I don't mind the innumeracy of so many liberal arts intellectuals... as long as they stick to liberal arts. Alas, they do not.
A short time ago, I was involved in debate over instituting a new affirmative action program at my university. "We're failing this group terribly! We must do something about this!" came the rallying cry.
I responded with university admissions statistics, high school graduation statistics, and census statistics, showing that the largest reason behind our apparent lack of members of that group was that we were an urban institution which drew students mostly from the local area, and members of that group lived mostly in rural areas where the population as a whole tended to attend more rural institutions. (Canada has far more of a trend towards attending "nearby" post-secondary institutions than the US does.)
I was accused of trying to confuse the issue "by introducing numbers and percentages", and the admissions policy was adopted.
As someone with a BA in English and wrapping up an MS in Computer Science, I really think anyone who considers themselves an "intellectual" should know both the theory of probability and Foucault. I'll be the first to agree that probability will land you more jobs, but from a purely intellectual angle I woulds say these have equally helped me undertand the world around me.
I've been in rooms of really smart technical people who have a child-like understanding of social and cultural issues that effect them (discussion about gender on HN can be a great example of this). At the same time I've been in rooms of extremely well read humanists who cringe at any attempt to understand the world through mathematical models. Both of these groups exhibit a clear intellectual poverty that limits their overall understanding of the world.
The worst part isn't merely that each group has such ignorance of the other's domain, but that each will proudly defend this ignorance. The "enjoy working at starbucks" and "buzzes like a fridge" comments are equally anti-intellectual. The first thing that needs to change is this attitude.
How does one determine whether Foucault's statements are true or not? At any rate, why should I accept them?
If the answers to these questions are negative, then in what way can Foucault be put on the same level as the theory of probability, so that it is a shameful thing not to know anything about what Foucault says?
See, this is exactly the sentiment that the parent was talking about. And this crops up repeatedly on HN. It seems incredibly presumptuous to go to other fields and demand that they produce answers in the way that you were trained: "philosophy doesn't yield data like hard science, so it's not as important!" Why should they listen to an outsider who doesn't even take the time to learn the field?
More to the point, why should one be proud of a reductionistic and truncated worldview?
Subject it to critical thought, like you should be doing with everything else. If it is sound, it will hold up to being logically dissected, and wrestled with in your mind. If we're talking about something that could change one's worldview, then you also need to evaluate whether it resonates with your own belief system.
For example, I liked Thus Spoke Zarathrusta's concept of the Ubermensch as a goal for aspiration, but realized I would never want to deify myself as much as Nietzsche espoused.
> you also need to evaluate whether it resonates with your own belief system.
The universe has never asked my input into anything before. Why should it care whether any aspect of itself resonates with my belief system?
I've seen what happens when people evaluate new ideas based largely on whether they resonate with their belief systems. The world doesn't need any more votes on whether the sea level is rising or whether the human genome is similar to the chimp genome because Jesus.
If you question whether this has any relevance to morality, for example, ask yourself why morality shouldn't be evaluated empirically. Might yield better results than channeling a mythologized goatherd.
There's a difference between questioning something having taken the time to understand it on its own terms and questioning something because it hasn't gotten around to expressing itself in yours.
Why must I accept Foucault's terms at all? Probability theory does not require me to buy into some closed system of beliefs in order to justify itself. Only certain things like critical theory and some religions seem to require that...
You've just repeated more or less exactly what you initially said in this thread. This probably indicates that you're not making enough effort to understand why people are saying what they're saying.
Yes, it also indicates, perhaps, that people aren't really understanding _you_. But if you find yourself repeating the same button, you're still not doing any additional work in the conversation.
Going back to your initial post:
>How does one determine whether Foucault's statements are true or not?
Thinking about them. Talking about them with others. All of the obvious answers.
>At any rate, why should I accept them?
You should accept them _conditionally_--i.e., not necessarily incorporate them into your actual beliefs--because if you want to have conversations with the loads of people that take Foucault seriously, _you will have to play nice_.
