The Future of Tertiary Education

MelbournePhilosopher

Yesterday's Age had an article entitled "California dreaming or tertiary futures?" - available at http://www.theage.com.au/news/Education-News/California-dreaming-or-tertiary-futures/2004/11/26/1101219740531.html.

This article discusses the split between teaching and research institutions. The Liberal argument goes something like this. Being accounted a University is prestigious, and everyone wants to get their qualifications from a University. To be a University, you need to put quite a lot of time and money into research, which is expensive, and doesn't really matter for the teaching part. Publically funded institutions can pay for their research with government money, and be viable. Private institutions cannot be competitive with public ones while incurring the overhead costs of research. There is surplus demand, and it should impact on the quality of degrees to allow teaching only institutions of sufficient calibre to call themselves Universities without a research components. This will up supply, keeping people happier and more educated.

It almost sounds reasonable.

Whinging lefties the world over are up in arms, because a number of Bad Things will inevitably happen once you do this. Firstly, it is felt that the quality of education at a teaching-only institution will not be high. Secondly, Universities (even public ones) bankroll their research with teaching income. Competing against teaching-only institutions will mean less money for research unless their funding structures change. Thirdly, it creates a divide between research and students, who will be divorced from the research culture. Fourthly, it's the thin end of the wedge for axing HECS. This need not be true, but everyone knows what the Libs are thinking.

So where are the flaws in these arguments, and is there really a problem here?

Basically, the driver of change, although disputed in the article, is the reduction of public funding for education. Universities face increasing pressure. The government basically doesn't want to know about higher education beyond its abilities to turn creative students into productive units of labour. Higher education as a goal-in-itself is not on the radar for public funding. They want to make sure as many people as possible get, you know, kind of well educated, but it's not a big deal for them how many people get to do Ph.D.'s in philosophy. A skilled populace is the goal, not an educated one.

What this means is that the government is forcing education into an increasingly competitive environment. This means that as an industry, they need to meet the demands of the populace cheaply, which means it's difficult to fund research. Hence teaching-only Universities. Clearly, there is also a popular push towards this model, otherwise the demand could be met by technical diplomas rather than "University" qualifications. Employers want the safety net of accreditation and respect that you get out of a Uni degree. The whinging leftie in me winced as I wrote that, given my opinions about the declining quality of higher education, another effect of the pressure of competition.

The bad reasoning is in the eyes of the government for viewing the competitive pressure of University degrees as a bad thing. There isn't anything wrong with having University degrees differentiating the intellectually gifted from the merely tenacious. They don't want to be seen as denying anyone an education, in either the voter's eyes or those from overseas. Oh, not to mention they would dearly love to sell more teaching-only courses to overseas students for increasing revenue.

I believe that the move to teaching-only Universities has unstoppable momentum, although it doesn't _need_ to happen. My expectation is that Honours and Ph.D. degrees will become the new place for intellectual pursuit for-itself.

Values in Schools

MelbournePhilosopher

Today was the media launch day for the inclusion of five core values into the curriculum of Victorian schools. It is being hailed far and wide as a stupendous non-event, and I have to agree.

Education minister Lynne Kosky is bravely defending the rationality of this move, but is doing it with rhetoric only. An article in today's Age gives some outline of the position http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Schools-get-a-lesson-in-values/2004/11/28/1101577356180.html and this morning's interview with John Fain on 774 ABC Melbourne revealed little more.

It seems that through some unspecified process, which may have the label of "behaviours", the teaching process will be somehow changed. As far as this reader can tell, what it actually means is that teachers will be asked to do exactly what they used to do, but in a way that's consistent with these values. In other words, not much has been accomplished. It's not like there's any more money, or a more efficient system, or some terrible outmoded thing been replaced or, well, really interesting.

The "core values" are :
1) Openness of mind
2) Pursuit of excellence
3) Respect for evidence
4) Learning for all
5) Engagement and effort

It's hard to argue that any of these are per se bad, but it's also hard to see how they are the most relevant values to be teaching in schools. It might not be drawing a long bow to suggest that a few more commandments than 5 might be worth instilling in our young learners.

MelbournePhilosopher suggests these alternative values instead as promoting a better model for learning...

1) Rational thought
2) Tolerance
3) Creativity
4) Pride of Mind
5) Fun

Associated with this of course must be a return to the proper use of language, and of course a little less Pomp and Circumstance.

Navel Gazing

MelbournePhilosopher

Noun:
"spending too much time considering your own thoughts, feelings or problems"

It is usually blatantly obvious to me when I am navel gazing, and this morning was one of those times. It usually starts with drink or a sleepless night, or both. It seems to be a function of the mind, something I regard as akin to sleep. Sleep is when our minds shut down our consciousness for a time and go into maintainance mode. Norton's Antivirus For Humans kicks in, deletes any bad files, and wakes us when it's done. When we wake up, we are refreshed, our ideas in order, and ready to face a new day - perhaps after a strong mug of coffee anyway.

