If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is • Hacker News Board

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#31

Post by actionwords » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #26

whatshisface wrote: post #9

It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely. If some Chinese philosophical paper is very good, it should be evaluated on its merits and folded in to an appropriate course for that topic. Philosophers believe at least, that they are doing work more along the lines of mathematics than underwater dance (that is, searching for truth). Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in num…

The author addresses your exact point in the article. "Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not address…

Do you think that philosophical theories such as Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gita are not worthy of being taught alongside ancient Greek philosophy?

yes.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#32

Post by noise_ramones » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

There is no denying that, both in the authors assigned in standard curricula and in the make-up of graduate students and faculty, white males are disproportionately represented in philosophy departments in the U.S. and Europe.

I would simply like to register the fact that, among current graduate students and (typically young) professors at the departments with which I am familiar (basically the Leiter top 30), this is generally an issue of grave concern. I know many people who work very hard to combat this. There are many collaborative efforts to construct alternative syllabi for mainstay classes (e.g. epistemology, ethics), to open real lines of dialogue with scholars who have historically been seen as "peripheral" to the enterprise of analytic philosophy (e.g. people who work on Buddhist philosophy, or Islamic philosophy), and to identify and redress the reasons that philosophy tends to overwhelmingly draw white males.

I don't mean to excuse the status quo. There is a lot of work still to be done. I simply want to point out that the advice of the authors of this article has not gone totally unheeded.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#33

Post by vlehto » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

They wish to include non-European traditions of philosophy into academic philosophy.

"Jay L. Garfield is - - the author of “Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy.” Bryan W. Van Norden is -- the author of “Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy.”"

"Give us more money. We like money."

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#34

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #26

whatshisface wrote: post #9

It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely. If some Chinese philosophical paper is very good, it should be evaluated on its merits and folded in to an appropriate course for that topic. Philosophers believe at least, that they are doing work more along the lines of mathematics than underwater dance (that is, searching for truth). Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in num…

The author addresses your exact point in the article. "Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not address…

[deleted]

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#35

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

Coincoin wrote: post #19

whatshisface wrote: post #9

It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely. If some Chinese philosophical paper is very good, it should be evaluated on its merits and folded in to an appropriate course for that topic. Philosophers believe at least, that they are doing work more along the lines of mathematics than underwater dance (that is, searching for truth). Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in num…

The author clearly thinks philosophy is some kind of school of esoterism and after life.

[deleted]

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#36

Post by programmer1234 » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

If you strip away the appeals to emotion, their point seems flimsier in isolation: "Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the American and European tradition, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Anglo-European philosophy."

This is on the surface, reasonable. But why don't we try reversing the names, which should be allowed under their pretense of fairness and equality, like so: "European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within Non-European philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the Non-European traditions, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Non-European philosophy."

Now it sounds at best sloppy (Which non-European traditions?), and at worst chauvinistic against the background noise that makes up the bulk of what really drives their point, which is the "apologize for imperialism" theme. So at one level below the surface, they are suggesting we abandon evaluating ideas based on their relevance to us as westerners, and subordinate that principle to saying sorry for imperialism. At two levels below, they are just talking their own book, as white male professors of Chinese philosophy.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#37

Post by shadowfox » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #20

Why do people feel the need to dictate to others what they should do? The authors of this piece are professors of philosophy. If they feel that teaching non-Western philosophy is crucially important and offers substantial advantages that cannot be obtained by studying only Western philosophy, then why don't they just simply teach non-Western philosophy . All the advantages they presume to exist by doing so will surel…

> Why do people feel the need to dictate to others what they should do?

I rather see this as advocacy. If you strongly feel the need for change, you have to do that in addition to simply doing what they themselves can do.

People do it all the time. Take a look at open source advocacy for example.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#38

Post by kolbe » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #26

whatshisface wrote: post #9

It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely. If some Chinese philosophical paper is very good, it should be evaluated on its merits and folded in to an appropriate course for that topic. Philosophers believe at least, that they are doing work more along the lines of mathematics than underwater dance (that is, searching for truth). Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in num…

The author addresses your exact point in the article. "Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not address…

No, the authors acknowledge this counterargument, but they do not offer a substantial refutation of it. They try to confuse their readers by equating a historical examination of philosophy with philosophy itself. id=whatshisface is correctly addressing how this argument applies to philosophy.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#39

Post by lr4444lr » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

I admit I'm not a philosopher, but this sounds like claiming that we're inappropriately teaching a narrowed perspective of math because we don't teach Vedic multiplication algorithms or Mayan counting bases. These are interesting topics in their own right, but they do not constitute the (relatively) unbroken chain of mathematics as a _discipline in and of itself_ in a progressional manner with a working epistemology, namely, the formal proof. The Greeks gets that prize, by virtue of Euclid (and a few others tangentially, e.g. Eudoxus or Nicomedes or Hero), not by virtue of being Greek, e.g. Eratosthenes or Aristarchus, who gave us good results and application, but did not build on or advance the process of _how_ we do math (as far as we have record).

Similarly, Plato is the father of a philosophical tradition that to this day is recognizable as the foundation of how we develop questions about philosophical problems and analyze them. There were schools of thinking that came to various _conclusions_ with some similarity to Greek (and some later Roman) traditions, and there were certainly Greek philosophers who were steeped in mythical, religious, or simply very time and place specific thinking and no longer considered of much interest today, but as per the article's example, the "Bhagavad Gita" is a deeply religious text - its wisdom is received from a god figure, not puzzled out or reasoned by man.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#40

Post by frogtog » Thu, May 12, 2016, 1:17 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #9

It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely. If some Chinese philosophical paper is very good, it should be evaluated on its merits and folded in to an appropriate course for that topic. Philosophers believe at least, that they are doing work more along the lines of mathematics than underwater dance (that is, searching for truth). Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in num…

> It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely.

The authors are professors of philosophy. I find it unlikely that they have "missed the point of philosophy entirely."