John Lachs at the library

 A Lachs talk I'd not seen. Introduced by his former colleague (and fellow-former MTSU Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker) David Wood as a "force of nature"...

Thomas Davidson

A neglected philosopher of democracy and a teacher's teacher, appreciated by Doug Anderson in Philosophy Americana

"...philosophy’s central task is the education of individuals to a freer and more philosophically minded existence, such that they might create and maintain a better world. “The task of the centuries since the close of the Middle Ages has been,” he said, “gradually to remove this yoke of authority, and to raise men to freedom of thought, affection, and will—in a word, to rational self-guidance, or moral life.” Though not in a narrow way, philosophy is instrumental to the development of community. Again, Davidson saw this role of philosophy as standing in the tradition of the Greeks, as developing the love of wisdom in a social context. He was a Dewey-like believer in democracy’s possibilities and took “the task of the twentieth century” to be “to raise mankind, every member of it, to complete and actual moral freedom, which rests upon insight, just affection, and strong will, realizing themselves in a social order.” This task, as Dewey also believed, is at core an educational task. “A democracy cannot long be sustained,” Davidson argued, “by an ignorant demos...

The teacher who does not feel himself, or herself, an apostle with an important mission, but looks upon the teaching profession as a mere means of making a living, had better seek some other occupation. For Davidson this political transformation is appropriate to the development of a democracy and requires special attention on the part of the state so that education is public and extends “equally to all classes of the population” to ensure that there is “freedom from castes.” Providing the opportunity for learning and for leveling persons upward is a condition for successful democracy. As does Dewey, Davidson begins with the assumption that all persons can learn—that is, that they can, through the development of habits, create “harmonious worlds” for themselves. Since individual freedom depends on world building, and world building depends on learning, the primary task of any democracy must be to provide the possibility of learning for all its citizens. “The nation,” Davidson argued, speaking specifically of the United States in the twentieth century, “owes it to every one of its citizens to see to it that he has time and strength left to be a student.” It is therefore equally apparent that we philosophers and students of the humanities are central to the community’s work. Our task is to provide freedom and culture through teaching. Philosophy, history, and the arts, approached in Socratic fashion, enable lives that are “rich, full, and lofty.” As James noted, the Davidsonian teacher’s aim was not to create citizens who are “interchangeable parts” in a “rule-bound organism,” but to enable “flexible” lives through “liberation of the inner interests.” Despite its focus on individuals instead of institutions, Davidson’s take on the relationship of education to democracy is strongly reminiscent of features of Dewey’s Democracy and Education and, more specifically, of Dewey’s later essay “Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us.” Davidson simply focused on aspects of democracy and education that are less prominent, though present, in Dewey’s work. One such aspect was the individual’s responsibility to learn. Not only did the state have an obligation to make learning possible, but persons in a democracy have an obligation to be students. But they must be students as learning world builders, not as receptacles of information...

Through his actions, Davidson had made a case for the essentiality of teaching and given credence to his plea that the rest of us do more of it: If the teachers of the nation, with a due sense of their power and importance, would, without hope or desire for material reward, form themselves into an association for the higher education of the bread-winners … and each devote a couple of evenings a week to the work, they would soon elevate the culture of the whole people, and remove the worst dangers that threaten society... such an example seems difficult to follow so long as philosophy and teaching are understood primarily as professions confined to university campuses and not as life tasks essential to the development of democratic community. William James did not remind us of Thomas Davidson because of the latter’s scholarly work. Rather, he pointed us to the philosophy for which the act and art of teaching “cultural science” is central. Davidson was indeed a renegade; Dewey called him an “academic outlaw”—a title Davidson no doubt relished. His ideas are radical and suggestive. To be sure, we have established “continuing education” and “distance learning” programs in our high schools and colleges; but one gets the cynical sense that these programs are now oriented toward the production of degrees for students and the generation of money for schools. They fall well short of the Davidsonian ideal. When the majority of our high school students arrive at college with no conception of what we philosophers do or why we do it, it is important for us to take notice. Most of us teach, yet teaching is not, in general, a highly applauded practice in the contemporary academy. Many of us have not thought about how our teaching is related to our philosophical practices—not just our philosophical “positions.”

Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture (American Philosophy Book 18) by Douglas R. Anderson: https://a.co/gUJcBrx

g'r

Talisse picks 5

A crash course on pragmatism with @RobertTalisse and @philosophybites, from Charles Sanders Peirce to WV Quine  https://t.co/nOjS6PCacQ
(https://twitter.com/five_books/status/1362665777682341889?s=02)

Liberty Fund

 And speaking of conferences...

I participated in one of these Liberty Fund events once, in Indianapolis, at the invitation of the professor who moderated our discussions over several days. I didn't realize we "young" scholars -- I'm pretty sure I was over 40 at the time-- were being vetted for recruitment into the libertarian cause. Don't know if Buchanan was in attendance, I wouldn't have recognized him then, but I was never invited back. Must've been a "weak" prospect, possibly even a "misfit" and "bad apple"... I hope. 😉  

Anyway, I was pleased to drink their wine. (Actually I recall being more excited by the craft breweries in the vicinity.)

"Buchanan was hired by yet another Koch-backed organization, the Liberty Fund, to run what became annual summer conferences for the recruitment and training of young talent (defined as under age thirty-five, later upped to forty) in the social sciences. In essence, he was being asked to identify and begin preparing the intellectual cadre that Koch now believed was so critical to the cause’s success. Buchanan relished the role of gatekeeper. The evaluations he submitted for who had promise and who did not were highly detailed. One participant was “a highly articulate speaker, with basic instincts you and I share,” he reported, although “a bit ‘slick’” for “the country boys.” Another, despite a “poor expository style” and annoying “soft-left” reflexes, was still “interesting” and worth watching. The rankings were blunt: the judge divided the prospects into “Very Strong, Medium, [and] Weak.” At the best sessions, he could boast new “camaraderie” and “no misfits.” Like Koch, Buchanan was not squeamish about throwing flotsam overboard. Anyone unsound in doctrine or lacking in promise was unlikely to be invited back. He tried to “insure that no bad apples get into the barrel, for such can spoil the whole thing.” He required “explicit recommendation by those we trust for potential participants.” And he rewarded himself and his recruits in high style. The man who still called himself a country boy and railed against liberal “elitists” did not stint on frills, personally preselecting wines such as a 1966 Château Lafite-Rothschild that today would retail between $300 and $1,000 per bottle." 145-6

"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America" by Nancy MacLean: https://a.co/iOUZFmb

==
Postscript. "I have run Liberty Fund programs and to the best of my knowledge nothing like this ever took place in them. It doesn’t surprise me that the Koch people want results for their money but if there are some talented “Left leaning” people in the group there should be some good conversations." John Lachs

Viva Las Vegas

I was at this conference (in 2000 or 2001), and had the same amused & bemused reaction as Doug:

"American scholars and philosophers are strange and culturally estranged. One need only attend a few philosophy conferences to experience this. But I don’t intend this claim pejoratively—our minds run in different grooves and highways, and that is a good thing. My most memorable picture of this estrangement came when a group of American philosophers, in full tweed, met for a conference in the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. The juxtaposition of slot machines and craps tables with staid discussions of Dewey’s virtue ethics was, in an odd and striking way, a kind of American beauty in itself, at once funny and deadly serious." Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture (American Philosophy Book 18)" by Douglas R. Anderson: https://a.co/gKvNUa8

A Moment of Reckoning

 Originally posted at Democracy in America...

Up at dawn, I had a jumble of thoughts inspired by the impeachment and my inability to understand the appeal of Drumpf to 74 million voters. 81 million chose Joe. What is it that divides the 74 from the 81?

I am a product of a Republican family. I know plenty of Republicans. I don’t think that any of them five years ago would countenance the kind of behavior that Drumpf has engaged in since his election as president. Yet today they do; at least they tolerate and accept it. I first thought, why have they changed? But then I thought, perhaps they haven’t changed at all. Perhaps the great divide between the 74 and the 81 reveals a fundamental, maybe evolutionally developed, difference in nature; a difference in American character.

For many in the 81, Donald Drumpf is a fatally flawed human being, with his garish lifestyle, with his gilded palaces, his obvious lack of virtue, and his buffoonery. We know his character by his acts, and it isn't pretty.