Navel gazing is like that, except it's painful and you're awake. Google scholar seems to no little about navel gazing, so I'm forging new territory with my work here. Every now and then, I think normal sleep isn't enough for the messed up thoughts going through our minds, and emergency action is required. Instead of shutting down normally to deal with our anxieties over a bad day at work, or some rude remark, we start to dwell on things. Normally fruitful lines of thought descend as though in a whirlpool, revolving around some issue only glimpsed at the bottom of some dark well. When we are navel gazing, our normal happy self seems to be the stranger, the superficial. We become the worst version of ourselves.

Fortunately, this condition is usually solved with the application of time, food, sometimes company, and in due course sleep.

I am reluctant however to call navel-gazing simple "depression" as I feel the two are, or can be, separate. Depression is something medical - something you could in principle fix with a pill, and certainly something that should be healed. Navel-gazing is something that broadsides everyone to a greater or lesser extent, and I think it's a normal mental process even if it is a little unpleasant.

Some philosophers have been professional navel-gazers. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is a fine example. Wikipedia has an excellent summary of his history, at the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schopenhauer. He espoused that we all lower our expectations as much as possible, as the most rational way to deal with worldly disappointments. If only we could avoid setting ourselves on pedestals, we would cease falling off them with quite so painful a landing.

Myself, I think that if we lower our sights, we will rather fall to even lower lows. But never mind, I feel the mood passing. For another little while, I shall drink wine, eat cheese, and enjoy life until next I once again cast my gaze navelwards.

The Apprentice 9 and 10

MelbournePhilosopher

Well, last night had more to teach us about the nature of failure than the nature of success.

Episode 9 showed the teams renovating a house in one day trying to improve its valuation. Raj got kicked out, but at the same time did put up one of his better performances - one suspects that he had been sabotaging the team performance by making life difficult for project managers in previous episodes. This time, his ass was on the line, and he didn't quite make it. Essentially, it was a task which required sensible, basic ideas carried out efficiently. His decision to knock down a wall and reduce the number of bedrooms in his house was a stupid decision to make when there were still other, simpler, gains to be made.

Episode 10 was a farce - the 4-man Apex Corporation being reduced down to 3 after a dismal performance. Not one of the team members put in a fiery or vigorous performance. When you fail, it not good to have been meek.

As a philosophical exercise, two simple points can be made. Where easy gains can be made, make them. Don't think outside the square when your job is to build a square. Clearly, picking the difference between when to be conservative and when to be creative is a difficult one, and Raj didn't actually reduce the value of his house, but he achieved only mediocre success.

Secondly, fight with fire. Don't give up on a task before it has begun, and don't write yourself off. It is a fair accusation against Apex that they actually achieved the same quality of presentation as Mosaic, but completely failed to compete equally in terms of marketing and sales. Mosaic outperformed their sales by a factor of 12 - $12, 000 to $1,000. This is a motto for life - if you choose not to fight hard, you are choosing to make less money. Trump rightly fired the project manager for, essentially, being a feckless leader. Nobody excelled, but at the same time nobody let the project manager down. Failing to show motivation and inspire others to work hard is a failure of leadership, not a failure of the workers. This is an object level in the value of not allowing yourself the luxury of self-denigration. A positive outlook is no guarantee, but a negative one is.

-MP

The Adaptable Brain

MelbournePhilosopher

Brains are cool. They can do some really awesome stuff. Here's a link discussing a few of those.

http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041123/ZNYT05/411230391/1051/NEWS01

Essentially, the brain appears able to comprehend sensory input apparently of one sort as though it were another. To provide an example, it can garner visual information / perception based on electrical impulses applied to the skin.

I don't know about you, but I find that both freaky and cool. While the article didn't go into sufficient detail, it suggested that one could experience vision, including things like object recognition, shape, proportion etc in this way. It speaks strongly to the idea that minds are tied less strongly to our particular inputs that might otherwise be thought. Unfortunately, due to the nature of academic publication, it's impossible to get good information from a primary source, but if true this is suggestive of many applications straight out of science fiction.

The article directly addresses many astonishing things remarkably casually - the ability to compensate for lost senses, allowing the deaf to hear, the blind to see and those without a sense of touch to feel. It also talks about augmenting existing senses by feeding feedback from night-vision goggles without impairing normal vision, for example. The possibilities are endless. As far as I'm concerned, if this is real, the revolution is coming. I'll go home, take out my million dollar loan and buy myself the hardware to see in the infra-red range, gain a third eye looking behind me. Ones mind even turns towards the entertainment value of this kind of technology.

Unfortunately, journalist reports are not science. If it were really that easy, I wouldn't need a million dollar loan - a soldering iron, pliers and a few hundred dollars worth of bits and bobs from the electronics store would suffice.

What this also has implications for is the plasticity of the mind. What, for example, might man achieve if new senses could be included in their life, possibly from birth. There are many things that humans are good at doing that are currently done only via the computer. Giving humans additional channels of input might provide leaps forward in human ability where previously they had to depend on computing models. On example might be signal analysis. What might it be like to directly experience radiation outside of the visual range accurately? What might the powers of the human minds be turned to by a scientist mad enough?

-MP

E Governance

MelbournePhilosopher

This post is just to provide an introduction to e-governance to the few of you who may be interested. e-governance refers to both publishing government documents to the web, and allowing feedback via the web. While this is to some extent done already, and entirely possible under todays technical infrastructure, the government is as usual a cautious adopter.