All the dude said was that he really felt Foucault was important. You pretty much just disagree with him, which is, you know, fine; but instead of saying "I find Foucault to be less useful for such-and-such a reason"--a statement I suspect you cannot construct because you actually don't know anything about Foucault--you are pointedly and obviously resisting the idea that Foucault could have any value.
The only tenet of Smilism is that you don't understand it.
Even I don't understand it. (It's very deep.)
However, why should you question it just because it hasn't bothered to explain itself to you on your terms? Why should it explain itself to you at all? Who do you think you are all of a sudden?
You seem to be making two contradictory points that both miss the spirit of what I was saying.
Certainly there are fields that are intentionally obfuscated and impenetrable. That doesn't mean the manner in which they are tangled is not outside comprehensibility, as your simple constructed example demonstrates.
The spirit of what I was saying is, if lots of people are talking about Smilism, then if you want to have a conversation with those people you will have to examine Smilism on its own turf.
No one's saying you have to play with other people, but if you do, you better play nice.
On the other hand, people that wish to spread or communicate their ideas are well motivated to translate them into other peoples' terms. So it's not that I'm some VIP, it's that--for instance--Democrats want to explain Obama's health bill in clear but simple terms.
Now, with Foucault, there is less motivation to do so. Partly because Philosophy is one of those fields in which thinkers can benefit from obfuscation, and partly because Philosophy is one of those fields that relies on the self-motivation of its students.
> philosophy doesn't yield data like hard science, so it's not as important!
This is deliberately misstating the position, something a philosopher should be acutely aware of and avoid entirely.
The problem with philosophy is, where is the falsification? How can a philosophical position be refuted and discredited in the way phlogiston has been?
The problem with this line of thinking is that you expect philosophy to offer predictive, objective power. This does not need to be the case - the same reason why a good piece of literature need not have an objective moral lesson.
Philosophy postulates interesting questions, and the mass of previous philosophers provides some direction in the exploration of said questions - the expectation that these questions even have an answer, much less a falsifiable one, is unreasonable.
> The problem with this line of thinking is that you expect philosophy to offer predictive, objective power. This does not need to be the case - the same reason why a good piece of literature need not have an objective moral lesson.
So if philosophy is art, why do some philosophers think it needs to be respected on the same level as physics when it comes to understanding the world?
What does it even mean to provide an "understanding of the world" if you're not offering predictive, objective power? As far as I know, understanding the world---by definition---means building a mental model of it that has predictive power.
Philosophical arguments should be just as evaluable as arguments in any other field. Many do depend on some empirical premises, but even the ones which don't should make sense, make sense out of things and be defensible.
How does one determine that the value of a discipline is dependent upon the boolean verifiability of it's conclusions? Why should I accept this conclusion?
In your very question you assume the existence of an ethical system which distributes values to systems of knowledge and yet that ethical system cannot be verified or tested the way that you demand all meaningful such systems should be.
The answer to why Foucault is important is the same as the answer to why you hold a belief system which itself denies it's own value.
It is curious that Foucault's questioning of other fields cannot be sustained by Foucault himself.
If I can't reliably determine that what he says is actually true or applicable to anything then there is no more reason for me to buy into his opinions than those of the Catholic church or the guy next door. Possibly less. I don't have to live with Foucault and I can't hurt his feelings, at any rate.
if you could fit foucault into that box, he would no longer be foucault, yes? Just another piece of science. perhaps there is a single box of knowing--explicit, falsifiable knowing--and everything else is noise. this is attractive: learn a set of rules, apply them rigorously, yield knowledge, repeat. clearly productive, many fruits.
alternately, perhaps this box is a subset of knowing. it's conceivable. and necessarily, the whole wouldn't follow the same rules as the part. it could be a challenge to leave our box, like learning a foreign language without cognates. i mean, it does all sound like noise, doesn't it? gives me such a headache.
> if you could fit foucault into that box, he would no longer be foucault, yes? Just another piece of science.
This grossly misunderstands science. If you think science is just everything we can fit in a box you've missed the past few centuries and still think everything is ultimately down to which religious leader has the most followers who haven't died of religion yet.
