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>>In Universities, there is an expectation that no specific category of ideas should be preferred above any other unless it beats out its competition on the gro

by keane 8y ago

>>In Universities, there is an expectation that no specific category of ideas should be preferred above any other unless it beats out its competition on the grounds of convincingness or support by evidence. Your claim here is not infrequently made. But university departments frequently hold specific viewpoints. We can see cherished categories of ideas in the past; it is harder to see weighted ideas within the era we live. >>Learning new theology is quite close to learning anything else, but research is very different! Classics is the study of what was written and what they meant by it; they can't be polled. English/Literature is also looking at what an author wrote and what they meant by it (sigh: excluding postmodernism). French/German/Latin/etc grammar is looking at what words signify when placed in certain orders. The Philosophy department does not need to conduct experiments or observations. If your criteria for valid university disciplines was limited to their developing new lab or field research, multiple departments are impacted. >>In fact, there's also a little gap inside the universities, between people who primarily rely on evidence (the sciences), and people who primarily rely on being convinced (the humanities). Relevant: https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ - https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bb61a9b12a5047d3ca4f28697f8c5a52-c https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bb61a9b12a5047d3ca4f28... https://xkcd.com/903/ https://xkcd.com/903/ (the ALT text) https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/628727755794821120 https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/62872775579482112... http://pintswithaquinas.com/comicstrips/the-error-of-scientism/ http://pintswithaquinas.com/comicstrips/the-error-of-scienti... http://existentialcomics.com/comic/other/3 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/other/3 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/190 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/190

whatshisface 8y ago
>But university departments frequently hold specific viewpoints. It's assumed that they became dominant somehow, usually by being convincing. It's almost tautological. >If your criteria for valid university disciplines was limited to their developing new lab or field research, multiple departments are impacted. Well, classicists do sometimes dig in to new documents, although rarely. Likewise, literature has a constant stream of new material, if they ended up with a model that perfectly predicted everything that was said about the human condition before 1980, it'd be falsified in a few days by some new paperback on the self-help shelf. Evidence doesn't necessarily have to come from experiments, only observations. see: astronomy. However, those fields (not astronomy, but English and Classics) in my exposure have, like philosophy, mainly have been run on the convincingness of arguments. So, one side of the divide has evidence, and the other side primarily relies on writing convincing arguments. >Links about scienceism. Truthfully, I never said evidence was better than convincingness (although I do think it is), but decades of hardline scienceists have trained everyone to think that saying "evidence" means you don't value philosophy. It would be a bit funny if I didn't, because I don't think any "evidence" has come up once in this entire discussion. How could it? We're on the convincingness side of the branch right now.

by keane 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago

>But university departments frequently hold specific viewpoints. It's assumed that they became dominant somehow, usually by being convincing. It's almost tautological. >If your criteria for valid university disciplines was limited to their developing new lab or field research, multiple departments are impacted. Well, classicists do sometimes dig in to new documents, although rarely. Likewise, literature has a constant stream of new material, if they ended up with a model that perfectly predicted everything that was said about the human condition before 1980, it'd be falsified in a few days by some new paperback on the self-help shelf. Evidence doesn't necessarily have to come from experiments, only observations. see: astronomy. However, those fields (not astronomy, but English and Classics) in my exposure have, like philosophy, mainly have been run on the convincingness of arguments. So, one side of the divide has evidence, and the other side primarily relies on writing convincing arguments. >Links about scienceism. Truthfully, I never said evidence was better than convincingness (although I do think it is), but decades of hardline scienceists have trained everyone to think that saying "evidence" means you don't value philosophy. It would be a bit funny if I didn't, because I don't think any "evidence" has come up once in this entire discussion. How could it? We're on the convincingness side of the branch right now.