Why don’t the 74 see this? I hypothesize that they do see it, but they see something in him they value. They see in him a fulfillment of the American dream. Gold toilets in a Manhattan high-rise, Mar-a-Lago, private jets, beautiful women, etc. And they believe that all this material success is the result of rugged American individualism that characterizes Americanism. This is the character of those that conquered a continent, built railroads and steel mills, and made America great. Howard Roark.

Donald Drumpf is a radical narcissist. He cares about one thing – himself. He embodies a concept of individualism that many Americans see as the essence of the American character. His character, seen through the prism of this perspective of individualism, may be a bit flawed, but he represents American values that the 74, by their nature, possess.

The 81 have a different perspective on individualism. Theirs includes caring for others. They are more likely than the 74 to look through their prism and see problems that affect others in society and to seek solutions that involve change. The 74 resist change, and see authoritarian preservation of the status quo as necessary to maintain American democracy.

The actions of the January 6^th mob are indefensible. Their ‘means’ are simply not acceptable in a democracy. But, what about their ‘ends’? Over and over, before, after, and during, their loudest spokespeople proclaimed their mission was and is to preserve American democracy. Was that not the concern of the 81 in the 2020 election? We all have a common goal. We cannot make any progress toward reconciliation without addressing this point.

There is a historical aspect to our present problem. You cannot separate out of the American experience our experience with race. We brought human beings to this country as slaves. We fought a horrible bloody civil war over the right to own and enslave human beings. The descendants of slaves comprise much of our population. These descendants have suffered injustice for 400 years, which continues to this day. And the mob that invaded the capitol carried Confederate battle flags.

Our country is now in a cold civil war. White supremacism has been revealed in all aspects of our society. We face the challenge of white supremacist militias like the Proud Boys, and threats of domestic terrorism (terrorism being violent actions to achieve a political goal).

Today’s civil war is a moral war. It is a war over the proper ethic for Americanism. It is, as Joe said, a war for the soul of the nation. Is Americanism to be characterized by ruthless materialistic individualism, or by empathy for others, and the seeking of a just society? This is a moment of reckoning.

In order to properly address this moment, we must try to understand each other, and reconcile the apparent paradox that both sides have the same goal. We will not rise to the occasion if we only tell the other side why they are objectively wrong. We must try to understand – and appreciate - their subjective feelings. We need to stand in each other's shoes, and articulate each other’s positions. Only then will we be able to reconcile our different means to our common goal. 

--Ed Craig

(aka "Grandfather Philosophy")

Special Issue of William James Studies: James and Peirce (English, Spanish, or Portuguese)

When reading the following announcement, one might keep in mind the image of hatted, baggy-pants William James decked out on his trip to Brazil.

--Tadd Ruetenik

Secretary, William James Society

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SPECIAL ISSUE OF WILLIAM JAMES STUDIES: 

JAMES AND PEIRCE

The WILLIAM JAMES SOCIETY is pleased to invite essays for an upcoming Special Issue of William James Studies. This Special Issue, guest edited by Daniel Herbert and Paniel Reyes Cardenas, will explore new connections between the works of William James and CS Peirce. In a first for William James Studies, essays may be submitted in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Papers will be accepted until 30 June 2021.

WILLIAM JAMES SOCIETY solicita ensayos para una próxima edición de William James Studies. Este volumen especial, editado por Daniel Herbert y Paniel Reyes Cardenas, explorará nuevas conexiones entre las obras de William James y las de C. S. Peirce. Por primera vez en William James Studies, ensayos podrían ser sometidos en Inglés, Español, o Portugues. Se aceptarán ensayos hacia 30 June 2021.  

 

Please see the Call for Papers for full details and instructions. Questions may be directed to our Guest Editors Daniel Herbert (d.r.herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) and Paniel Reyes Cardenas (panielosberto.reyes@upaep.mx).

The Call for Papers may be viewed on the William James Studies website (https://williamjamesstudies.org/call-for-papers/).

Kyle Bromhall, PhD

Managing Editor, 
William James Studies.

--

Tadd Ruetenik

Professor of Philosophy 

St. Ambrose University

Pure Experience, Radical Empiricism

A World of Pure Experience
William James (1904)

First published in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 1, 533-543, 561-570.