If you demand pithy quotes, here's one: Science is the process by which we gradually learn to stop fooling ourselves about things.
Remember, asking why the sun rises in the East was once a moral and philosophical question.
> If you think science is just everything we can fit in a box...
no, I don't. you misunderstand. willfully? or just hubris?
box == frame of reference == paradigm == system of thought == set of axioms, habits, etc, that fit together into a semi-cohesive whole.
you may, or course, not be able to perceive the box as a box, and invert the negative space into something substantial. that is, you may not be smart enough to understand, to avoid the wrong questions.
I can explain the broad value of probability: Cox's theorem, in theory, and broad use in mathematical sciences, in practice. What makes Foucault comparable? (Honest question from the ignorant. Though I'd be less skeptical if you'd said something like 'postmodern critical theory' instead of a name.)
Is there a good reason to think this is not either a curious outlier or strawman? Is that situation alone actually good reason to demand people "stick to the liberal arts"? Or is there something else here among your reasoning?
For the record, I have a degree in CS and Philosophy, so its awfully tough to "stick to the liberal arts".
That was the most blatant example, but I see members of the university Senate voting for what they "know" over what they have evidence for on a regular basis.
(And the philosophers aren't the problem... although that might be partly because our philosophy department is quite strong on logic.)
Many English-speaking philosophy departments are, largely because Bertrand Russell got tired of this shit 100 years ago:
"Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject."
Better-read with good probability, better-educated with good probability. But no specific reason for them to be more intelligent, because there is no process to make that especially likely.
It is a job one gets by deciding to do it, sticking to it, paying one's dues over a long period, cultivating connections, building a personal brand. Like so many other jobs...
Professors should be respected in direct proportion to their actually demonstrated knowledge, and only in the fields where that knowledge has been demonstrated... other than this we should not respect them more than teachers of high school or elementary school, who usually have greater expertise and dedication in teaching.
Not to derail the thread here, but I'm genuinely curious: what prompted you to pick up degrees in both CS and philosophy? I know pg is in a similar boat, however I didn't meet anyone in undergraduate or graduate school pursuing that path. Given how important reasoning is in both disciplines, I don't think it's an unnatural coupling; however, I'd be very interested to know if you felt they complemented each other.
It turns out that philosophy and programming are distressfully similar. You build a structure out of logic and feel proud of yourself until somebody finds a bug, and then you scramble around trying to reassemble your logic structure so it doesn't have the bug. The main difference is that you can test a program, so the turnaround time is measured in minutes rather than, in some cases, centuries.
And here you've nicely summarized why I think I've seen so many technically-inclined philosophy grads working as sysadmins...
Totally a case of selection bias, given I'm one of those and notice them, but I've long been convinced that a love of systems creation and debugging is the common attribute between philosophers and sysadmins.
Not to derail your question, but my brother got a BA in philosophy, decided that he was really more interested in music, got a BMus, decided he was interested in the application of technology to music teaching, got an MA in "interdisciplinary" (music and computing), then decided machine learning was cool and decided to teach a machine learning system to play violin, and is now getting a PhD in "electrical engineering" (which is really CS in this case).
So in at least some cases, people get odd combinations of degrees more by accident than design.
Sorry for the incoming long-windedness. I've never articulated this so I'm not sure what to say.
Freshman year I came in as Computer Science and took a class called Minds and Machines that was a sort of intro to philosophy and cognitive science (two years later, the school got their Cognitive Science degree approved/accredited and the Minds and Machines program because the Cognitive Science program)
I love Computer Science but I really love writing and ethics[1]. I love communication and the art (and science) of effectively conveying ideas. I'd probably love advertising, to be honest.
I love all majors and subjects though so maybe that's not accurate enough. Anyway I went into college wanting to do science, and I picked Computer Science because it had the lowest do-your-own-thing cost. If a Biologist or Engineer wants to do his own thing he may need a lab or machining equipment. Prices for that stuff has really come down in the last 50 years but its nowhere near CS. All you need is a computer. I loved the idea that my only restriction to making things was time. It was the people's major! (cue communist imagery)
I had no idea about this whole world of humanities until I took that first class. The teacher was also my advisor-to-be if I dual majored and the logic part of the Phil curriculum had its own appeal. So many more opportunities to write papers than my CS classes!
