Socrates Café #3: “Education: What is it Good For?”

February 9, 2013 in Philosophy as a Way of Life, Socrates Café, Uncategorized | 1 comment

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In his famous Allegory of the Cave, Plato inquires into “our nature as it concerns education.”  These days, education is a hot-button issue, and with good reason:  from concerns over “teaching to the test” in elementary school, to deficits in basic reading and writing skills, to skyrocketing tuition and crushing student loans, to the corporatizing of the university, to the rise of online education–education is in a state of dysfunction, disrepair, and decline. Indeed, the title of the most popular recent documentary on education is apt:  ”Waiting for Superman.”

These problems raise questions about precisely what education is for, what it means, and in what it consists.  Why is education such a difficult problem in American life?  In modern life?  In life itself?

Please join us as we delve into these and other thorny questions!

RVSP

Socrates Café #2: Minutes

February 1, 2013 in Philosophy as a Way of Life, Socrates Café | Leave a comment

A belated thanks to all those who took part in our second Socrates Café a couple weekends ago.  This time we had a smaller group and a somewhat more intimate discussion that centered on the effects technology is having on our everyday lives and innermost minds.  Our conversation ranged over a swath of issues:  the positives and negatives of social media, the incentives for children to approach relationships transactionally, digital reflexes, boredom, distraction, online dating, and more.

We also got a couple suggestions for how to improve the event:

-Distribute a short reading to the group beforehand that touches on the topic at hand, so that everyone has a common base to launch from

-Tilt more toward divisive or at least controversial issues in order to spark more spirited debate and avoid a bland consensus

-Recommend some additional philosophical literature on the subject

I will keep these in mind in planning for the next event, but per the last suggestion, I want to post a few readings for those who’d like to learn more:

1)  Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”.  Heidegger’s classic essay on technology is noteworthy for his (at first) strange thesis that the question concerning technology is not technological.  That is, technology is not really “the stuff”–the computers, iPhones, planes, trains, and automobiles–but rather a way of seeing, knowing, disclosing the world:  it is a way the world is presented to us.  It is not a purely human artifice, but one-dimension of the world that, in the modern age, has been blown out of proportion such that it crowds out and obscures other modes of appearance.  While not intrinsically an evil or a negative force in our lives, the danger with technology is that we will come to see ourselves in terms of it; that, as Emerson put it, “things are in the saddle, and ride us,” such that we forfeit our freedom and humanity in our attempt to gain control over our lives.

2) C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”.  Following up on the last point, Lewis questions the long-term goal of modern secular humanism and the modern scientific research project–which, he argues, is to gain total control not just over nature, but over human nature.  The danger is that, in such a world, our only polestars for what counts as progress are our desires–our instincts–rather than some transcendent moral order, such as the Tao, Natural Law, God.  As such, Lewis concludes that, in our attempt to use technology as, in Freud’s phrase, a “prosthetic God,” our victories over nature are really nature’s victories over us.

3)  Ray Kurzweil, “The Singularity is Near”.  Kurzweil is the intellectual prophet of Silicon Valley.  A distinguished and brilliant scientist, his radical views on the telos of technology can be roughly distilled into the following equation:  Hegel + evolution + technology + the Matrix = the cosmos.  Put differently, technology is the continuation of evolution by other means, and technology is developing at an accelerating rate.  Soon, with the birth of AI, evolution will reach a new stage, and the changes that will be wrought not just in human life but in the universe are so disruptive and unimaginable that this singularity is like an eschaton, a point of no return, the edge of a black hole–what lies on the other side is inconceivable from our present standpoint.  But Kurzweil insists it is good.

4)  Jaron Lanier, “You Are Not a Gadget”.  A scion of Silicon Valley , Lanier, plays the puckish trickster to the pantheon of Gates, Jobs, and Zuck.  In this polemical text, he argues that the internet and digital technology is gradually corroding the human spirit and dealing away our dignity, one click at a time.  Like Heidegger, he fears the ways that technology warps our minds and constricts our engagement with others and the world around us, offering up a form of false consciousness in which he imagine we are free and following our heart’s desire, a state he calls “digital Maoism.”

