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I think we need to rethink what we consider academically important which should be taught at universities and then what should be taught as self studies. I can

I think we need to rethink what we consider academically important which should be taught at universities and then what should be taught as self studies. I can't help but thinking that one of the real problems is that a lot of academia isn't that valuable anymore as a field of study. Don't get me wrong I consider ex. philosophy as one of the most important fields but I also feel like it doesn't belong as an indiependent discipline anymore. Maybe I am wrong but after postmodernism I really don't see what new revelations are going to be of fundamental value to society. I see plenty of need for applying philosophy in various fields as interpretation of those fields such as neuroscience, quantum mechanics, technology etc. but as a stand alone field I think it gave us what we needed. And even if I am wrong you don't need an academic faculty to support it anymore. I feel the same with something like psychology which to me is even more problematic as it it's based on a premise that you can learn about the human mind by studying humans. Again it should be tied to something like Neuroscience instead. That way the fields are put to good use rather than being self servant. I am aware this might not be a popular opinion and it's not something that I am 100% certain of myself but it seems to be that a lot of academia could be learned without large institutions to support and and thus with the need to measure it the only way large institutions normally can. Thoughts?

trishume 10y ago
It's really easy to make punchy-sounding arguments about why a certain field isn't as important to teach, so we should be rather reluctant to go along with them. For example your argument about psychology could equally applied to almost any field and physics. "I feel the same way about (Computer Science|Biology|Chemistry) which to me is even more problematic as it is based on the premise that we can learn about (computers|life|chemicals) by studying (code|proteins|chemicals). Again it should be tied to something like quantum physics instead." In fact this argument makes no sense to me, why wouldn't studying human behaviour be the best way to learn about human behaviour? Same for the argument about philosophy, it's too easy to assume something valuable a field produces is too amazing to ever be topped. "After [the light bulb] I really don't see what new revelations [about electricity] are going to be of fundamental value to society."
- ThomPete 10y ago
  I know which is why I said it with some reluctance. But your rubutals aren't good examples. Physics, Computer Science and Chemistry still have many still unanswered questions and provide clear benefits and ways to uncover those. In psychology we have a much better way into the human mind through neuroscience. Asking humans about their own behavior is filled with the very bias that we try to battle through the scientific method. Comparing philosophy with the lightbulb doesn't make much sense as the value of the lightbulb doesn't need to be peer reviewed to show it's value. The problem with many of these old fields is that they have become self-referential. Their contribution to society the last many decades aren't warrenting the popularity of them. We aren't studying alchemy anymore either because we have found more and better ways to study chemistry all I am saying is that perhaps it's time to park some of these fields in the alchemy department. Edit: Ironic that someone disagreeing with me on this very important discussion didn't find much more argument than a downvote :) Oh well.
  - trishume 10y ago
    Why do you think neuroscience is a better way to learn about human behaviour (which is what psychology deals with)? Neuroscience is incredibly difficult and the brain is super complex. We have learned far far less about human behaviour through neuroscience than through psychology studies. Learning about behaviour through neuroscience is working at the wrong level of abstraction, we're not capable of comprehending large systems at low levels. You cite bias in psych studies, but neuroscience has lots of issues too. See fmri study that can find results on a dead salmon. Also inability of neuroscience tools to figure out what the net of a tiny microprocessor does, let alone anything larger. I wasn't the one who down voted you.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      What I said was that psychology should be used as an extension of interpreting neuroscientific findings. We haven't learned anything about the brain through psychology we have learned about how humans interpret the brain but we don't have a lot of raw data. That's what neuroscience gives us and so it allow us to focus on interpreting the data rather than making a lot of flawed experiments which are often anecdotal more than anything else. Again I am pretty sure psychology will be seen as alchemy in 50 years if not before. And yes I know you didn't downvote :)
Jhsto 10y ago
> That way the fields are put to good use rather than being self servant. I am a student and the way I see is that this is the writing on the wall. The university (and BSc in specific) gives you the basis to develop yourself into the direction you feel passionate about. You can take computer science and mathematics if you want to become a great software engineer or you can mix computer science with communications and psychology to develop yourself into more of a bridge-builder between industries rather than a hard skilled engineer. Whether people figure this out in the midst of alcohol-centric student life and handling odd jobs is another thing. > I think we need to rethink what we consider academically important which should be taught at universities and then what should be taught as self studies. In the Nordic welfare state I live, the three main objectives of universities are written in the law (advance research and education, give education based on