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It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time, always loosening of old landmarks, a softening of oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another reflecting on the part of systems anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of the extant school-solutions. The dissatisfaction with these seems due for the most part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is confused and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to crave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though it were at some cost of logical rigor and of formal purity. Transcendental idealism is inclining to let the world wag incomprehensibly, in spite of its Absolute Subject and his unity of purpose. Berkeleyan idealism is abandoning the principle of parsimony and dabbling in panpsychic speculations. Empiricism flirts with teleology; and, strangest of all, natural realism, so long decently buried, raises its head above the turf, and finds glad hands outstretched from the most unlikely quarters to help it to its feet again. We are all biased by our personal feelings, I know, and I am personally discontented with extant solutions; so I seem to read the signs of a great unsettlement, as if the upheaval of more real conceptions and more fruitful methods were imminent, as if a true landscape might result, less clipped, straight-edged and artificial.

If philosophy be really on the eve of any considerable rearrangement, the time should be propitious for any one who has suggestions of his own to bring forward. For many years past my mind has been growing into a certain type of Weltanschauung. Rightly or wrongly, I have got to the point where I can hardly see things in any other pattern. I propose, therefore, to describe the pattern as clearly as I can consistently with great brevity, and to throw my description into the bubbling vat of publicity where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics, it will eventually either disappear from notice, or else, if better luck befall it, quietly subside to the profundities, and serve as a possible ferment of new growths or a nucleus of new crystallization... (continues)

The Varieties of Pure Experience: William James and Kitaro Nishida on Consciousness and Embodiment

Joel W. Krueger

1. Introduction 
The notion of “pure experience” is one of the most intriguing and simultaneously perplexing features of William James’s writings. There seems to be little consensus in the secondary literature as to how to understand this notion, and precisely what function it serves within the overall structure of James’s thought. Yet James himself regards this idea as the cornerstone of his radical empiricism. And the latter, James felt, was his unique contribution to the history of philosophy; he believed that philosophy “was on the eve of a considerable rearrangement” when his essay “A World of Pure Experience” was first published in 1904. While Western philosophy is still perhaps awaiting this “considerable rearrangement,” James’s notion of pure experience was quickly appropriated by another thinker who in fact did inaugurate a considerable rearrangement of his own intellectual tradition: the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870—1945), the founder and most important figure of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy.
1
Kitaro Nishida is widely recognized as Japan’s foremost modern philosopher. His earliest major work, An Inquiry into the Good (1911), is generally considered to be the founding statement of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy. Other prominent Kyoto School figures, including Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962), Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990), and Masao Abe (1915– ), each acknowledged the profound influence of Nishida’s work on their own intellectual development. Pluralistic in his outlook and comparative in his methodology, Nishida was throughout his life deeply influenced by a number of western thinkers and religious figures (a trait shared by most other prominent Kyoto School figures). For instance, Nishida speaks favorably of Augustine, Kant, Hegel and Bergson, and concedes that these Western thinkers, among others, had a hand in shaping his thought.
2
But it was with James’s formulation of pure experience that Nishida first believed that he had found a conceptual apparatus upon which he could ground the characteristic themes and concerns that have since been designated “Nishida Philosophy.” Additionally, Nishida felt that James’s idea of pure experience was able to preserve some of the more important features of Buddhist thought that Nishida looked to incorporate into his own system... (continues)

==

RECONSTRUCTING JAMES’S EARLY RADICAL EMPIRICISM: THE 1896 PREFACE AND “THE SPIRIT OF INNER TOLERANCE”

ERMINE L. ALGAIER IV

ABSTRACT. This paper re-contextualizes William James’s early radical empiricism based upon a historical and philosophical reading of the 1896 preface of The Will to Believe. I suggest that James’s “irrational” early radical empiricism, as guided by the “spirit of inner tolerance,” is tinged with a fringe sensitivity or awareness of the epistemic outsider. Based upon his critique of the blind monist, this paper argues that when we look toward a wider conception of James’s philosophy, it reveals that his early radical empiricism is intimately concerned with social and moral elements with regard to matters of fact and perspective. Utilizing Gavin’s manifest-latent hermeneutic, I show how James defends this type of outsider, the epistemic underdog, with the hope of creating a more open, free, and democratic marketplace of ideas and practices that is predicated upon the value of respectful difference.