There is an overview page on MelbournePhilosophy.com - http://melbournephilosophy.com:8080/jspwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=AustralianEGovernance. This has a few links to some current inquiries and e-governance portals.

Geeks for many years have heavily promoted e-governance as something that could fundamentally change the nature of government. It would potentially allow the return of more power to the people, returning to a more linguistically correct meaning of the word "democracy". I believe this assumes an unrealistic level of interest in government, but it is true that for the first time ever, this is technically feasible.

What e-governance could probably enable here and now rather than in some arbitrarily restructured form of government is greater interaction with small community groups. It is being more strongly adopted in local councils rather than parliamentary government, which is just fine. It has been a long-standing philo-political motto that a problem should always be solved as closely as possible to the source - i.e. one shouldn't go to John Howard with a plan for a speed bump. It's more effective to enable local councils to deal with local issues. e-governance has the potential to make local councils more agile in understanding community issues, and allowing better interaction with the community.

Underlying all of this is the untested assumption that people will be able to use computers more easily than interacting via traditional means. I think in the long run this is probably true, but in the short run probably false. This is one of the great and recurring barriers to technology adoption everywhere. It's a lot of work to set up, then it gets underused by the very people for whom it is being enabled. Initially, technology seems to most people to be scary and weird. However it is also the best way forward.

It seems to me that the greatest barrier to e-governance is not technical at all, but social.

-MP

Taboo Words

MelbournePhilosopher

For most people, there will be some kind of taboo topic, especially in the media. Today's Age newspaper had a story running about how they mispublished a URL to the winner of Australian Idol, and instead published a URL to a gay porn website. Frankly, I thought this was really quite funny - not to mention being the result of lack of basic understanding of web technologies on the part of that particular journalist. Clearly someone or another didn't distinguish between ".com.au" and ".com" - as any technical person knows these are as different as chalk and cheese, but in the mind of the average person are essentially indistinguishable. For example, I always publish MP as http://melbournephilosophy.com/ rather that http://www.melbournephilosophy.com/, but people without even thinking frequently just assume I meant "www.". Hey, that works too, on account of I created a virtual server pointing at the same place, but I only did it because I needed to cater to people who couldn't discern the difference.

In any case, I tried to post a discussion on this to Whirlpool, but the thread got deleted for being inappropriate. I'm reminded of a movie I saw recently, called "Lenny" about a US comedian who eventually got drawn into drugs and depravity, but was helped on his way by an oppressive police force inhibiting what he saw as a necessary use of free speech. He couldn't deal with the way that people were muzzling him for talking about scary ideas.

It's funny how people can find ideas scary. The one place I think it has relevance is in the eyes of the very young, who tend more than others to accept what they read as true, and tend to assimilate the knowledge in an unbalanced way. Even then however I tend to think that ageism is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy to some extent. It's hard to say. Our comedian Lenny certainly felt he should be allowed to say anything he liked. "Nigger", he says (I paraphrase), "it's a dirty word. Everyone's shocked. It's the power we give words that makes them rude, or offensive to people. I wish people would just use it - the President should just say nigger nigger nigger nigger until it doesn't mean anything any more. Then it would stop making children cry because someone at school called them a nigger and they didn't understand why."

There's a grain of truth in that. We get afraid of certain words and ideas, don't use them in polite company, don't even talk about them. I'm not Lenny - I don't think we should just ignore our social environment - but I'm not his oppressive policeman either. I think that our society would be much better off if more things were open to discussion, including in public. The article on today's error was closed by the whirlpool staff, because the article contained a link to the offending website. Firstly, that website is breaking no law. Secondly, the Age article is freely available. Thirdly, it's the power we give to words and ideas that makes them taboo, not the ideas themselves. Reducing bias and discrimination means bringing issues into the light, not censorship.

-MP

The Apprentice 7 and 8

MelbournePhilosopher

I think it was 7 and 8. I might have miscounted.

The first episode really had very little content, but Stacy finally got fired. Cya Stace.

The second episode was a tragedy of leadership from Elizabeth, who thoroughly deserved the firing she got on account of a complete inability to hold a consistent line or control her freewheeling team in any way.

However, we did see Andy taking his first swipe at the project management role, and sticking it to the man - and women. Both Wes and Maria were having a bit of a go at him. Maria especially felt like she was Miss Marketing, and knew all the right answers. Wes was also uppity, but was a more effective team member despite his misgivings.

Having survived the boardroom about 4 times, and winning as project manager, Andy is now a force to be reckoned with. I would hesitate to hand him the final victory, as the road is still long, but he really has now answered every challenge. He is guaranteed another week, which if he can perform even at an average level, will cement his position as a reliable performer, capable of leadership and with the chutzpah to handle himself under criticism. Good for him.

I think the strongest contenders are Andy, Kevin and Wes. I hate to be all male chauvanist and all, but I don't see a lot of strong opposition from the women. Maria hasn't had the opportunity to lead, but a grin that smug usually hides someone inflexible. Ivana isn't bad - I've said this before - but doesn't have charisma, and doesn't always have the vision to succeed. Wes struggles a little on vision too, but is great on implementation. Kevin is pretty awesome, but I don't know if he is practical enough.

Raj has got to go soon. What a loony!