research, educate students to serve the country and humankind). However, there are many points on what people see valuable and what they do not. Where I live in, the laymen think the mission of higher education is to produce capable and internationally competitive professionals. In Finland in specific, we had Nokia, thus many people see that universities should be teaching students to start new Nokias. The contradiction is that professors in universities are oftentimes so closed in on the academic circles that they start to think the only thing which matters is how competitive researchers the university produces. That tends to fall into the trap laid in the OPs post. I once read a paper from a professor of mine which had the outcome of this: > In today’s heavily competitive game market, it has become very important to make a game that stands out from the other games. Even though the game design might not be very unique, a game can still offer a better playing experience by having a better usability than a similar game with worse usability. I believe that when you need a 20-page whitepaper to prove this something is clearly wrong in the way the researchers are incentivized.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Exactly. The field of psychology or philosophy has much more value in the sense that it provides alternate perspectives on another subject matter when applied to them. As I said I do believe ex. philosophy is important, just not as a field onto itself. It's the way of thinking by the best of them thats valuable (careful thinkers, making sure we don't do circular reasoning, be aware of a priori thinking etc) but as a field it doesn't add more to human knowledge besides a lot of junk because of the demand to publish or vanish.
kem 10y ago
As a professor, I probably agree that a lot of academia probably isn't that valuable, and probably could be reorganized. However: 1. I think the same arguments could be made about just about anything anywhere. People forget that. 2. I think there's a collision of reality with assumptions about how progress works. We tend to think that supergeniuses come in and revolutionize everything, and I think things are instead very piecemeal and incremental. As a result, we fret about worthless academics when the real problem is our expectations about how things work. I realize that sounds a bit like "we should downgrade our expectations" but what I really mean is that great work requires a lot of small contributions that don't look important at any given point in time, but we expect great work to be lots of big contributions all the time. It's sort of like expecting building construction to happen by waiting for one mutant superhuman to come in and put the pieces together, and then blaming the workers for not building quickly enough. 3. Relatedly, it's impossible to know what's important and what not at any given time. I'm struck by the number of times obscure results from decades ago are dragged out and used as the basis of some new finding. 4. About psychology and neuroscience: there's the bootstrapping problem. Let's say you want to explain something like attention. At some point you have to invoke neurons. But to get there you have to have a way of measuring attention, a definition of what attention even means. To do that you have to have a model of the thing you're explaining. We're nowhere near a clear framework for that sort of thing. Similar sorts of arguments could be made about philosophy. Sure, philosophy's great when it intersects with other fields. But there are some problems that wouldn't have any sort of outlet anywhere else other than philosophy publications. Emergence is a good example of this.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  You cant say that about every other field though. You cant say it about physics you cant say it about chemistry you cant say it about math. Each of the have very applicable outputs. None of your examples require philosophy or psychology etc. to provide progress. Neuroscience is perfectly capable to ponder on its own problems. Emergence belongs to other fields too though systems theory, art, ai. And it isn't going to change philosophy itself like ex modernism or postmodernism did. Keep in mind I didn't say the fields weren't important, the point is that they are not uncovering fundamental properties of their own field. They cant because the tools they uses aren't allowing them to really dig deeper. Anyway I am not 100% certain about this but there is something that isn't sitting right IMO.
chimprich 10y ago
You're assuming that the point of academia is that it is valuable to society. The point of academia (from a purist's perspective, at least) is that learning is the target in itself; pushing back the boundaries of ignorance is an end-goal of our species. In many cases the advancement of our state of knowledge brings many rewards but that doesn't have to be the point of it. > Maybe I am wrong but after postmodernism I really don't see what new revelations are going to be of fundamental value to society. I'm not sure postmodernism has any fundamental value to society! But of course we can't reason about how much value new advances have to society - if we knew enough about them to know that, they would already have been discovered.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Well not really. There is a reason why learning into itself have value and thats exactly because it benefit society which is why governments have paid for it historically. But if you want to study alchemy you have to do it on your own. My point is that perhaps philosophy and psychology and economics now belongs to that group.
  - chimprich 10y ago
    Well yes really. You might disagree but I think a society that knows what Pluto looks like (for example) is a better society than one that doesn't, even if that knowledge does not make that civilisation any materially better off.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      No not really cause i said nothing about a society that doesent know what pluto looks like these are your own strawmen.

