Category: Teaching

Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the University

The universities have been under assault from the Left for decades, but now advanced A. I. has its destructive role to play.

A recent article by James D. Walsh in New York Magazine, widely circulated among academics, reported that “just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT [in 2022], a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments”. The use of Generative-AI chatbots for required coursework is, if anything, even more widespread today. At elite universities, community colleges, and everything in between, students are using AI to take notes in class, produce practice tests, write essays, analyze data, and compose computer code, among other things. A freshman seems to speak for entire cohorts of undergraduates when she admits that “we rely on it, [and] we can’t really imagine being without it”. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education quotes multiple students who are effectively addicted to the technology, and are distressed at being unable to kick the habit — because, as an NYU senior confesses, “I know I am learning NOTHING.”

Related: Do You Really Want to Teach at a University?

Do You Really Want to Teach at a University?

Substack latest. Do you want to feed the unhungry in a leftist seminary?

Comments and replies:

Tony: One of the best, and certainly the most concise, essays on the problem. The mild criticism when I was at NYU was that the universities were offering "higher skilling." Higher infantilization was right around the corner. 

Bill: Thanks, Tony. One could go on to mention what a lousy deal a college degree is these days: as the quality goes down, the price goes up.  And then the trifecta of corruption: overpaid do-nothing administrators pushing the destructive DEI agenda; federally insured loans without oversight; stupid students and their parents who go into deep debt for something of little or no value. One absurdity leads to another: bad financial decisions are then to be rewarded by student loan forgiveness! Let the waitresses and the truck drivers pick up the tab. The law, unmoored from morality, and positively promotive of immorality, becomes a mere power tool for the advancing of the interests of amoral if not immoral elites. Talk about moral hazard!

Tony: Which connects to the inherently fraudulent banking system and the Ponzi scheme called Social Security. A perfect storm of moral hazards.

Bill: I agree. But permit me a quibble. Ponzi schemes are set up with fraudulent intent.  The SS system was not so set up. Initially, at least, it was reasonable and well-intentioned: to keep workers from ending up in the gutter, subsisting on cat food. It was insurance against destitution, and like all insurance, the premiums were relatively small. Of course, it soon enough transmogrified into an ultimately unsustainable retirement program.  My main point at the moment, however, is the pedantic one that SS is not a Ponzi scheme strictly speaking.  But it may be more than pedantic inasmuch as lefties could take it as a smear against SS as opposed to a legitimate criticism. Or as I put it about a dozen years ago, though not in a reply to Tony Flood:

Language matters.  Precision matters.  And if not here, where?  If you say what you know to be false for rhetorical effect, then you undermine your credibility among those whom you need to persuade.  Conservatives don't need to persuade conservatives, and they will not be able to persuade leftists.  They must pitch their message to the undecided who, if rational, will be put off by sloppy rhetoric and exaggeration.

I note that W. James Antle, III, the author of the linked article, refers to the SS system as "the liberals' Ponzi scheme."  But of course it is not a Ponzi scheme.  A Ponzi scheme, by definition, is a scheme set up with the intention of defrauding people for the benefit of those running the scheme.  But there is nothing fraudulent about the SS system: the intentions behind it were good ones!  The SS system is no doubt in dire need of reform if not outright elimination.  But no good purpose is achieved by calling it a Ponzi scheme.  That's either a lie or an exaggeration.  Not good, either way.  The most you can say is that it is like a Ponzi scheme in being fiscally unsustainable as currently structured. Why not make the point accurately without a distracting rhetorical smear? Conservative exaggeration is politically foolish.  Is it not folly to give ammo to the enemy?  Is it not folly to choose a means (exaggeration and distortion) that is not conducive  to the end (garnering support among the presently uncommitted)?

