From: Erin N. (enoonan@kent.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 14 2003 - 20:22:05 GMT
>
>As for the politics of academia, I think the emphasis on certain standards
>is a useful thing to have. If I came along, not having read any
>philosophy, and said to my local philosophy department, "The Platonic
>tradition of philosophy is a load of bunk," I would expect them not to take
>me seriously and I think they are justified in doing that. But when Rorty
>says the exact same thing, I think they are entitled to take him a bit more
>seriously because he was in the trenches for 20 years, he did his homework,
>he's read his Plato through Carnap. What the university wants to encourage
>is the learning of a tradition, so that a person can then break away from
>that tradition. If they don't learn the tradition, then a lot of time
>could be lost covering old ground that others have covered. "If you don't
>learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it." This isn't to say that
>some person, ignorant as a box of rocks, could come along and change the
>face of a discipline. But I think the chances of him even remotely
>speaking the same disciplinary language, enough for the old guard to even
>understand what he's suggesting or how it even affects their discipline, is
>pretty slim.
Saying something is bunk when you know little about is not what I had in mind
when I said politics. Somebody who has read little Plato can attack an idea
of his and not be assumed to be wrong because he has not read as much as the
teacher. It would be up to student show why he was wrong and the teacher
to show why he was right about that idea. The archives aren't fully up to date
so I can't go get the part but it was more about the part where you said go to
conferences, publishing, getting in with colleagues etc.. Somebody wrote a
post a long time ago (have no idea where I could find it) about society
allowing individuals to be alone to think. Of course academia is about sharing
ideas too but my personal glimpse I see it becoming too political...instead of
kissing babies we have to kiss the asses publishers in the top tier journals.
There is this business aspect about selling our "products" rather then sharing
ideas. Then there is the whole theatrical parts about this (nicely parodied in
Don Delillo's White Noise) fully appreciated by me when my college teaching
course consisted of things like 'carry in a coffee mug into class to show your
authority' (there is a whole "reasoning" process behind that idea--little age
difference between grad students and college kids). Then there's the whole
hypnotizing thing Pirsig talks about. It's all not what academia should be
about to me. I think ideas should stand on themselves and academia should be a
place to encourage people to think for themselves and a good atmosphere share
their ideas and receive critique. I don't like to promote politics/theatre/
business attitudes in a classroom even if you call it a nice word tradition
;-)
>On folk knowledge, all I can say is good knowledge is useful knowledge. I
>find it hard to believe that a good empirical study, covering all the
>bases, wouldn't corroborate a tried and true piece of folk wisdom, or at
>the least explain why the folk wisdom works. For instance, your cold
>example. Given that we assume that being cold outside isn't the direct
>cause of our getting colds, and that we actually receive the germ when we
>are inside with other people. And we assume that being cold for long
>periods of time lowers our immune system's resistence to germs, we could
>construct an explanation as to why it seems as if we get colds from being
>outside in the cold. We get them because we _were_ outside, and then when
>we move inside we actually come in contact with the germs.
>
>I find it hard to believe that cold weather has _nothing_ to do with
>getting colds, and that its only about how often you are inside with other
>people, because I'm indoors at a consistent rate throughout the year (I'm
>not an outdoorsy type) and I get more colds in the winter. But, this is
>definitely folk wisdom. I haven't done any tests, I know nothing about
>germs, and I have about zero expertise in medicine. A good empiricial
>study could come along and show me what's more useful to believe.
>
>Matt
>
I don't know exactly how colds happen. But I am setting up a true example of
my professor telling me temperature had nothing to do with it---my protest
it can have an indirect effect---- being told no that's just folk wisdom,
science says no.
The problem could be the teacher's misinterpreation of the study,
the experimenters incorrect conclusion, my stubborn ignorance, whatever.
My question was what does this idea "knowledge is measured by consensus of
opinion" say when a intuitive folk piece of info conflicts with
counterintutive expertise piece of info.
See knowledge to me is the idea of how you get a cold....
the experts and folk are just opinions of that idea that probably both contain
some knowledge to that process. (how many people believe in the folk or
experts
is irrelevent?)
Could you compare for me this knowledge/opinion idea with Pirsig's example
of gravity being a ghost.
Erin
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jan 14 2003 - 20:14:56 GMT