trishume 10y ago

It's really easy to make punchy-sounding arguments about why a certain field isn't as important to teach, so we should be rather reluctant to go along with them. For example your argument about psychology could equally applied to almost any field and physics. "I feel the same way about (Computer Science|Biology|Chemistry) which to me is even more problematic as it is based on the premise that we can learn about (computers|life|chemicals) by studying (code|proteins|chemicals). Again it should be tied to something like quantum physics instead." In fact this argument makes no sense to me, why wouldn't studying human behaviour be the best way to learn about human behaviour? Same for the argument about philosophy, it's too easy to assume something valuable a field produces is too amazing to ever be topped. "After [the light bulb] I really don't see what new revelations [about electricity] are going to be of fundamental value to society."

ThomPete 10y ago
I know which is why I said it with some reluctance. But your rubutals aren't good examples. Physics, Computer Science and Chemistry still have many still unanswered questions and provide clear benefits and ways to uncover those. In psychology we have a much better way into the human mind through neuroscience. Asking humans about their own behavior is filled with the very bias that we try to battle through the scientific method. Comparing philosophy with the lightbulb doesn't make much sense as the value of the lightbulb doesn't need to be peer reviewed to show it's value. The problem with many of these old fields is that they have become self-referential. Their contribution to society the last many decades aren't warrenting the popularity of them. We aren't studying alchemy anymore either because we have found more and better ways to study chemistry all I am saying is that perhaps it's time to park some of these fields in the alchemy department. Edit: Ironic that someone disagreeing with me on this very important discussion didn't find much more argument than a downvote :) Oh well.
- trishume 10y ago
  Why do you think neuroscience is a better way to learn about human behaviour (which is what psychology deals with)? Neuroscience is incredibly difficult and the brain is super complex. We have learned far far less about human behaviour through neuroscience than through psychology studies. Learning about behaviour through neuroscience is working at the wrong level of abstraction, we're not capable of comprehending large systems at low levels. You cite bias in psych studies, but neuroscience has lots of issues too. See fmri study that can find results on a dead salmon. Also inability of neuroscience tools to figure out what the net of a tiny microprocessor does, let alone anything larger. I wasn't the one who down voted you.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    What I said was that psychology should be used as an extension of interpreting neuroscientific findings. We haven't learned anything about the brain through psychology we have learned about how humans interpret the brain but we don't have a lot of raw data. That's what neuroscience gives us and so it allow us to focus on interpreting the data rather than making a lot of flawed experiments which are often anecdotal more than anything else. Again I am pretty sure psychology will be seen as alchemy in 50 years if not before. And yes I know you didn't downvote :)

Jhsto 10y ago

> That way the fields are put to good use rather than being self servant. I am a student and the way I see is that this is the writing on the wall. The university (and BSc in specific) gives you the basis to develop yourself into the direction you feel passionate about. You can take computer science and mathematics if you want to become a great software engineer or you can mix computer science with communications and psychology to develop yourself into more of a bridge-builder between industries rather than a hard skilled engineer. Whether people figure this out in the midst of alcohol-centric student life and handling odd jobs is another thing. > I think we need to rethink what we consider academically important which should be taught at universities and then what should be taught as self studies. In the Nordic welfare state I live, the three main objectives of universities are written in the law (advance research and education, give education based on research, educate students to serve the country and humankind). However, there are many points on what people see valuable and what they do not. Where I live in, the laymen think the mission of higher education is to produce capable and internationally competitive professionals. In Finland in specific, we had Nokia, thus many people see that universities should be teaching students to start new Nokias. The contradiction is that professors in universities are oftentimes so closed in on the academic circles that they start to think the only thing which matters is how competitive researchers the university produces. That tends to fall into the trap laid in the OPs post. I once read a paper from a professor of mine which had the outcome of this: > In today’s heavily competitive game market, it has become very important to make a game that stands out from the other games. Even though the game design might not be very unique, a game can still offer a better playing experience by having a better usability than a similar game with worse usability. I believe that when you need a 20-page whitepaper to prove this something is clearly wrong in the way the researchers are incentivized.