Tony:  I take your point about imputing ill-intent, but the passive voice of the "SS system was not so set up" (as a Ponzi scheme) obscures agency and its motives (which you were not writing an essay about). Before the Social Security Act of 1935 there was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which was not hatched overnight. The conspiracy to nationalize US banks was at least a decade in the making. The propaganda seeding the mass media (as today, post-SVB collapse) was that there's nothing worse than a bank run or "panic" (or is it a "threat to public health"?). That line served those who wanted to bring banking under governmental control (with the bankers overseeing the government). The easy money of the '20s led to the crash that engendered the destitution you referenced. Intelligent people engineered the FRA, and equally intelligent, educated, sober, well-meaning people came up with the SSA (and other agencies) to address the former's unforeseen consequences. Their ideological heirs now prevent the inevitable insolvency of SS with easy money: the central bank writes a check to itself with "our" money (denominated in federal reserve notes), postponing the day of reckoning. My issue is moral hazard, and one seems to engender another. As Tucker reminded us last night, the bankers effed up, but none went to prison. The government moved heaven and earth to shore up the same morally hazardous system because, as all the right people know, "there's no alternative." As I wrote in Christ, Capital & Liberty:

Just as advances in technology decreased the fear of “getting caught” consuming pornography, so did the central bank in the financial markets decreased the fear of suffering losses for making bad loans. As Peter Schiff put it regarding the 2008-2009 Meltdown:

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy. [Peter Schiff, “Don’t Blame Capitalism,” The Washington Post, October 16, 2008.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/15/AR2008101503166.html

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Admini­stration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and -selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow—until it could grow no more. [CCL 126-127]

I'll stop here before I write an essay!

Bill: And I'll leave you with the last word. You make substantive points of more importance than my linguistic one, although I retain my conviction that language matters: any toleration of linguistic slovenliness spills over into a toleration of sloppy thinking. 
 

Lousy Teachers

They unwittingly gave me the confidence that I could do what they do, and indeed do it better, but they also deprived me of the intellectual formation that I had to spend years developing on my own. They set me forward, and they set me back.

To cheat students is bad enough; to corrupt them is far worse. The latter is happening now in classrooms at all levels throughout the land.  To speak of a decline in standards would be an understatement: perversion of standards.

Do I Miss Teaching?

I am enjoying classroom teaching quite a bit now that I no longer do it. With some things it is not the doing of it that we like so much as the having done it. 

One day in class I carefully explained the abbreviation ‘iff’ often employed by philosophers and mathematicians to avoid writing ‘if and only if.’ I explained the logical differences among ‘if,’ ‘only if,’ and ‘if and only if.’ I gave examples. I brought in necessary and sufficient conditions. The whole shot. But I wasn’t all that surprised when I later read a student comment to the effect that Dr. V can’t spell ‘if.’

On another occasion I explained that 'When does life begin?' is not the right question to ask in the abortion debate. For one thing, are we talking about life on Earth? Human life on Earth? An individual human life? If the question pertains to an individual human life, then the answer is obvious: at conception.  So that can't be the question. The question concerns personhood: when does an individual human life become a person?  I then explained descriptive personhood, the criteria of same, normative personhood, the relation between the two and added a bit about rights and duties and their correlativity.

After I was done with these distinctions, a kid raised his hand and asked, "But isn't the question when life begins?"

I was struck once again by the pointlessness of most 'teaching,' but I didn't quit my job then and there.  More time had to pass before the 'meaningfulness' of being paid was no longer meaning enough.  

It may be a generational characteristic. We Boomers want every moment to be meaningful. I suppose we are spoiled in that regard.

I did have a few good students. A memorable Kant seminar was composed of ten students, eight of whom were outstanding. I would have taught that class for free.

Former Students

Did I help them or harm them? Probably not much of either.  They've forgotten me, and I have forgotten most of them.

The few excellent students I had made teaching somewhat worthwhile, but the unreality of the classroom bothered me and the unseriousness of teaching those with no desire to learn.  It was like trying to feed the sated or seduce the sexless.  Philosophy, like youth itself, is wasted on the young.

There were a few older students. They were eager and motivated but their brains had been ossified by the boring repetitiveness of mundane  existence. They wanted to learn, but they were old dogs unreceptive to new tricks. The picture I paint is in dark tones and your experience may differ. I am well aware of that.

