Philosophy

Professor Wallace kindly pointed out to me that she has put together a report on trends in philosophy majors between 1970-71 and 2008-09. The report, based on NCES data - the same ones used by McIntyre in his Chronicles of Higher Education piece - delivers a different picture than the one suggested by McIntyre regarding the decline of philosophy majors over the past decades.

Here is a quite interesting passage in professor Wallace's document: "McIntyre's alleged "decline" derives from the fact that the increase in philosophy and religious studies is less than the increase in the total number of degrees conferred -- 191% -- over the same period. But now consider another data point, using McIntyre's criterion of major as a percentage of degrees conferred: 1985-86 showed a widespread drop in many humanities and social sciences majors compared to 1970-71. So, in 1985-86 philosophy and religious studies majors fell to 6,396 and .65% of total degrees conferred. However, from 1985-86 to 2008-09 philosophy and religious studies majors nearly doubled, increasing by 194%, while the total number of degrees conferred increased 162% over the same period. Therefore, compared to 1985=86, philosophy and religious studies majors as a percentage of degrees conferred increased by 20% (or 13 percentage points from .65% to .78%; .78% is 120% of .65%)."

Brian Leiter's blog has also a post on Wallace's report.

This discussion has so far provided some useful insight into the reputation of philosophy among students. It would now be useful to understand more in depth what contributed to shape up such reputation and how to deliver the message to the non-acedemic world. For more on this, stay tuned.

A December 2011 article on the Chronicles of Higher Education by Lee McIntyre is dividing philosophically oriented professionals and aspiring ones. McIntyre argues that philosophy is at risk of been wiped out of the academic map because philosophers have failed to engage students, academic, and the civic society like their peers in other departments have done: "The profession of philosophy has had ages to make itself more relevant to what people--even within the academy--care about, and we have largely ignored the issue. Now that the financial crisis has hit, the chickens are coming home to roost." In other words, philosophy is on the brink of disappearing because it does not matter anymore to anyone but philosophers.

Is the situation really so dramatic? Not according to everyone. In a letter to the editor of the Chronicles dated January 22, 2012, Kathleen Wallace (Chair of the Philosophy Department at Hofstra University in Hampstead, New York) showed that data are not as gloomy as McIntyre pictured them. A wealth of other readers have sent in comments that speak against McIntyre.

Who see things straight? As oftentimes, the most suitable position is to be sitting in the middle. McIntyre is right, I think, in pointing out that many philosophers have not done much in engaging civic society with their research. Still, there are a great deal of collaborative efforts with academics from other disciplines, from the cognitive sciences to the political sciences, biology, physics, mathematics, and the culinary arts. The work of many contemporary philosophers has the capacity to reach out to academics in other departments and oftentimes also to students; the question is more of how the profession is perceived outside the academic world, and that's not - at present - a perception filled with a desire to learn what's hot and new in philosophy. Philosophers can do more to matter here as well.

Economy has been down for quite some time now and the situation is very uncertain. Should we expect more hard times to come or did we reach the bottom? How to prevent a recession?

Economics is hardly a science of certainty, despite all the numbers that economists may throw at us. From a philosophical standpoint economics harbors some deep questions span across different areas: from the logic of economic thinking to the structure of economic theorizing as studied by philosophers of science, from the epistemic problem of induction to the understanding of how news spread across economists through linguistic and non linguistic conventions.

Despite this wealth of philosophical issues surrounding economics (after all, some of the earliest modern economists such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx had a training in philosophy), it is rare to see philosophers being interviewed regarding the puzzling economic situation. Are philosophers to blame for this? What role can philosophers play in understanding the economic challenges of contemporary global society?

Philosopher Philip Kitcher has a review out of Derek Parfit's On What Matters, a work that I blogged about a few weeks ago.

Kitcher's review is pungent and deserves to be read in its entirety. Here, I wish to bring to attention one point that particularly struck me. Towards the end of the article, Kitcher stresses the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the quest ethical truths; the intellectual project that many ethicists are embarked on nowadays is collectively shared with biologists, cognitive psychologists, economists, political scientists, and so on. Parfit completely missed this point: his volume is filled with imaginary and approximative examples.

Kitcher's suggestion owes much to the lesson of American pragmatism. But there is another ancestor which deserves being brought into the picture: Enlightenment. Authors such as Voltaire and Rousseau innovated philosophy by opening up their quest for philosophical truth to disciplines such as geology, physics, chemistry, biology, but also to the knowledge typical of crafts, such as gardening and cooking. Perhaps, this way a novel approach to ethics and the self could be fostered.

Sir Michael Dummett, one of the most cherished British living philosophers, died at age 86 on December 27th. Dummett was most famous for his work in logic and philosophy of language. Several philosophically-minded obituaries have already been written. Here are - in no particular order - my favorite three, appeared in the Telegraph, the Opinionator at the New York Times online, the Guardian.

The second, exciting new is that CUNY distinguished professor Saul Kripke is out with a new book, Philosophical Troubles. Collected Papers, Volume 1. Regarded as one of the most influential contemporary American philosophers, before this new work Kripke had published only a dozen lengthy papers and two books, one of which - Naming and Necessity - collected a series of lectures he gave in Princeton in the early Seventies. Indeed, most of Kripke's manuscripts have so far never seen a press. Philosophical Troubles is the first volume of a series of collected papers, which includes both published and unpublished materials. With the support of the Saul Kripke Center, more volumes are scheduled for the coming years.