Cheers,
-MP

Rapid Changes of Mood

MelbournePhilosopher

I don't think you can call what I experience mood swings. A swing implies a gentle parabolic lowering out of one state, then a rising into another. They may vary from the slow motion of a hammock gently moving in a breeze, or even the kind of extended panic of a pirate ship ride at a fun-park. I seem to be a different kind of beast, moving seamlessly from one mood directly into another as quickly and inexplicably as through scenes in a dream. You know the sort, one minute you're on a bus, then all of a sudden you need to buckle your safety belts for landing, with no transition having really occurred.

I'm sure psychologists have detailed and various accounts of how we undergo mood change, but I've never read them. My own states of mind are as mysterious to me as the vaguaries of weather are to a stockbroker.

Let me list today's moods :

* enthusiasm
* pleasure
* irritable
* rushed
* confused
* companionable
* curious
* exhausted
* relieved
* uncertain
* nostalgic

That's probably not a half of it, as most of them came from what I can remember of my lunch break. The morning has already mostly faded, and my thoughts of yesterday are as blurred as a series of clicks that have become a steady tone.

Feminism

MelbournePhilosopher

I listened last night to the http://www.philosophytalk.org/ discussion on the philosophy of Feminism, and it was very interesting. The philosophy of feminism turns out to be quite different to the politics of feminism, and I certainly came out the wiser.

Mostly, it helped me understand what people mean when they talk about sexism. Most people who talk about feminism are talking about activism to redress sexism. However, it's really a little more complex than that. Feminists come in several different flavours - but can be fairly well-divided into "Same-ist Feminists" and "Difference Feminists". The first is the view that gender differences are essentially arbitrary, and all of our views about male/female differences could be otherwise. The second is the view that male and female gender roles make for quite different people, and that while you shouldn't let this difference be the basis for discrimination or oppression, you still need to treat the two in different ways.

There was some discussion about the difference between sex and gender - there is a well-defended position that people's characters vary, across both sexes, according to traits which have typically been associated with one or the other sex. Nurturing attitudes, people who emphasise the value of connections between people and place importance on the feelings of others are dubbed "feminine". On the other hand, competitiveness, aggression, some kinds of reasoning and goal-oriented behaviour are dubbed "masculine".

Same-ist feminists would say that these gender divisions are mostly artificial, and that connecting them to sex is a philosophical mistake which needs to be redressed. Difference feminists would say that these are based on real biological differences, which may or may not be connected to sex, but are certainly inherent to particular individuals. Unravelling the effects of cultural bias on how we understand gender and sex is important to having a good understanding of people.

The nub of feminism appears to be about respect. Respect for another person shouldn't be dependant on someone's sex or gender. Redressing this imbalance is what political feminism was about in the mid and late 20th century, and is referred to as a sufferage movement. There is still plenty of imbalance left, by the way. Dealing with the errors of thought involved is what the philosophy of feminism is about. How should some of the apparent genuine gender differences affect our society? Should we be attempting to reduce gender difference, or should we encourage people to identify strongly with a particular gender? How does this affect our relationships? Has it led to any reduction in the quality of life in the forms of institutionalised sexism?

Philosophy of time

MelbournePhilosopher

Rather than summarise the physics of time, I'm just going to say this right out - I don't believe in time. You heard me - doesn't exist. So how do I explain what we all obviously experience and call time, and how did I come to this view?

Well, if you ask a modern physicist "what is time", the first answer he'll give is an analogy with position. Just as I can be to the left of something, or to the right of it, so I can be before it, or after it. Causation works along on direction only, and we call that "forward" in time. If you probe a little harder, you'll find out the time is just another variable in some maths that relates mass, momentum and location. How fast is the car travelling? 50 kilometers per hour? Oh, right that makes sense. So what's an hour? Well, an hour is about how long it takes for a car going at 50km/h to go 50 km.

That's right - the only way I know to describe time is self-referential. How, er, long does a second last? How do we know that a second is the same in all places? Actually, thanks to relativity, these kinds of questions make only a limited sense, but even then time is still just this crazy self-defined thing. Time is only ever defined in terms of motion. Here's what time really is, mathematically speaking. Time is the movement of one object, relative to the movement of another. Say I've got an incredibly reliable clock. I can judge time off it, because it's a consistent frame of reference. I can define one tick of the clock as "a second" and from that determine how far all the other objects in question move in that second. But my second is only defined here as the motion by the second hand of one interval - maybe a few mm, depending on the size of the clock.

This makes good relativistic sense, and the intuition is sound even under high velocities. No matter how fast you are going relative to other objects in space, your personal definition of time is still only understood in terms of the motion of the clock you have with you.

Time, then, is nothing other than change. Because things change with respect to other things in reliable an predicable ways, we have evolved with an innate sense of a "rate of change" that is natural. If you will, our sense of time is like an inbuilt clock, by which we judge the change of other objects.

The question "where does the past go" has the answer nowhere. The past is just the word we use to describe what the universe was like before it changes. The future is just the word we use to describe that the universe is still undergoing change.