What do I mean by the unreality of the classroom? Compare the dentist's office. You don't want to be there and he'd rather be playing golf. But you want his services, and he is intent on providing them in a professional manner.  It is a serious setting in which money, that universal measure of seriousness and reputation, are on the line. Most students in a required course don't want to be there, and getting them to participate is like pulling teeth. 

Advice on Study and the Improvement of the Mind

Reader M.L.P. inquires,

I was wondering what habits one should acquire to study philosophy profitably. I read philosophy books but I tend to forget most of what I read. I also find it hard to come up with my own ideas.

Roughly how many books or articles should one read in a day? Or is this the wrong way to approach the issue?

Should one start by reading ancient philosophy or by familiarizing oneself with current philosophical debates?

And finally, how crucial is it to study philosophy with a mentor? Is it possible to be a good philosopher by studying alone?

A great deal could be said on this topic. Here are a few thoughts that may be helpful. Test them against your own experience. First some general points, then to your specific questions.

1)  Make good use of the morning, which is an excellent time for such  activities  as reading, writing, study, and meditation.  But to put the morning to good use, one must arise early.  I get up at 1:30, but you needn't be so monkish.  Try arising one or two hours earlier than you presently do. That will provide you with a block of quiet time.  Fruitful mornings are of course impossible if one's evenings are spent dissipating.  You won't be able to spend the early morning thinking and trancing if you spent the night before drinking and dancing. The quality of the morning is directly affected by the quality of the previous evening.

2)  Abstain from all mass media dreck in the early morning.  Read no newspapers.  "Read not The Times, read the eternities." (Thoreau)   No electronics. No computer use, telephony, TV, e-mail, etc.  Just as you wouldn't pollute your body with whisky and cigarettes upon arising, so too you ought not pollute your pristine morning mind with the irritant dust of useless facts, the palaver of groundless opinions, and every manner of distraction.    There is time for that stuff later in the day if you must have it.  (And it is a good idea to keep an eye on the passing scene.) The mornings should be kept free and clear for study that promises long-term profit.

3) Although desultory reading is enjoyable, it is best to have a plan.  Pick one or a small number of topics that strike you as interesting and important and focus on them.  I distinguish between bed reading and desk reading.  Such lighter reading as biography and history can be done in bed, but hard-core materials require a desk and such other accessories as pens of various colors for different sorts of annotations and underlinings, notebooks, a cup of coffee, a fine cigar . . . .

4) If you read books of lasting value, you ought to study what you read, and if you study, you ought to take notes. And if you take notes, you owe it to yourself to assemble them into some sort of coherent commentary. What is the point of studious reading if not to evaluate critically what you read, assimilating the good while rejecting the bad?

The forming of the mind is the name of the game.  This won't occur from passive reading, but only by an active engagement with the material.  The best way to do this is by writing up your own take on it.  Here is where blogging can be useful.  Since blog posts are made public, your self-respect will give you an incentive to work at saying something intelligent.

5) You say that you forget what you read. 

Well, there is little  point in learning something that you will forget.  The partial cure for this is to read in an active way, with pen in hand. I use pens of different colors for underlining and note-taking. Write key words on the top of the page.  Isolate and mark the key passages. Make a glossary on the book's fly leaves.  When a book arrives, I note the date of its arrival so that I an track my intellectual biography. At the end of a chapter I note the time and date of my first and subsequent readings of it.  Reconstruct the author's arguments in a notebook in your own words.  Look up reviews online, print them out, then insert them into the book.  A properly annotated book is easy to review, and of course review is essential. Review fixes the material in your mind.

You ask how many books or articles should one read in a day.

I'll use myself as an example. Yesterday, N. Rescher's Aporetics arrived.  I read and annotated the first chapter this morning slowly and carefully. Then I sketched a blog post in my handwritten journal that was inspired by Rescher's chapter.  Then I went back to Palle Yourgrau's Death and Nonexistence which I am working through and mulled over a few pages of that.  These activities took me from 2:00 am to 3:35. Then 45 minutes of formal meditation. Then I logged on and put up a couple or three Facebook posts.  Around 5:20 I was out the door for an hour on the mountain bike.  The main thing is to read and write every single day.

You ask whether one should start by reading  the ancients or by studying current debates. 