If I had to do college all over again I'd probably try to do English/Philosophy/CS, with perhaps CS as the minor. I have enormous respect for liberal arts majors, but more-so than other majors, and I think this is very important, the value of humanities degrees are very much what you put into them. It didn't seem hard in my school at least to get a Phil/Communications/English degree compared to a STEM degree, but that in itself only meant that what you got out of a humanities degree it was what you put in. I definitely found myself finding humanities majors far, far more socially capable than the engineer majors, almost to an embarassing degree.[2]
Anyway I do think the two majors compliment each other. It seems only natural, especially with the intersection of Logic. But I also think it compliments CS because I think the largest deficiency in every other CS and engineering grad I've met is that they have a hard time communicating their ideas and debating others effectively. Philosophy helps with that. A lot, in my opinion.
[1] in the Aristotelian/Kant/Mill/Humanity's greater good/etc sense of the word, not the vague-ideas-gotten-by-parents-and-peers sense which is usually picked up on (see for instance almost the entire abortion debate)
[2] I'm quite the introvert and it took me a long time to overcome the social interaction thing that seemed to plague so many of my peers in college. I was supremely shy as a kid and generally liked to hide behind my mom whenever we went somewhere. My 8th grade class was just 21 people (two groups of 10 and 11), and my high school was just 500-600 people. I was unused to, well, interaction.
In my freshman year of college it hit me. My college (RPI) was known for being an introverted place and I met so many great people who almost literally never left their rooms. Great minds and personalities who were self-sequestered from the world.
It felt tragic sometimes. I met and found a lot of people wanted to meet people but had a great fear of simply being in public spaces more and exchanging pleasantries. Others still, and this was not an uncommon opinion, would disparage the idea of small talk as useless. It's funny but, of all places, once I came to college and met enough varied and amazing people I became vastly, vastly less shy. It just wasn't worth it to be shy when there were so many great people to meet.
Wow, that's incredibly interesting; thank you for explaining it to me. I think my view of a lot of a lot of liberal arts majors (the curriculum, not the students) had been tainted by the people who coast through, however your explanation seems far more accurate. Your assessment of the social abilities of the respective majors is dead-on in my experience as well (especially concerning communication skills). Again, thanks for your time and extensive response!
It seems to me like a reasonable generalization of the part where experts don't talk authoritatively about things outside their fields. You have degrees in CS and Philosophy, but I doubt you'd write about as related to your field as CPU manufacture, much less completely unrelated fields like aircraft design or particle physics. Staying out of shakespeare, political science, art history, and archaeology is just a broader extension of the same principle. In the reverse direction, if you know nothing about statistics, using statistics in your reasoning is probably a bad idea, and if someone brings in statistics you should pull in someone that knows how to do statistics so you're not making a decision that you don't understand. "Staying out of things you're not qualified to talk about" could prevent a lot of problems.
Your point may be true, but this is not a good example, since the question discussed was of political nature, and even very smart people will ignore whatever evidence contradicts their political choices. That your argument was ignored had nothing to do with the innumeracy of the faculty members, and everything with them being liberals. If the room had been full of Google engineers, the outcome of the discussion wouldn't have been any different. (Although obviously they wouldn't use the phrase "confuse the issue by introducing numbers and percentages.")
A short time ago, I was involved in debate over instituting a new affirmative action program at my university. "We're failing this group terribly! We must do something about this!" came the rallying cry.
I responded with university admissions statistics, high school graduation statistics, and census statistics, showing that the largest reason behind our apparent lack of members of that group was that we were an urban institution which drew students mostly from the local area, and members of that group lived mostly in rural areas where the population as a whole tended to attend more rural institutions. (Canada has far more of a trend towards attending "nearby" post-secondary institutions than the US does.)
I was accused of trying to confuse the issue "by introducing numbers and percentages", and the admissions policy was adopted.