How knowledge creeps in

MelbournePhilosopher

You might not realise it, but everything you know is the result of philosophy. Apart from the meagre proportion of your knowledge which is the direct result of abstraction and generalisation from firsthand experience, basically your mind is full of recieved knowledge. Language, conversational structure, moral beliefs, beliefs in religion, atheism, political structure, chemistry, physics, maths - all of these have been formed mostly by people who addressed these issues from a philosophical point of view.

Our Western society still has such strong characteristics of Aristotelian logic that you can immediately accept them when they are identified to you. Logic - the idea for example that something can't be both true and false at the same time - is an Aristotelian idea. The idea that a bottle is defined as such because of its properties is an Aristotelian idea. The idea that ideas can be rigorously examined using logic is an Aristotelian idea. Whole centuries of Christian doctrine used Aristotelian beliefs about metaphysics (i.e. that the infinite was an impossibility, and that vacuum was similarly nonexistent) to back up their belief in a creator God.

Language itself has been formed by these ideas. While truly words are developed in an evolutionary way rather than being some kind of formal system, nonetheless our word pattens and entire way of thinking is reflected in it. Many apparent philosophical problems are merely the result of language rather than of true contradiction.

Physics in its entirely used to be a subdomain of "natural philosophy" - a movement under which such powerhouses as Descartes, Leibniz and many, many others developed idea which we would now properly call the domain of mathematics. Yet these people also saw philosophical meaning in their work - that is to say they did not separate the technical process of counting with the proper way to understand the world around us. Indeed, arguments about whether the world consists of countable components, or is continuous in nature rage to this day. This argument can be tracked from Aristotle's ideas about the void, through astronomy and the understanding of the infinite, into arguments about the nature of mathematical truth, along the mathematical ideas of Einstein and his contemporaries and right into our living room.

But people don't need or want to realise this on the whole. Instead, we are content with the approximate correctness of the ideas we hold. Perfect knowledge is a kind of illusion, and we understand this instinctively. We are content that our minds understand the world in Euclidean terms is acceptable - the relativistic nature of the universe is invisible at human scales and doesn't really matter when we are driving to the shops. Knowledge in most people exists as accepted rather than reasoned knowledge.

Things like cultural shift, generational gaps, frameworks, ontologies, contexts etc are essentially the result in changes to education (not just academic). Nobody in Australia my age or younger has experienced their country under the threat of military invasion. War heroes of the 1940s are respected in a kind of vague and uncomprehending way, the reality of their decisions and lives a mystery, only one generation later.

There is a duality to knowledge - on one hand most knowledge is the basis of thousands of years of human reasoning, and on another it is accepted entirely without rationale on the individual basis.

-MP

The Apprentice 4 and 5

MelbournePhilosopher

A double episode of The Apprentice - score! Or so I thought - unfortunately they cut out a whole lot of content in order to fit into the 1.5 hour total. A net loss, I would say, although I did enjoy them both. I don't really like the "cut to the chase" attitude of our networks though, I want to see the cut-and-thrust of the competition.

Short summary : Boys win episode one by $10 in a scenario where each team make $17, 000. Pretty close. But there's only one winner, so we lose a girl. Girls win episode two by about three country miles. Project manager gets the chop for not having a clue.

The fast pace of the format really showed a lot less of exactly how people were performing and reacting which I thought was a real shame. I think seeing the boys take their first loss gives some good insights into who will stay on. Now the US is ahead of us. I'm going to make some predictions, and all you fans out there can check up on the US website right now to see if I'm right or not.

1) I reckon the girls will win the next challenge
2) Andy is the leader next time (from the preview) and it looks like he cops a lot of heat. I reckon if he can defend himself, he's cool, but if he forgets how to stand up for himself in the boardroom, he's toast. It's a fine line between being the manager's fault and being the employees fault, and you need to steer that well. I suspect he will get the chop, because everyone so far who's been put under pressure by Trump has been fired. Simplicity and accuracy are the name of this game - be honest to your business principles, and make sure that as manager you do your job by making a call on the tough issues. Delegate, but don't try to say you weren't involved in the decisions.
3) Stacy R, the annoying lawyer, has an infuriating attitude is caused mostly by arrogance, nervousness and an unwillingness to take responsibility, but her instincts are okay. Under her infuriating exterior lurks the potential for better behaviour. Unfortunately. It remains to be seen if she can conquer her "can't-do" attitude.
4) Ivana has the least creative energy of the women, but isn't a failure either. After a few more weaker contenders drop off, she'll be next on the hit list.
5) Kevin is one of the strongest candidates, and if Andy can make it through his trial by fire next week, may go on to do good things. You don't get many second chances in Trump's boardroom though.

Let's see how I do!

Cheers,
-MP

Content Webs

MelbournePhilosopher

I made a comment the other day that I thought the pool of philosophical research that was publicly available was small. Implied here is also some degree of quality associated with that - there's plenty of bad pseudo-philosophy out there.

His response was that he had about 2000 pdfs of stuff in a directory somewhere, and he didn't think the pool was small.

Well, that's not really a pool - it's more like a kind of large asteroid. Rather than being a watering hole for information-thirsty travellers, it's more like a freewheeling chunk of information that you'll never know about until it hits you, unless you've got a good telescope.