Finally, I encourage everyone to visit TED.com (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), which contains a cornucopia of short talks on tech.

If you have any recommendations, please post them here and/or on MeetUp!

I will be in touch soon about our next MeetUp, which will be in late February.  I plan to lock down a more commodious venue.

 

 

MOOCs, Globalization, and Geist

January 31, 2013 in Higher Education, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

originalThomas Friedman, ever the technological optimist, heralds the coming revolution in online education.

There is a kind of Hegelian strain in Friedman’s boosterism for neo-liberalism and globalization; not the state, but the free market is the march of spirit on Earth.  Any nasty consequences are just the acceptable side-effects and bugs of the beta version of something that will be surely perfected in the next iteration or soft-ware update.  Though Friedman’s natural optimism sometimes gets the better of him, his point about the potential impact of online learning in so-called developing countries is hard to deny.  This, coupled with increasing access to nimble tools like micro-finance, may well give people in the poorer countries and forgotten places of the world more opportunity to improve their lives.

We often discuss the merits and demerits of online education in the context of life in the developed world.  While this is surely an important discussion to be having, it may blind us to the prospect that the most far reaching, world-historical effect of online education may be felt not by us, but by those still struggling to secure basic needs.

What Courage Looks Like

January 31, 2013 in Graduate School, Higher Education, Non-Academic Careers, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Uncategorized | 1 comment

My friend and colleague Dan Fincke just posted a reflection on his own journey through the twisted funhouse of the academic employment market.  Dan’s energy and passion–as a teacher and a blogger–has for years simply dumbfounded those of us who know him; his efforts are über-human, and in this way he is true to the ideal of his favorite philosopher, Nietzsche.

Dan’s situation is a symbol for what is wrong with professional philosophy.  In much the same way that Andrew Sullivan–one of Dan’s role models as a blogger–has led the charge in upsetting the conventions and exposing the limitations of traditional print journalism, Dan is leveraging the new medium of the blog to do philosophy in way that is accessible, interesting, relevant, and important for a broader audience.  I don’t say “popular” audience because that carries the whiff of “pop culture,” which spells “dumb.”  But today’s popular audience, in some parts of the country and the world, at least, no longer spells dumb.  When academics turn their nose up at “popular” writing and venues, I think they have this 19th century vision of a semi-literate hoi polloi a world removed from the elite bastions of oak-adorned studies and sophisticated salons.  But Dan, like an increasing number of younger academics, smells the rot and decadence that infects this way of thinking and this way of doing philosophy.  Again, like his intellectual hero, Nietzsche, Dan is finding a way to do philosophy outside the confines of academic scholarship.  And it should concern us that the 20th century was the first in which almost all the major philosophers were academics.  I heard a talk recently where a scholar argued that philosophy has always done better as a parasite (gadfly?)–when it uses something else as fodder for reflection, be it new developments in science, culture, technology, or politics.  Whenever it tries, or pretends, to become it’s own thing, it retreats into a sorry sort of solipsistic solitude, a cloud of self-important knowingness; a retreat fueled by fear and insecurity.  Voltaire’s Candide is precisely a mockery of this tendency–Dr. Pangloss (literally, “all words”) is the caricature of this mindset.

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The Law of Subtraction

January 27, 2013 in Philosophical Counseling, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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Not to be confused with the “Law of Attraction,” the concept peddled by the best-selling self-help New Age book and film, The Secret:  the idea that, if you just want something hard enough—“I think I can, I think I can”–it will eventually come into your life.  Taken at a literal level, of course, this is plainly stupid and easy to mock.  But the book wouldn’t be so successful if it didn’t contain a kernel of truth.  The message resonates with people because it taps into a brute and basic psychological truth:  that people who are generally open and optimistic will generally attract other people and opportunities that will generally get them what they want and where they want to go.  It’s not a law of gravity, but a pragmatic strategy to help us navigate life.