When we look toward James’s first public announcement of radical empiricism, it becomes clear that we need to be more critical as to how we discuss his ideas. In contrast to Edward Madden’s interpretation, I am suggesting that we avoid using James’s later formulation (e.g. his 1904-05 technical writings) as a measuring stick for his 1896 articulation.[1] As we inquire into James’s early radical empiricism,[2] we ought to not assume that he is directly concerned with metaphysics, with pure experience, and the epistemological relations of the subject-object dichotomy.[3] A more critical reading, I suggest, is one which draws from the historical, thematic, and philosophical context of James’s work in the mid to late 1890’s... (continues)

On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings

OUR judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us. Where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated already with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things our mind could entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other.

Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves.

We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals.

Take our dogs and ourselves... (continues)

==

William James

 A more hirsute Doug Anderson -- no bald-headed erkentnisstheorist he -- on real philosophy.

 

PHILOSOPHY AMERICANA

MAKING PHILOSOPHY AT HOME IN AMERICAN CULTURE

By Douglas R. Anderson

In this engaging book, Douglas Anderson begins with the assumption that philosophy—the Greek love of wisdom—is alive and well in American culture. At the same time, professional philosophy remains relatively invisible.

Anderson traverses American life to find places in the wider culture where professional philosophy in the distinctively American tradition can strike up a conversation. How might American philosophers talk to us about our religious experience, or political engagement, or literature—or even, popular music?

Anderson’s second aim is to find places where philosophy happens in nonprofessional guises—cultural places such as country music, rock’n roll, and Beat literature. He not only enlarges the tradition of American philosophers such as John Dewey and William James by examining lesser-known figures such as Henry Bugbee and Thomas Davidson, but finds the theme and ideas of American philosophy in some unexpected places, such as the music of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, and Bruce Springsteen, and the writings of Jack Kerouac.

The idea of “philosophy Americana” trades on the emergent genre of “music Americana,” rooted in traditional themes and styles yet engaging our present experiences. The music is “popular” but not thoroughly driven by economic considerations, and Anderson seeks out an analogous role for philosophical practice, where philosophy and popular culture are co-adventurers in the life of ideas. Philosophy Americana takes seriously Emerson’s quest for the extraordinary in the ordinary and James’s belief that popular philosophy can still be philosophy.

"bald-headed Ph.D.s"

 My favorite moment in the Rorty "American Philosopher" interview: his mention of James's contempt for the careerists and erkentnisstheorists who've lost what Doug Anderson calls the ordinary Thoreuvian (and Wendell Berry-an) sense of "real" philosophy...

 

The Ph.D. Octopus

William James

Some years ago, we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D. degree. The man in question had been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained to consider that an academic bauble should be his reward.

His appointment had thus been made under a misunderstanding. He was not the proper man; and there was nothing to do but inform him of the fact. It was notified to him by his new President that his appointment must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's degree must forthwith be procured.

Although it was already the spring of the year, our Subject, being a man of spirit, took up the challenge, turned his back upon literature (which in view of his approaching duties might have seemed his more urgent concern) and spent the weeks that were left him in writing a metaphysical thesis and grinding his psychology, logic, and history of philosophy up again, so as to pass our formidable ordeals.

When the thesis came to be read by our committee, we could not pass it. Brilliancy and originality by themselves won't save a thesis for the doctorate; it must also exhibit a heavy technical apparatus of learning; and this our candidate had neglected to bring to bear. So, telling him that he was temporarily rejected, we advised him to pad out the thesis properly, and return with it next year, at the same time informing his new President that this signified nothing as to his merits, that he was of ultra-Ph.D. quality, and one of the strongest men with whom we had ever had to deal.

To our surprise we were given to understand in reply that the quality per se of the man signified nothing in this connection, and that the three magical letters were the thing seriously required. The College had always gloried in a list of faculty members who bore the doctor's title, and to make a gap in the galaxy, and admit a common fox without a tail, would be a degradation impossible to be thought of. We wrote again, pointing out that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature; we sent separate letters in which we outdid each other in eulogy of our candidate's powers, for indeed they were great; and at last, mirabile dictu, our eloquence prevailed. He was allowed to retain his appointment provisionally, on condition that one year later at the farthest his miserably naked name should be prolonged by the sacred appendage the lack of which had given so much trouble to all concerned.

Accordingly he came up here the following spring with an adequate thesis (known since in print as a most brilliant contribution to metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination, wiped out the stain, and brought his College into proper relations with the world again. Whether his teaching, during that first year, of English Literature was made any the better by the impending examination in a different subject, is a question which I will not try to solve.