I think MelbournePhilosophy.com is a well-connected link in the web, drawing together more independant content sources for philosophy than any other page on the web. This wasn't particularly hard, because there was no competition. Literally everyone else has concentrated on (a) introductory guides to philosophy, (b) selling content, (c) making a specific set of e-content available, (d) promoting a personal view. There just wasn't any (e). Instead of all these people linking to eachother, they existed in isolation, whizzing around in the vastness of space, visible only to those with good telescopes.

This isn't just a beat-up for MP. Okay, maybe it is so far, but I'll make some other points now. Firstly, mp3s became a "killer app" because they allowed easy redistribution. Good mechanisms for organising and trading them exist. MP doesn't provide this - it helps you find related but unlinked sources of data, but doesn't actually help in making them more accessible. To get philosophy research into the public consciousness, this needs to happen. I'm not suggesting that philosophy papers will ever get as popular as mp3s, but until they become easily redistributable, they will suffer from a cloud of technical obscurity.

The "information pool" presented by the mainstream media is one example of the power of interconnected information. Whatever newspaper you buy, you are reading essentially the same thing. The information mostly comes from all the same places, and the only value-add is to couch it in a particular language and give it a particular slant. Information that is not linked to by the mainstream media is not considered credible. By using the power of connection, the mainstream media is able to easily dictate what society gives credence to. It's capitalism at its worst.

To 'escape the trap' we need
* The ability to aggregate data from information sources of our own choosing
* A reliable system for re-distributing data
* Print media equivalents of the same
* Greater understanding of the nature of news reporting
* Healthy skepticism
* Greater attention to local issues

And philosophy is a good place to start.

The Big Questions

MelbournePhilosopher

I was talking about the subjects I am going to do over summer - "The Good Life in Ancient Thought" and "Human Life in Modern Thought" - to which my companion replied, "Ah, the big questions!"

I wonder if they really are. People get motivated by different things at different times, so it's hard to see how any one question is bigger than another. Maybe he was just expressing a feeling of fellowship with my interest in these areas. Then again, maybe not. Some questions never seem to get answered.

Physics, maths, even economics, seem to get if not explained, at least better understood as time goes by. Errors decrease. Others seem by constrast to be less well understood now than when they were first asked - and it always seems to be the same ones. Questions relating to our purpose in life, issues of morality, and dealing with happiness (or sadness) seem to have remained essentially unanswered for tens of thousands of years. That's a long time. So why the big wait?

Well, it could be that we haven't all started to believe in God yet. Thomas Aquinas, famous philosopher and all around good-guy talked about a God-shaped hole in the human heart. I've toyed briefly with believing in God, but wasn't able to find any comforting feelings of faith. Maybe I'm missing something - some people certainly seem to gain a lot of comfort from it. But just as many people debate over which God to believe in, or become in turn disenchanted with the whole idea. While Aquinas was onto something, I don't think religion is the right answer for everyone.

It could also be because we're just not evolved for happiness. Ever since consciousness resulted from increasingly intelligent ape-minds, people have been evolving to survive. In a world where reach 40 is a big deal, achieving enlightenment is rather less pressing than fending off lions. (This is actually a big fib - many primitive societies had plenty of time on their hands, and basically seemed quite happy. But they're all dead now, and us misanthropes have out-evolved them). That's it boys and girls, the mind just wasn't built to be happy in our world. We're wired up to enjoy killing lions, and without that opportunity, we're just bottles of misdirected angst. (This is a broadly Nietzschean view of the mind).

It might be that human minds are infinitely malleable, and thus the character of every age is different. As society changes with time, so must we adapt to the circumstances in order to attain personal fulfillment. As such, the answer to the question must eternally be revised.

Relevant Ontology

MelbournePhilosopher

Okay, so you can slice and dice information up a few different ways. It's not terribly interesting to say there's more than one way to look at something. So why get excited about new kinds of ontological frameworks?

Well, one reason is for understanding something like religion. Being an atheist, I not only don't believe in a god, I also (if I'm being true to my claim) believe that everyone who does is wrong. There's two ways to be open-minded about this. The first is to accept that I might easily be mistaken, and the second is to say I'm not mistaken, but I don't mind if you want to believe in a god anyway. The point is that whichever group happens to be wrong isn't wrong enough that they can't get on with living somehow or another. Both groups, right or otherwise, are more or less equally able to reason about the world around them, get on in life, and do whatever people do.

It's provably true that you can come up with equivalent but different ontological frameworks which are internally consistent and predict correct results. It's my view that people do this when they take on different world views. The differing views are not equivalent exactly, but they are each close enough to the way that things really are that both are practical.

Next time you are having an argument with an irrational person, stop for a moment. They may mean entirely different things when they are reasoning to what you mean. If this is true, then your arguments will seem wrong and backwards to them.

Wittgenstein, along with his concepts about family relations, heralded a big change to the way in which philosophers understood the world around them. Initially at least, it was unclear what effect those kinds of fuzzy set would have on the consistency of any ontology which used them - in fact it wasn't even clear that it was going to be consistent with our normal ideas of logic.

To fast forward, this more or less explains why nobody is ever right. The more you learn, the more you notice that everyone can argue for their position (okay, not really, but a lot of people who you thought were raving loonies turned out to be at least internally consistent, despite the fact most of them aren't). You begin to notice that educated people don't converge to a monoculture. Philosophy ceases to give explanations, and starts to be the tool by which you better understand your intuitions.

