Scholastic thoughts

[catscradle]

After a weekend of massive over spending and little in the way of anything else, I'm feeling a bit better about myself and my place in the universe this Monday. This sounds like a good thing, but it's actually a very dangerous time as I do things like look into Ph.D. programs. This bud needs nipped, so I'd appreciate it if all the people I've asked to bash me in the head if I ever started thinking of school again would please do so.

So I was looking into the philosophy Ph.D. program at CU Boulder and as I'm reading the class descriptions I'm all shit man, I did this as an undergrad. If the subject matters were new, I'd be all about taking them, but it's a rehash. And yeah, I"m sure I'd learn new things at a grad level there, but as I have the skills needed to follow what's going on and know how to pick out the important stuff - well, I can do that on my own. Do I really want to write a 20 page paper on Aristotlean ethics? No. I don't. And at the graduate level I just think there should be specifics and not just generic classes on Philosophy of Science and Logic and 17th Century Rationalism. What they'll most likely do is have the grad students choose a topic to write on and then I get into the nitty gritty when I do my research, but hell. I really can do that on my own without taking loans out. It's just a matter of if I want the Ph.D. =P

And this is a huge peeve of mine - if you have an undergrad degree in philosophy, they should REALLY allow grad students to opt out of pre-20th-century philosophy. Because dudes, it really hasn't changed and we paid our dues. We've got our foundation of the oldies, but they are so completely irrelevant to contempory philosophy, I just need it to stop. Decartes? Cogito ergo sum. Clever, yeah I get it. But if I have to read Discourse on Method one more time, I'm gonna go all Hobbesean, so stop.

Alright, my rant is done. I'm not really going to enroll. Yet.

Comments

[mindslant.livejournal.com]

I got my B.A phil. from Texas Tech. Our pre-20th was a lesbian that hated me, but respected that I would be late dut to OB/GYN appointments with my pregonaut wife.

After just two weeks of Descartes someone asked the question I asked in day one, how can we know what God is like? I just looked back and said, "It's the Descartes 'I-say-so' Law". When the class stopped laughing I was in trouble. Next class she explained we were not there to berate old ideas but to reoncstruct and excorcise within them.

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

The beauty of radical doubt is that even if you can accept the semanitcal argument in favor of the existance of God, it tells you absolutely nothing about God. It's like Kantian truth. Sure there can be objective truth, you'll just have to forgive the fact that you're really no closer to remotely understanding the universe than you were before it all started.

I have real problems with profs that have problems with students berating philosophy. What would have happened if Galileo stayed loyal to the Ptolomy model of the universe? Where would we be without Nietzsche abusing... well just about everyone? People like Kuhn, Rorty and Feyerabend made their mark thumbing their nose at the status quo.

So yeah, understanding of the past is important - but there is no need to revere it. If Kuhn is right and paradigm shifts happen in revolutions - and what comes after does not stand on the shoulder of what came before - then I say let's call for a Philosophical Death Match.

Actually, I was once writing a philosophy slasher film in which people like Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Satre, Nitzsche, Hegel, Heidigger and a couple of others must find out which of them is the killer before s/he strikes again. I don't know what happened to the script, but I had much pride in having sent Zeno out to warn the others of impending doom.

Awesome

[mindslant.livejournal.com]

I'd call it something like Philoso-Fighters. When I get back in for my Ph.D. I'd like to focus my papers on potential problems of the Dialectic. It's the main tool of philosophy and it's not actually guaranteed to take us more towards truth, just a middle path. Like behaviorism and cognitivism. Maybe the behaviorist were right, they just weren't clever enough to endure the Chomsky onslaught.

Re: Awesome

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

How few truly understand the notion that you can present a better argument and still be wrong.

But the behavoirists to me were kinda like the proponents of continental drift theory. They had the right idea, they just couldn't supply the mechanism. I'm looking for the day quantum psychology really takes off and I think that's the page cognitive science is on. And in that arena, as far as I'm aware, Chomsky himself is rather dated. But I must admit, it's been about a decade since I read Chomsky for something other than his political activism. His linguistic theory always seemed a bit mystical to me and I half expected there to be a step wherein a miracle occurs.

Re: Awesome

[mindslant.livejournal.com]

Well theres Early and Late Chomsky, the later in which he tones down or recants Earlier Chomsky. I always thought of it as Locke for Language. You can't get past perceptions kind of thing. Like I think of Putnam's "Why There Isn't a Ready Made World" as Locke with Einstein thrown in.

[vasiliki.livejournal.com]

if you have an undergrad degree in philosophy, they should REALLY allow grad students to opt out of pre-20th-century philosophy.

Isn't it possible that they're doing something different with what you already know? Like, offering more knowledge so the older theories can be analyzed in a different light or in contrast with contemporary theories? It'd be strange if they covered undergrad level stuff in a postgrad course. In my own MA, we covered the oldies, but in a different light, so I didn't find it useless (at the beginning I felt it was somewhat redundant, but as the term progressed, I changed my mind).

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

If I were looking for a degree in classics or philosophical literature, I'd agree with you. Which is why I think at the grad level it should be optional. You can analyze anything and look at it in a new light. But if your interest is in Philosophy of Science or Mind and you're spending graduate time on Descartes, it's like working on a Ph.D. in physics and studying Newton instead of quantum theory. Believe me, you got down what you needed of Newton as an undergrad.

Classical philosophy will always crop up - you'll get Descartes (to use him as an example again) in things like Metaphysics, Epistimology and the Philosohy of Religion - then he'll crop up again in classes on Philo of Mind and Science for comparative measures. So the classics will always pop up again. My point is not that we should ignore them, but at the grad level you really don't need a class called The 18th Century Rationalists. What you should have are classes on Deirrida and what is to become of the dialectic in the face of deconstructionalism - wherein you can argue the fate of the rationalist argument and how Descartes breaks down (or is maintained) in that light.

[(Anonymous)]

you really don't need a class called The 18th Century Rationalists. What you should have are classes on Deirrida and what is to become of the dialectic in the face of deconstructionalism

So they don't offer that kind of classes? o.O Not a good programme, then!
Don't they have any PhD programmes where you don't have to take classes, but just research on your own (with some advice from your supervisors)? In the UK, one can do that - no classes, just individual research. It takes 3-4 years.

[vasiliki.livejournal.com]

that was me, btw