Along with authors such as Tim Ingold and James Gibson, I favor a metaphysics centered on an ecological perspective, where individuals do not play a central role, rather the features of an environment do. This position is confirmed also by less theoretically oriented writings. For instance, when speaking of the relationship between bees and apple trees, Michael Pollan remarks in the Botany of Desire that "the traditional distinction between subject and object is meaningless." ("Introduction": xiv)

Over the past few days, while I was reflecting on the distinctive aspects of the idea of the West and how these relate to liberalism and humanism, I was wondering what would happen to the West were an ecological perspective to prevail in the years to come. Can liberalism still be defended from an ecological perspective? How about the cognate core doctrines within humanism? What are the implications of an ecological perspective over capitalism, the attribution of individual rights and duties, and the very idea of democracy?

To address those questions may well end up on my New Year's resolutions list. Stay tuned for more on those topics in the weeks to come.

As New Year's approaches, we hurry up buying bottles to celebrate the new start. Of course it is hard to syncronize the opening gesture to the clock; but, in the end, it's all a bluff, isn't it? Is there really one exact moment in which we will enter 2012? Can we ever point our fingers, or even feel, an exact moment?

At the very origins of Ancient philosophy, Zeno of Elea used some paradoxes about time and space to prove that Being is one, as his teacher Parmenides had theorized. New Year's celebration would have been a great occasion to showcase his theory.

Each day is made out of twenty-four hours; each hour of sixty seconds; each second contains one thousand milliseconds ... As we descend the list of time units, our chances to measure (and, of course, feel) time changes become smaller and smaller. Is there really an exact moment in which the New Year's begin? If time is infinitely divisible, how is it possible that we ever move through time?

Some like to think - for good reasons, perhaps - that physics should indicate the way the world is. In theoretical physics, the smallest (theoretical, i.e. non measurable) unit of time is Plank time, that is the time it takes to light to travel (in a vacuum) one Planck length (1.616199(97)×10^-35 meters). Could it be that 2011 and 2012 are divided by one unit of Planck time?

While this may be the most scientifically sophisticated belief to have at the moment, it cannot be proved in practice, while its theoretical soundness still lies open to the scrutiny of fundamental physicists. So, perhaps Zeno and Parmenides may still be right in saying that there is only one Being and that change is only psychological. If you are a little late in opening that bottle at midnight, don't worry: it's always the right time to celebrate an illusion.

A rumor has been recurrently spreading around over the past decade, or even more: the financial crisis that is affecting capitalism around the globe these days seems to make some of Marx's prophecy regarding the fate of our economic structure come true.

What would have Marx said about the response offered so far by governments, investors, and citizens? Most likely he would not have been happy, as the answer so far suggested seems to be just more capitalism, while individual citizens are but spectators of a show that seems to be beyond their heads - and their wallets too.

Those who would like to get deeper into this intriguing subject, can find here a good list of online readings to start off. In the meantime, the question lays open: what if Marx was right?

How important is to have experienced something in order to know it?

Well, of course the answer may depend on the "something" at issue. When John Locke had to explain the necessity of experience to knowledge, pineapple seemed to be a great case in point: an exotic fruit whose characteristics had to be so foreign to British readers that they could not have grasped it without having a bite: "If you doubt this, see whether you can by words give anyone who has never tasted pineapple an idea of the taste of that fruit. He may approach a grasp of it by being told of its resemblance to other tastes of which he already has the ideas in his memory, imprinted there by things he has taken into his mouth; but this isn't giving him that idea by a definition, but merely raising up in him other simple ideas that will still be very different from the true taste of pineapple." (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter IV)

Empiricists claim that knowledge of all sorts of things depends upon having undergone proper experience. Rationalists deny that this is the case. The latter rely on some important feature: you can learn that two plus two makes four by manipulating apples or pears, or by counting horses in your head; since these are heterogeneous experiences, it seems that the idea of four is not in the mere experience of the things, but it is an idea of reason. Empiricists rebut that the idea depends upon some experience of counting.

Matters start becoming more interesting when we wonder what would empiricists say of knowledge of those things that are analogous, but not quite identical with things we experienced in the past. Say you are a great Chianti Classico wine expert; you haven't tasted yet 2011 Chianti Classico yet, but a friend of yours (also a great expert) describes you in details what it tastes like: do you really lack knowledge of 2011 Chianti Classico, as an empiricist such as Hume would submit? If so, then there may be no full-fledged wine expert, because no one has tasted all wines ever made.

Even more paradoxical seems the case of music. At the time he composed his ninth symphony, Beethoven was deaf. Henceforth, he never heard its execution and thus never really had experience of it. Moral: empiricism seems committed to say that Beethoven never had knowledge of the ninth symphony. Quite a staggering conclusion.

Since what holds for wine and Beethoven's ninth symphony holds for nearly any other subject, empiricism seems to be committed to the denial of full-fledged expertise. Even Beethoven was not a musical expert, as there were plenty of musical pieces he did not know, including his own.

How should we think of the relationship between our bodies and the environment?

On the one hand, there is a continuity between the body and its surroundings. This is reflected in the way we speak about our relationships to the world, which underlies a direct acquaintance with objects: you taste the cookie, feel the air, swim in the water, and so on. So, it seems that our body is like a window or a gate to the open world.

On the other hand, our bodies have boundaries whose limits are roughly and approximately marked by the extent within which we can feel our own body. That the water is touching your skin does not entail that you are feeling the water: you are rather experiencing the effects of the water on your body. So, what makes you think that your body is a gate to the outside world?

"And it is a bad habit of ours to think of our soul as receiving messenger species, or as if it had doors and windows," admonished Lebniz in section 26 of his Discourse on Metaphysics (1686). According to him, there is no world which is "external" to us because all that exists are but ideas. Besides being idealistic, Leibniz's position is also radically rationalist, as it denies any role to the senses in the attainment of knowledge.

Leibniz's position might have been later improved by Kant's transcendental philosophy; still, the question stands, how should we think of the relationship between our bodies and the environment?