I have related this incident at such length because it is so characteristic of American academic conditions at the present day. Graduate schools still are something of a novelty, and higher diplomas something of a rarity. The latter, therefore, carry a vague sense of preciousness and honor, and have a particularly "up- to-date" appearance, and it is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to attract professors already eminent, and forced usually to recruit their faculties from the relatively young, should hope to compensate for the obscurity of the names of their officers of instruction by the abundance of decorative titles by which those names are followed on the pages of the catalogues where they appear. The dazzled reader of the list, the parent or student, says to himself, "This must be a terribly distinguished crowd,-- their titles shine like the stars in the firmament; Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s bespangle the page as if they were sprinkled over it from a pepper caster."

Human nature is once for all so childish that every reality becomes a sham somewhere, and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees the Ph.D. degree is in point of fact already looked upon as a mere advertising resource, a manner of throwing dust in the Public's eyes. "No instructor who is not a Doctor" has become a maxim in the smaller institutions which represent demand; and in each of the larger ones which represent supply, the same belief in decorated scholarship expresses itself in two antagonistic passions, one for multiplying as much as possible the annual output of doctors, the other for raising the standard of difficulty in passing, so that the Ph.D. of the special institution shall carry a higher blaze of distinction than it does elsewhere. Thus, we at Harvard are proud of the number of candidates whom we reject, and of the inability of men who are not distingues in intellect to pass our tests.

America is thus a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?

Our higher degrees were instituted for the laudable purpose of stimulating scholarship, especially in the form of "original research." Experience has proved that great as the love of truth may be among men, it can be made still greater by adventitious rewards. The winning of a diploma certifying mastery and marking a barrier successfully passed, acts as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the diploma will help to gain bread-winning positions also, its power as a stimulus to work is tremendously increased. So far, we are on innocent ground; it is well for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools do but apply a normal psychological spur. But the institutionizing on a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption. Observation of the workings of our Harvard system for twenty years past has brought some of these drawbacks home to my consciousness, and I should like to call the attention of my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of the picture, and to make a couple of remedial suggestions, if I may.

In the first place, it would seem that to stimulate study, and to increase the gelehrtes Publikum, the class of highly educated men in our country, is the only positive good, and consequently the sole direct end at which our graduate schools, with their diploma-giving powers, should aim. If other results have developed they should be deemed secondary incidents, and if not desirable in themselves, they should be carefully guarded against.

To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the passing of examinations,--such consequences, if they exist, ought surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges, and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments.

I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his moral, social, and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever. Certain bare human beings will always be better candidates for a given place than all the doctor-applicants on hand; and to exclude the former by a rigid rule, and in the end to have to sift the latter by private inquiry into their personal peculiarities among those who know them, just as if they were not doctors at all, is to stultify one's own procedure. You may say that at least you guard against ignorance of the subject by considering only the candidates who are doctors; but how then about making doctors in one subject teach a different subject? This happened in the instance by which I introduced this article, and it happens daily and hourly in all our colleges. The truth is that the Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which is becoming so rooted an American custom, can show no serious grounds whatsoever for itself in reason. As it actually prevails and grows in vogue among us, it is due to childish motives exclusively. In reality it is but a sham, a bauble, a dodge, whereby to decorate the catalogues of schools and colleges.

Next, let us turn from the general promotion of a spirit of academic snobbery to the particular damage done to individuals by the system. There are plenty of individuals so well endowed by nature that they pass with ease all the ordeals with which life confronts them. Such persons are born for professional success. Examinations have no terrors for them, and interfere in no way with their spiritual or worldly interests. There are others, not so gifted, who nevertheless rise to the challenge, get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become doctors, not without some baleful nervous wear and tear and retardation of their purely inner life, but on the whole successfully, and with advantage. These two classes form the natural Ph.D.'s for whom the degree is legitimately instituted. To be sure, the degree is of no consequence one way or the other for the first sort of man, for in him the personal worth obviously outshines the title. To the second set of persons, however, the doctor ordeal may contribute a touch of energy and solidity of scholarship which otherwise they might have lacked, and were our all candidates drawn from these classes, no oppression would result from the institution.

