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.

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Three Concepts of Salvation: Physical, Mystical, Religious

Salvation is a religious concept, and every religion includes a doctrine of salvation, a soteriology. Or can you think of a religion that does not? It is not essential to a religion that it be theistic, as witness the austere forms of Buddhism, but it is essential to every religion as I define the term that it have a soteriology. A religion must show a way out of our unsatisfactory predicament, and one is not religious unless one perceives our life in this world as indeed a predicament, and one that is unsatisfactory. Sarvam dukkham!  But the definition of 'religion' is not what I want to discuss.  Surely some religions include a soteriology (think of Hinduism, Buddhism, and the three Abrahamic religions) and so it is worth inquiring into just what salvation is or could be.

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Causes of Death of Philosophers

Here. For example, Rescher died of incoherence while Spinoza died of substance abuse. Miguel de Unamuno expired from a tragic loss of sense. Plantinga perished of necessity, and Augustine by a Hippo. As you can see, some are nasty and one needn't be dead to have a cause of death assigned. Last I checked, Professor Rescher was still happily scribbling away. And that reminds me of a joke.

A student goes to visit Professor Rescher. Secretary informs her that the good doctor is not available because he is writing a book. Student replies, "I'll wait."

Bilingual Education and the Left’s Diversity Fetish

My mother was born near Rome and didn't come to the United States until she was ten years old. She quickly learned English, she became completely fluent, and she spoke without an accent. But I wonder what would have happened if there had been a bilingual education program in place in the New York schools and she had been forced to participate in it. I think the answer is obvious: she would have had more difficulty learning English and she would not have learned it as well as she did.

And that fact would have impeded her assimilation. So why is there any support for bilingual education? It is a foolish idea on the face of it, and it harms those it is supposed to help.

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Diversity and the Quota Mentality

Liberals emphasize the value of diversity, and with some justification. Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good, and so is a diversity of opinions, especially insofar as such diversity makes possible a robustly competitive market place of ideas wherein the best rise to the top. A diversity of testable hypotheses is conducive to scientific progress. And so on.

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John Heidenry’s Zero at the Bone

There is serious reading and there is bed reading.  Serious reading is for stretching the mind and improving the soul.  It cannot be well done in bed but requires the alertness and seriousness provide by desk, hard chair, note-taking and coffee-drinking.  It is a pleasure, but one stiffened with an alloy of discipline.  Bed reading, however, is pure unalloyed pleasure.  The mind is neither taxed nor stretched or improved, but entertained.

I came across Heidenry's Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease (St. Martin's 2009) by chance at a local library.  I would never buy a book like this because at best it is  worth reading only once.  But its skillful noir recounting of a 1953 kidnapping and murder most definitely held my interest over the few days it took me to read it in those delicious intervals lying abed before nod-off.  But I have to wonder about books that anatomize depravity while eschewing all moral judgment.  A large topic this, one that I will get around to eventually.

I now hand off to Janet Maslin's NYT review.

Like, What Does It Mean? Notes on Nagel

Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” (Philosophical Review, 1974, reprinted in Mortal Questions, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 165-180) is a contemporary classic in the philosophy of mind, and its signature ‘what is it like’ locution has become a stock phrase rather loosely bandied about in discussions of subjectivity and consciousness. The phrase can be interpreted in several ways. Clarity will be served if we distinguish them.

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The Sociology of Philosophy: A PhilPapers Survey

What percentage of philosophers are atheists?  What percentage theists?  Are there more compatibilists than libertarians when it comes to the freedom of the will?  More libertarians than deniers of free will?  These are questions in the sociology of philosophy.  The general public has wildly inaccurate beliefs in this area, but practicing philosophers also cherish misconceptions.  Here are the results of a sophisticated PhilPapers survey.

Mildly interesting, but what does this contribute to philosophy?  I was pleased to see that a solid majority favors the analytic-synthetic distinction.  But surely I cannot use this merely sociological fact as any part of my justification for accepting the  distinction.  Or can I?