One other such strategy is what we might call the Law of Subtraction.  We can come at this concept by defining it in terms of what it’s not:  the Law of Addition, which rules our lives more often than not.  What is the Law of Addition?

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Socrates Café #2: “What is Technology Doing to Us?”

January 13, 2013 in Socrates Café, Uncategorized | 1 comment

Please join us for our second MeetUp!  RVSP

Our topic:  ”What is technology doing to our society?”  Digital technology is rapidly and radically changing just about everything we do.  As Emerson said, “things are in the saddle, and ride us.”  Whether we see this spreading as a wildfire, a disease, or a wave of freedom–or as just really cool–I think we can all agree that its simply a fascinating phenomenon.  How are different technologies–medical, transportation, communication, information–changing our lives, for better or worse?

Please come join us for a Sunday afternoon of collective inquiry!

If you’d like to learn more, check out my website at http://www.davidestorey.com

RSVP

~David

*If you plan to attend, please be sure to patronize our generous host, Sit and Wonder Café.

**If you would like to suggest discussion topics, please let me know.

***Space is limited.  I am exploring an alternative venue that can accommodate more members of our growing group.  Stay tuned!

Socrates Café Meeting #1: Minutes

December 12, 2012 in Philosophical Counseling, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Socrates Café, Uncategorized | 1 comment

Thanks to all those who attended our first Socrates Café Brooklyn, “What is Success?”  It was a real pleasure meeting all of you, hearing your stories and struggles, and peeling back the veneer of our conventional views on success to try and approach the heart of the matter.  I think we often fail to realize the power and importance of throwing ourselves into dialogue with people from different walks of life and suspending, if only for a few minutes or a couple of hours, our basic assumptions about ourselves, our trajectory in life, and our view of the world.  It is not easy–indeed, in our discussion, we hit a few bumps in the road and the engine stalled a few times; but confusion is the crucible of a higher, deeper, rounder form of consciousness.  And we had some unpleasant exchanges; it became clear pretty quickly that the philosophical is the personal.  But overall, I think we had a good first showing and I look forward to our next meeting in January.

Some highlights from our discussion:

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What is Critical Thinking? The Single Most In-Demand Skill in 2013.

December 12, 2012 in Business, Corporate Philosophy, Non-Academic Careers, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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Academic philosophers, pressed to explain their unique contribution to the university, how they “add value,” why they are relevant, and so on, often fumble about, and the first thing the seize upon is the good old, tried and true “critical thinking.”  Ironic as it sounds, today’s academy isn’t all that interested in their critical thinking prowess.  But as it turns out, they may be fumbling in the wrong place, all while sitting on a pile of gold.  In its forecast of hiring practices for 2013, Forbes puts critical thinking at the top of the list.  In fact, philosophical habits of mind dominate the list:  complex problem-solving, judgment and decision-making, and active listening round out the top four.

Forward-thinking business leaders have been singing this song for years:  technical know-how is more downloadable than the supple habits of mind needed to deal with ambiguity and complexity, integrate concepts, perspectives, and data across domains, and see the bigger picture.  As Dov Seidman has argued, in today’s new economy, it doesn’t just matter what you can do, but how you do it, and philosophy is uniquely-suited to help us navigate the new normal of hyper-complexity, hyper-connectedness, and hyper-transparency:

Philosophy can help us address the (literally) existential challenges the world currently confronts, but only if we take it off the back burner and apply it as a burning platform in business. Philosophy explores the deepest, broadest questions of life—why we exist, how society should organize itself, how institutions should relate to society, and the purpose of human endeavor, to name just a few. 

…

Credit, climate, and consumption crises cannot be solved through specialized expertise alone. These problems, like most issues businesses confront in the global marketplace, feature complex interdependencies that require an understanding of how political, financial, environmental, ethical, and social interests influence each other. A philosophical approach connects the dots among competing interests in an effort to create synergy. Linking competing interests requires philosophers to examine areas that modern-day domain experts too often ignore: core beliefs, ethics, and character. 