Wittgensteinian family relations allows us to define sets in a way natural for human cognition. Developments in his ideas have also meant that now we can also use those sets formally. These ideas give us better descriptive power, allowing us to verify a greater range of ideas using reliable methods.

Ontology

MelbournePhilosopher

As a part of my current essay on the philosophy of mind, I have found myself exploring the nature of categories. Ontology is a technical word, roughly meaning "the classification of what is". This post is taken from a work-in-progress on MelbournePhilosophy.com on the nature of categories.

On the false paradox of nominalism, realism and ontology

It is false that there is any contradiction between an ontological description of the world, and the way it really is. This is a question of Metaphysics . Traditionally, people have broken the world down as being either nominal or real. Is our understanding of the world through naming a way to come to grips with the fact we have only an imperfect way of understanding how things change over time and are presented to use through our senses, or rather are the definitions of things made according to true and objective properties of those objects?

This question can be helped by a simple thought-experiment claim "We can never step into the same river twice".

The nominalist claims that in our naming of the river's apparent nature as river, we can indeed step into the same river twice, as it keeps the same name. The realist claims that the river has changed, and thus can no longer be considered the same object.

The claim of the realist is false, unfortunately, because he lacks the ability to describe what a river is - he cannot accurately describe a river at any point of time. He points to a named river, and says "this is changing", however by naming the river as "this", he is already committing himself to the fundamental describability of the river.

The spatial description of a river is no less a nominalisation than the temporal description of a river. How wide are its banks? How shall we correctly identify the difference between the river and its tributaries? Quickly, we find there is no realist way to describe the river as being an independant entity.

Identity

What is identity? Anything which has a name has an identity in someone's eyes. Philosophically speaking, two things are actually the same thing if logical statements about them are reflective, transitive and symmetrical.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/\http://users.erols.com/igoddard/identity.htm\http://philosophy-of-logic.philosophy.designerz.com/philosophy-of-logic-identity.php\http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~hhho/humanid.htm\http://www.neoscience.org/reflexiv.htm\http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reflexiveIs "the mind" a cluster concept?
*The Cluster-concept Theory: the referent of a proper name is determined by a cluster or family of descriptions. The referent is whatever satisfies enough of these descriptions. (p. 31) --Wittgenstein, Searle, & Strawson

http://www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/catalogue/0-522-84756-0.html

Actually, a cluster concept (after reading a little more) appears to be something like this : two distinct sets previously thought of as being the same set, differentiated according to some set of properties that has not hitherto been noticed.

Is the mind a family resemblance?
This is a Wittgensteinian idea. If a category has no sound and complete set of properties, then the classification must be done on close resemblances rather than on a set of predicates. W' uses the example of games.

The Apprentice 4

MelbournePhilosopher

Last night's episode of Melbourne Philosophy's favourite TV program didn't have quite the same aura of scandal that has dogged the show to date. The boys once again took prime position comfortably, but this time the infighting in the girls team was probably not the cause. True, they were still far from a united team, but cattiness levels were down a little. Possibly this is because there are so few of them left.

The goal was to set up a restaurant, and try to get good reviews. The boys correctly identified this as a simple task - clean out the building, put in some nice decor, and schmooze the customers. In a stroke of astounding good sense, they got their establishment professionally cleaned, did a few paintings to spice up the decor, and headed for bed. Rested and well-fed, they were able to give good attention to their customers, and didn't miss a trick in making sure everyone had a good time - even if they didn't have the polish of a professional waiting crew.

Sadly, the opposition didn't put up so much fight. Electing to clean by hand, they were running on 1.5 hours sleep the next day, and nobody functions well like that. In the end, it was their choice of athmosphere which probably did them in - they had a great look, but it was not appropriate to the demographic to which they were catering. Additionally, they were a little sycophantic with their customers, resulting in an overall "uncomfortable" feeling for the night.

In the end, the project manager was fired for bringing in not the person responsible for the decor, but rather two other people with whom she had had personal issues. Trump rightly put paid to that. The ongoing message - teamwork wins. Together we stand, divided we fall. (Or, we must all hang together or else me may all be hanged separately).

Building a good team is a greater achievement than mere personal success in your area, although without good people it can be hard to do well.

To take this out of the TV show and into the rest of our lives, it speaks to the value of friends, community groups, and humanity as a whole. In order to improve our own lives, we should not worry about others bringing us down by dragging their feet, but rather sweat about whether we are part of a good group. A church, circle of friends, being part of a business, and feeling connected are what will bring the greatest rewards - not isolationism.

Fighting for Your Viewpoint

MelbournePhilosopher

Many people have strong views on certain subjects, and believe that others should join them in their viewpoint. Religious groups, philosophical groups, self-help authors, politicians and myself all have lines that we tow around in public, trying to convince people of our correctness. In the face of so much divided opinion, it is easy to conclude that there is no right answer. This ambivalence inspires the various promoters to try even harder to push their views. However there must somewhere be a line when you are no longer being convincing, but are instead being a bully.

Often in conversation, I just let my thoughts run away with themselves, the result being that I dominate a conversation, or don't give other people enough voice. Even more at fault are those who do so deliberately - advertising companies, politicians and certain varieties of religion. Religion is a sufficiently broad class that it contains both the highly reasonable and the extreme.