You could do either, as long as you do the other.   You need to have some issue, problem, or question that you need to get clear about.  Perhaps you want to understand knowledge in its relation to truth, belief, and justification.  Contemporary sources will give you some idea of the relevant questions. Armed with these, you can profitably read Plato's Theaetetus.

You ask whether you need a mentor. 

No, but it helps to find one or more intelligent individuals with whom you can interact productively.  But even this is not necessary, and in any case, these individuals may be hard to find.  To exaggerate somewhat, all real learning is via autodidacticism.

Scholar

Euthanizing Liberty

Chad McIntosh sees an upside in the recent closures of philosophy programs.  I agree with him.

In conclusion, I now see the closure of philosophy departments, along with others in the humanities, as a good thing, for three reasons. First, institutions of higher education have already devolved to the point that the humanities are a mere vestigial organ. Their removal helps clarify the image of these institutions as something other than true universities. Second, removing the humanities will help slow the spread of the insidious ideology destroying society that’s incubated there. Finally, it’s plausible that the future of the humanities is better off in the hands of independent lovers of wisdom. So, to all the institutional bureaucrats just thinking about the bottom dollar: cut the humanities! Slash, chop, dice, hack them into nothing. Leave thinking about the bigger picture to those who know what a real university is.

Since the spirit of true philosophy has fled the leftist seminaries, a New Monasticism is needed to preserve and transmit high culture:

I will end on a (slightly) more hopeful note. In his 2017 book The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher says orthodox Christians should think of themselves as a people in exile, and that their best chance of preserving their faith and traditions is to form quasi-monastic communities within this increasingly hostile post-Christian culture. Those of us who still believe in the university, classically understood, would do well to consider adopting a similar strategy. Since we can no longer depend on modern institutions of higher education as places where the great classics of Western thought and tradition can be faithfully taught, learned, and engaged, we will have to do those things on our own. Thankfully, we are not in wholly untrodden territory. Homeschooling parents have been blazing these trails for a long time. As for aspiring academics, William Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, is a model. True, few people have the means to support themselves as an independent scholar. But those who find a way will be precisely those seek knowledge for its own sake. The independent scholar will not have to continually debase himself by justifying his own field of study to some institutional bureaucrat or even to his colleagues. Furthermore, being unburdened by the duties of managing classes of disinterested students and time-consuming administrative tasks, he is in a position to do his best work.

Somerville/Blondel on Education

Once widely understood, now forgotten:

It is not expedient that all truths be indiscriminately communicated to every student regardless of age or temperament. Premature truths can do more harm than good; for just as it is criminal to anticipate the age of puberty with indiscrete revelations, similarly, intellectual irresponsibility on the part of the teacher can be vicious. Between the desire to tell all and to tell nothing, the educator must find a middle path. For example, if there is a real value to be realized in educating elementary school children in love of country, it is questionable whether the teacher should make it his or her business to make a parade of all the skeletons in the history of American or French diplomacy or military enterprises on the grounds that the child has the right to know all. Again, while the instructor may himself be passing through a phase of disillusionment, he is not really carrying out his trust if he seeks to poison other minds because of his own momentary personal problems.

James M. Somerville, Total Commitment: Blondel’s L’Action (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Books, 1968), pp. 161-162. A very good book!  It merits the coveted MavPhil plenary endorsement.

We Lesser Lights

The great thinkers think for humanity, and the great writers write for humanity.  The great teachers are teachers of humanity. Buddha was such a one and so were Jesus and Socrates. We lesser lights think and write to clear our heads, and to appropriate what we have inherited. 

Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!
 
What from your fathers you  received as heir,
Acquire if  you would possess it. 
 
(Goethe's Faust, Part I, Night, lines 684-685, tr. W. Kaufmann)

 
We think and write to know our own minds, to form our minds, and attract a few of the like-minded.  As Aristotle says somewhere, we philosophize best with friends. Philosophy does not make progress in us so much as we make progress in philosophy. We are teachers of humanity only at second-hand, and only to a few.  But we too participate in the great tradition and are grateful for the vocation to such participation.
 
Faust im Studierzimmer Kersting