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

nytimes.com

121–130 of 208 posts

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

#121

The underlying problem (which wasn't mentioned at all in this essay) is that contemporary philosophical education is a confusing mix of two things: 1. Ideas on particular "universal" topics, like politics, ethics, metaphysics, and so on. We can call this "philosophy." 2. What certain people thought about said ideas. We can call this "history of thought." Should there be a wider variety of cultures in #2? Of course. B…

> a philosophy startup. That sounds like a very different kind of startup.

I'm hoping to deduce myself into YC. :)

I'll be launching it this July. Stay tuned.

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very idea that something like logic is part of philosophy is Western, I think. The ancient Greek philosophers studied logic, and therefore modern Western philosophers still do. I don't think people with an African or Chinese or whatever background would even consider that a natural part of the subject. They probably would consider other topics that are not included in our philosophy programs.

I'd put it the other way around. Philosophy is a Greek word, and the collection of subjects it encompasses is part of a tradition inherited from the Greeks (as similar think applies to Religion and the Romans). However, other people do have the same concerns, though they might package it differently. So logic is hard to escape and was studied everywhere, but whether it was studied alongside Grammar, Metaphysics or Ma…

The connection is closer to Philosophy Law Logic Philosophy than Philosophy containing Logic. In context much of this discourse relates to their system of government.

PS: There is a great comedy about this stuff from the roman republic which has a great scene that roughly translates as: A: Yay communism! B: Who would work the fields? A: Why the slaves of course! Anyway, stripped from context it's really easy to misread many of their arguments.

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

#123
Having gone through an undergraduate philosophy major and taken many classes on non-western thought, all offered by other departments, I strongly support the article's position. To have a class called "Ethics" that covers only the historical Western positions deprives students of the majority of the world's thinking on the topic.

What many of the comments here are missing by trying to separate "history of thought" from a more abstract conception of "philosophy" is that people do not develop their views of the world in a vacuum. Philosophy classes are not meditation sessions where students try and summon knowledge from the void, they involve reading the works of great thinkers in the field, analyzing their reasoning and engaging with their ideas.

The philosophers you read provide both the content and the tools you learn for use in your own thinking. As such, only presenting philosophers from a particular tradition biases the experiences of your students whether that bias is cultural as the article points out or even towards a particular school of thought within a culture, like the shift from pragmatics to highly analytic philosophy that took place in American schools during the second half of the twentieth century.

When I asked my department head why we did not, for instance, mention Confucius in our Moral Philosophy class, she explained that it is at least partially a bootstrapping issue. Because none of the faculty at my university had training in non-western traditions or spoke any non-western languages, they did not teach them nor did they feel comfortable advising graduate students doing their research on those traditions and in those languages.

Take a look at the graduate program requirements for the Ivy League philosophy programs and you will see that they all require students to know a second language, but the languages they are told to choose from are: French, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, or Dutch if you are really into Kierkegaard. You might also be able to get approval for Russian. The result is an echo chamber where we only teach western so we only hire western so we only teach western.

I doubt the article's suggestion of renaming departments will do much to change this situation but I agree that it would be a more honest representation of the materials taught and sympathize with the frustration behind their argument.

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

#124
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in number theory" You underestimate postmodernist literary theorists.

Quote one that argues the eurocentrism of number theory. Or are postmodernists just a bogeyman?

If no arguments exist concerning Eurocentrism in number theory, then one will surely have been invented, and likely disputed, by the time I'm finished typing this sentence. We have more philosophers than we have philosophy for them to do.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, it wasn't "clearly inferior" historically. Liebniz' arguments why it was valid were heavily based on infinitesimals and monadology, which were not known at the time to be valid. (In fact, many of Liebniz' arguments weren't valid, although the conclusions turned out to be.) Secondly, if biases exist, one need not argue for diversity in order to achieve it. Liebniz notation didn't win because someone argu…

Lets assume your claim that Newtonian notation was not "clearly inferior"* to an unbiased person of the time, it follows then that teaching both ideas in English Universities might have helped to more quickly determine which notation is more useful. Consider the result for the English Mathematical community if the Analytical Society was never formed. If biases exist then a spectrum of ideas from cultures which hold a…

Wouldn't it make more sense to either standardise the notation, or translate papers into both notations?

I feel this is a poor analogy to cultural cross pollination: notation is not the same kind of 'idea' as those found in philosophical paper.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics -- and if they do then they a wrong. Philosophy inevitably involves teaching of traditions (see below). But universities and indeed the word "philosophy" are historically tied to the western tradition. Philosophy students study study particular thinkers and the traditions in detail. And rightly so: theirs words are open to importantly varied…

"I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics" As someone with a postgraduate background in Philosophy I can say that, within at least the Western Analytic (mostly anglophone) tradition, that many do in fact think exactly that and I would tend to agree. Many Philosopher see their closest relations reside in Mathematics and to a lesser extent the hard sciences. They prize deductive reas…

Agreed. Also, observe how many of the giants of modern philosophy were also mathematicians: Russell, Whitehead, Frege, Quine, Wittgenstein, etc.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whathisface is arguing from unsupported assertion as much as TFA is.

Whathisface is commenting on an article. You expect a counter article? I think the original article has a higher burden of evidence for supporting it's claims.

Not from whathisface no, but that wasn't a response to whathisface. It was a response to Kolbe who chose whathisface's assertion over TFAs assertion without evidence or even really additional argument.

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

#128

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…

I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics -- and if they do then they a wrong. Philosophy inevitably involves teaching of traditions (see below). But universities and indeed the word "philosophy" are historically tied to the western tradition. Philosophy students study study particular thinkers and the traditions in detail. And rightly so: theirs words are open to importantly varied…

Some of my philosophy professors published papers in math journals. I bet they thought they were "doing work like mathematics."

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

#129

Having gone through an undergraduate philosophy major and taken many classes on non-western thought, all offered by other departments, I strongly support the article's position. To have a class called "Ethics" that covers only the historical Western positions deprives students of the majority of the world's thinking on the topic. What many of the comments here are missing by trying to separate "history of thought" fr…

Wouldn't that be called Anthropology?

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics" As someone with a postgraduate background in Philosophy I can say that, within at least the Western Analytic (mostly anglophone) tradition, that many do in fact think exactly that and I would tend to agree. Many Philosopher see their closest relations reside in Mathematics and to a lesser extent the hard sciences. They prize deductive reas…

Well then I stand corrected on what philosophers (at least analytic ones) believe. I even agree that mathematics is the closest thing to Analytic philosophy. But it is still very telling that in your third para, you list names instead of theorems. And you are right to do so, for the reasons I explained in my post above. When you talk of current research, then sure, you talk of modern philosophers. But that's still st…

Because I was leading to my point about citation networks and didn't want to bore you to death about theory names like causal theories of reference and semantic externalism in philosophy of language.
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