Perhaps we might amend Plato’s dream of the philosopher-king:  that the world will limp on until philosophers become CEOs, or CEOs become philosophers.  Bodhisattvas must become businessmen.

Out of the Shadows

December 8, 2012 in Graduate School, Higher Education, Non-Academic Careers, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

What leadership looks like:

On Thursday afternoon, on Day 2 of the Council of Graduate School’s annual meeting here, Michael F. Bérubé was scheduled to give a plenary address titled “The Future of Graduate Education in the Humanities.”

“There is no way to talk about the future of graduate education in the humanities without talking about everything else involved in the study of the humanities,” he told a rapt audience of about 700 graduate deans, most of whom were not from humanities fields.

…

Mr. Bérubé opened his remarks by saying that every aspect of graduate education in the humanities is in crisis, from the details of the curriculum to the broadest questions about its purpose. “It is like a seamless garment of crisis, in which, if you pull on any one thread, the entire thing unravels. It is therefore exceptionally difficult to address any one aspect of graduate education in isolation,” he said.

Among the problems he cited were high attrition rates among graduate students, the many years it takes students to get their degrees, the need to revise the content of graduate courses so that students are prepared for jobs outside of academe, whether alternative forms should replace the traditional dissertation, and if some programs should be reduced in size or eliminated altogether.

Mr. Bérubé also noted the glut of Ph.D.’s in the academic-job market and the 1.5 million people now employed as adjuncts, with no hope or expectation of ever getting a tenure-track position.

“For what are we training Ph.D.’s in the humanities to do, other than to take academic positions in their fields?” Mr. Bérubé asked the audience. “What does one do with a Ph.D. in philosophy or history, other than aspire to teach and conduct research in philosophy or history?”

The great task of the current generation of graduate students and early-career academics is to answer that question–together.  The university system cannot save them.

A Modest Proposal

December 4, 2012 in Graduate School, Higher Education, Non-Academic Careers, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Lenny Cassuto makes one:

What if we reconceived the guiding assumption that Ph.D.’s are supposed to become professors? As the Versatile Ph.D., a Web site dedicated to alternative careers for Ph.D.’s, pointed out in a comment to me, “Recognizing nonacademic placements as legit communicates a much more positive message about the skills and abilities that are nurtured by graduate education. It affirms the value of the entire enterprise.”

But it also throws a bone to administration.  If graduate programs were tricked out with nonacademic job training programs and workshops; if they forged partnerships with university career services offices, AltAc alumni, and administrators; talked openly about applying PhD training and skills, rather than relegating these conversations to the shadows; and/or incorporated internships and/or service learning into their programs–if any or all of these things are done, then graduate schools gain a competitive advantage.  They can say to prospective students:  ”We don’t just place our graduates in tenure-track jobs.  We prepare them for a whole host of careers in different sectors.”  A healthy culture is one capable of criticism, reform, and adaptation–that is how institutional metabolism works.  But as Cassuto points out, cultural change can only happen if it starts at the academic equivalent of birth:

That affirmation has to begin at the earliest stage of graduate school. Professors need to shape students’ expectations before they enter graduate school—which means more transparency about their career options. And we need to shape students’ expectations while they’re in school about what’s waiting for them afterward. Most important, we need to alter their training accordingly, to prepare them for the full range of jobs they will be able to get.

The system only gets fixed from the inside, granted.  But I worry that Cassuto’s solution is only a rearguard action that eases the passage of the current generation of graduate students but concedes that the war is lost:  admissions will be cut and programs will close, and “becoming a professor” will no longer be a legitimate career path.

In any case, if present trends continue, I think we’re likely to see three species of PhDs:  the few Elites idling in Ivy Heaven , the many Plebs toiling away in Adjunct Hell, and the plucky, creative NACs who parlay the PhD into something new.

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