ThomPete 10y ago
Exactly. The field of psychology or philosophy has much more value in the sense that it provides alternate perspectives on another subject matter when applied to them. As I said I do believe ex. philosophy is important, just not as a field onto itself. It's the way of thinking by the best of them thats valuable (careful thinkers, making sure we don't do circular reasoning, be aware of a priori thinking etc) but as a field it doesn't add more to human knowledge besides a lot of junk because of the demand to publish or vanish.

kem 10y ago

As a professor, I probably agree that a lot of academia probably isn't that valuable, and probably could be reorganized. However: 1. I think the same arguments could be made about just about anything anywhere. People forget that. 2. I think there's a collision of reality with assumptions about how progress works. We tend to think that supergeniuses come in and revolutionize everything, and I think things are instead very piecemeal and incremental. As a result, we fret about worthless academics when the real problem is our expectations about how things work. I realize that sounds a bit like "we should downgrade our expectations" but what I really mean is that great work requires a lot of small contributions that don't look important at any given point in time, but we expect great work to be lots of big contributions all the time. It's sort of like expecting building construction to happen by waiting for one mutant superhuman to come in and put the pieces together, and then blaming the workers for not building quickly enough. 3. Relatedly, it's impossible to know what's important and what not at any given time. I'm struck by the number of times obscure results from decades ago are dragged out and used as the basis of some new finding. 4. About psychology and neuroscience: there's the bootstrapping problem. Let's say you want to explain something like attention. At some point you have to invoke neurons. But to get there you have to have a way of measuring attention, a definition of what attention even means. To do that you have to have a model of the thing you're explaining. We're nowhere near a clear framework for that sort of thing. Similar sorts of arguments could be made about philosophy. Sure, philosophy's great when it intersects with other fields. But there are some problems that wouldn't have any sort of outlet anywhere else other than philosophy publications. Emergence is a good example of this.

ThomPete 10y ago
You cant say that about every other field though. You cant say it about physics you cant say it about chemistry you cant say it about math. Each of the have very applicable outputs. None of your examples require philosophy or psychology etc. to provide progress. Neuroscience is perfectly capable to ponder on its own problems. Emergence belongs to other fields too though systems theory, art, ai. And it isn't going to change philosophy itself like ex modernism or postmodernism did. Keep in mind I didn't say the fields weren't important, the point is that they are not uncovering fundamental properties of their own field. They cant because the tools they uses aren't allowing them to really dig deeper. Anyway I am not 100% certain about this but there is something that isn't sitting right IMO.

chimprich 10y ago

You're assuming that the point of academia is that it is valuable to society. The point of academia (from a purist's perspective, at least) is that learning is the target in itself; pushing back the boundaries of ignorance is an end-goal of our species. In many cases the advancement of our state of knowledge brings many rewards but that doesn't have to be the point of it. > Maybe I am wrong but after postmodernism I really don't see what new revelations are going to be of fundamental value to society. I'm not sure postmodernism has any fundamental value to society! But of course we can't reason about how much value new advances have to society - if we knew enough about them to know that, they would already have been discovered.

ThomPete 10y ago
Well not really. There is a reason why learning into itself have value and thats exactly because it benefit society which is why governments have paid for it historically. But if you want to study alchemy you have to do it on your own. My point is that perhaps philosophy and psychology and economics now belongs to that group.
- chimprich 10y ago
  Well yes really. You might disagree but I think a society that knows what Pluto looks like (for example) is a better society than one that doesn't, even if that knowledge does not make that civilisation any materially better off.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    No not really cause i said nothing about a society that doesent know what pluto looks like these are your own strawmen.