There is a dilemma from the perspective of the information providers - in order to spread your viewpoint, the most effective mechanism is often advertising based not on your beliefs, but on human psychology. Pop music is sold not because it sounds good, but because it is glamorous. Conservative religions play on people's fears, as do conservative politicians. Public debate is frequently simplistic, and product advertising is seldom an accurate reporting of the facts.

For someone who wants to take some kind of ethical responsibility for the promotion of their views - i.e. not to betray the principles of what they stand for - some thought is required. There are two problems. One is that good ideas are not guaranteed to succeed. The other is that the rightness of ones view is frequently only right in its own terms. My position on abortion (to pick an example) is right according to my views, but is dependant on your accepting my larger position on a few issues. Just because I think I have some good and right ideas doesn't mean that I can force them on others. No matter how convinced I am of my view, it is still backed up only by my conviction.

Acknowledging that humans are fallible is opening the door to relativism - that nothing is ever perfect, and nobody is ever right about anything. Yet, one can be approximately right about many things. Is there any kind of rational certainty by which we can know that our beliefs? Certainly, it seems like logic can help by at least pointing out invalid argument structures, but every apparently logical position still rests on many many assumptions about rules and inferences.

The only conclusion that I can think of is that one should trust ones instincts about what is a good position and what is not, but that highly emotive topics should be tempered by a lot of careful consideration. Some beliefs are held nearly absolutely, such as the right to defend oneself by force, some basic human rights etc. There are positions which I am willing to fight for with physical force, others that I am willing to promote believing them correct, others which I am happy to stand for, and still others which I hold internally but do not push outwards. So long as one attempts to recognise the difference, that is enough. At the end of the day, adherence to ethical promotion is a choice made many different ways.

-MP

Information For Free II

MelbournePhilosopher

In the last post on this topic, I alluded to the ways in which information might be un-free. It might cost money, or be subject to copyright restrictions. As pointed out, it could also be simply difficult to obtain, available but not publicised, or hidden in background noise. There might also be a restriction on the basis of who is accessing the information.

For the case of philosophical publication in Australia, it is all of the above. Much philosophical writing can be obtained only by the subscription to various professional journals. Those articles are typically not available for re-distribution or re-use in other works. They can be difficult to get - that is you may need to buy a paper copy, or access it via a library system. They are often not listed on general philosophy sites (such as University websites) and must be found by careful searching. In the amateur league, so much philosophical writing is uninformed and clumsy re-hashes of topics with a wealth of quality information available if you know where to look. Some writing is restricted to subscribers to journals, by level of education, membership of clubs or registration to a website.

It's a miracle anyone knows anything about it at all.

It is a goal of mine to bring down at least some of these barriers, in order to foster the propagation of knowledge. Because I believe that thinking well can improve your life, and that studying philosophy can help you frame your own questions, I would like to see it more widely known as such.

Some kinds of information - for example scientific research - flourish best in a research environment, sponsored by government and industry. The rewards are circulated throughout society through economic markets, providing an improvement to everyone's lives. The market is an efficient mechanism for propagating this kind of knowledge.

However, philosophical content is different. It is not alone - religious, political and personal information also falls to some extent into the same category. What makes it different is its unrealised potential to improve mental life. Because it is so well hidden, the benefits of philosophical thought are not recognised - it is thought of as being essentially impractical, a discipline of irrelevant questions.

Ignoring the philosophical history of all human knowledge and looking only on the direction of modern philosophy as being primarily metaphysical, you could be forgiven for finding some of the subject matter to have little bearing on your life. However, for people in unusual situations may often find these same subtleties to be the very center around which their universe is turning. Equipping individuals in crises with the ability to see the nature of their issues properly will allow them to better reach the only human goal - happiness.

It is for this reason that unlike other kinds of saleable research, philosophy's benefit is derived only when it is diffused throughout society. Rather than being more valuable when scarce, philosophical knowledge is drastically more valuable when it is shared. If two people distrust eachother, both lose. By sharing and understanding eachother in a well-thought-out way, it is possible for all to gain.

Choosing philosophy as a form of employment is to subject yourself to maximising your benefit under the existing system. However, everyone in the system would win by a more free flow of information between academics and with the public.

Dealing with the problems of making this so is a tough challenge, one which I will talk through in another installment of "Information For Free".

Ah, holidays

MelbournePhilosopher

I missed posting on Saturday and Sunday, but that's what holidays are for. A little mental regeneration time. But even my downtime has had quite a bit of philosophy in it!

On Saturday, I went to episode two of the lecture series at NGV, this time concentrating on the standpoints of Aristotle. Rather than pass judgement, I will simply pose a series of related questions.

1.) Can thinking well make us happier?
2.) Is happiness the end goal of all other actions?
3.) If everything nothing happens for no purpose, then for what purpose are we happy?
4.) What is it good in life to hope for?
5.) Does moderation make us always happier than an extreme?
6.) Can we be happy if we do not have more than others?
7.) The carrot or the stick?
8.) Is there only one kind of happiness?
9.) Is happiness a momentary state of being, or can it be long-lasting, even permanent?

Cheers,
-MP