degree so I don't claim to be an expert. However, I do know that we never used the terms "potentially infinite" vs. "actually infinite".

I am not surprised, but this indicates a problem with the way mathematics is taught: it is often taught in a manner that is both ahistorical and unphilosophical.  If one does not have at least a rough idea of the development of thought about infinity from Aristotle on, one cannot properly appreciate the seminal contribution of Georg Cantor (1845-1918), the creator of transfinite set theory.  Cantor sought to achieve an exact mathematics of the actually infinite.  But one cannot possibly understand the import of this project if one is unfamiliar with the distinction between potential and actual infinity and the controversies surrounding it. As it seems to me, a proper mathematical education at the college level must include:

1. Some serious attention to the history of the subject.

2. Some study of primary texts such as Euclid's Elements, David Hilbert's Foundations of Geometry, Richard Dedekind's Continuity and Irrational Numbers, Cantor's Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, etc.  Ideally, these would be studied in their original languages!

3. Some serious attention to the philosophical issues and controversies swirling around fundamental concepts such as set, limit, function, continuity, mathematical induction, etc.  Textbooks give the wrong impression: that there is more agreement than there is; that mathematical ideas spring forth ahistorically; that there is only one way of doing things (e.g., only one way of construction the naturals from sets); that all mathematicians agree.

Not that the foregoing ought to supplant a textbook-driven approach, but that the latter ought to be supplemented by the foregoing.  I am not advocating a 'Great Books' approach to mathematical study.

Given what I know of Cantor's work, is it possible that by "potentially infinite" Kline means "countably infinite", i.e., 1 to 1 with the natural numbers?

No! 

Such sets include the whole numbers and the rational numbers, all of which are "extensible" in the sense that you can put them into a 1 to 1 correspondence with the natural numbers; and given the Nth member, you can generate the N+1st member. The size of all such sets is the transfinite number "aleph null". The set of all real numbers, which includes the rationals and the irrationals, constitute a larger infinity denoted by the transfinite number C; it cannot be put into a 1 to 1 correspondence with the natural numbers, and hence is not generable in the same way as the rational numbers. This would seem to correspond to what Kline calls "actually infinite".

It is clear that you understand some of the basic ideas of transfinite set theory, but what you don't understand is that the distinction between the countably (denumerably) infinite and the uncountably (nondenumerably) infinite falls on the side of the actual infinite.  The countably infinite has nothing to do with the potentially infinite.  I suspect that you don't know this because your teachers taught you math in an ahistorical manner out of boring textbooks with no presentation of the philosophical issues surrounding the concept of infinity.    In so doing they took a lot of the excitement and wonder out of it.  So what did you learn?  You learned how to solve problems and pass tests.  But how much actual understanding did you come away with?

Do You Want an Academic Job?

Thomas H. Benton, Dodging the Anvil:

Essentially, if you want an academic job, you'd better be really good at what you do. You should be at a top university (although sometimes less-famous institutions can be effective at local placements); have at least a few high-quality publications, preferably in top-tier journals; have a dissertation that's nearly a publishable book, preferably under contract with a university press; be a charismatic and challenging teacher; be socially energetic without being threatening; have well-known and well-connected advisers who will support you without any reservations; be willing to live anywhere; be prepared to work as a visiting professor and move a few times in the first decade of your career; and be willing to live with the possibility that you will always have an itinerant, insecure, poorly compensated existence.

But you knew all that already.

Related posts, and links to two other earlier Benton pieces, are filed under Academia.

Philosophy is Inquiry not Ideology

(The following, composed 16 February 2005, is imported from the first incarnation of Maverick Philosopher.  It makes some important points that bear repeating.)

On the masthead of The Ivory Closet, now defunct: "Life as a Closet Conservative Inside Liberal Academia."

From the post Liberal Groupthink is My Cover:

My dissertation, which I'm still working on, focuses on a contemporary French philosopher who is known in academia primarily as a radical Leftist. Generally speaking, academics seem to just assume that you agree with and share the same views as the figure you focus on in your dissertation. So, everyone just assumes that since I'm writing on a radical Leftist that I must be a radical Leftist. I keep my mouth shut about my conservativism. Often I have to bite my tongue when I hear disparaging remarks about conservatives. But, so long as I manage to do that the liberal bias of academia makes it all too easy to stay in the closet. Everyone just assumes your [you're] a liberal.

Continue reading “Philosophy is Inquiry not Ideology”

David Gordon Reviews Thomas Nagel’s New Book and Criticizes Brian Leiter’s Puerile Fulminations

David Gordon reviews Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–2008.  The following is a particularly interesting portion of the review in which Gordon comments on a certain status-obsessed careerist's puerile fulminations against a real philosopher:

Continue reading “David Gordon Reviews Thomas Nagel’s New Book and Criticizes Brian Leiter’s Puerile Fulminations”

From the Mail Bag: Dogmatism in Academe

This just over the transom:

I wish I could express to you just how much of a blessing your blog has been (and continues to be) to me.

I am a grad student in a Ph.D. program here in the states.   I read your site for enjoyment, but also because I find that you tend to very acutely and eloquently crystallize objections and points that I find appearing in my own mind in a very rudimentary and unrefined way.  It is a great reassurance when I find you making a point so clearly that has occurred to me, but that I haven't known quite what to do with.

And, of course, this is to say nothing of your topics and insights that are well beyond me and never would have occurred to me.

I have a love/hate relationship with this field.  I love it, but I suffocate within it because of predominating paradigms.   I was recently instructed by a professor in one of my courses that "no reasonable person needs to argue for naturalism" when I pointed out that a certain author never once argued for the naturalism he was presupposing.

Continue reading “From the Mail Bag: Dogmatism in Academe”