But there is a third class of persons who are genuinely, and in the most pathetic sense, the institution's victims. For this type of character the academic life may become, after a certain point, a virulent poison. Men without marked originality or native force, but fond of truth and especially of books and study, ambitious of reward and recognition, poor often, and needing a degree to get a teaching position, weak in the eyes of their examiners--among these we find the veritable chair a canon of the wars of learning, the unfit in the academic struggle for existence. There are individuals of this sort for whom to pass one degree after another seems the limit of earthly aspiration. Your private advice does not discourage them. They will fail, and go away to recuperate, and then present themselves for another ordeal, and sometimes prolong the process into middle life. Or else, if they are less heroic morally, they will accept the failure as a sentence of doom that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited men thereafter.

We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the responsibility. We advertise our "schools" and send out our degree-requirements, knowing well that aspirants of all sorts will be attracted, and at the same time we set a standard which intends to pass no man who has not native intellectual distinction. We know that there is no test, however absurd, by which, if a title or decoration, a public badge or mark, were to be won by it, some weakly suggestible or hauntable persons would not feel challenged, and remain unhappy if they went without it. We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an electric light. They come at a time when failure can no longer be repaired easily and when the wounds it leaves are permanent; and we say deliberately that mere work faithfully performed, as they perform it, will not by itself save them, they must in addition put in evidence the one thing they have not got, namely this quality of intellectual distinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human pity, we ignore our high and mighty standard and pass them. Usually, however, the standard, and not the candidate, commands our fidelity. The result is caprice, majorities of one on the jury, and on the whole a confession that our pretensions about the degree cannot be lived up to consistently. Thus, partiality in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood on our hands; and in both a bad conscience,--are the results of our administration.

The more widespread becomes the popular belief that our diplomas are indispensable hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their holders, the more widespread these corruptions will become. We ought to look to the future carefully, for it takes generations for a national custom, once rooted, to be grown away from. All the European countries are seeking to diminish the check upon individual spontaneity which state examinations with their tyrannous growth have brought in their train. We have had to institute state examinations too; and it will perhaps be fortunate if some day hereafter our descendants, comparing machine with machine, do not sigh with regret for old times and American freedom, and wish that the regime of the dear old bosses might be re-installed, with plain human nature, the glad hand and the marble heart, liking and disliking, and man-to-man relations grown possible again. Meanwhile, whatever evolution our state-examinations are destined to undergo, our universities at least should never cease to regard themselves as the jealous custodians of personal and spiritual spontaneity. They are indeed its only organized and recognized custodians in America to-day. They ought to guard against contributing to the increase of officialism and snobbery and insincerity as against a pestilence; they ought to keep truth and disinterested labor always in the foreground, treat degrees as secondary incidents, and in season and out of season make it plain that what they live for is to help men's souls, and not to decorate their persons with diplomas.

There seem to be three obvious ways in which the increasing hold of the Ph.D. Octopus upon American life can be kept in check.

The first way lies with the universities. They can lower their fantastic standards (which here at Harvard we are so proud of) and give the doctorate as a matter of course, just as they give the bachelor's degree, for a due amount of time spent in patient labor in a special department of learning, whether the man be a brilliantly gifted individual or not. Surely native distinction needs no official stamp, and should disdain to ask for one. On the other hand, faithful labor, however commonplace, and years devoted to a subject, always deserve to be acknowledged and requited.

The second way lies with both the universities and the colleges. Let them give up their unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their lists of offices with these doctorial titles. Let them look more to substance and less to vanity and sham.

The third way lies with the individual student and with his personal advisers in the faculties. Every man of native power, who might take the higher degree, and refuses to do so because examinations interfere with the free following out of his more immediate intellectual aims, deserves well of his country, and in a rightly organized community, would not be made to suffer for his independence. With many men the passing of these extraneous tests is a very grievous interference indeed. Private letters of recommendation from their instructors, which in any event are ultimately needful, ought, in these cases, completely to offset the lack of the bread-winning degree; and instructors ought to be ready to advise students against it upon occasion, and to pledge themselves to back them later personally, in the market-struggle which they have to face.

It is indeed odd to see this love of titles -- and such titles -- growing up in a country of which the recognition of individuality and bare manhood have so long been supposed to be the very soul. The independence of the State, in which most of our colleges stand, relieves us of those more odious forms of academic politics which continental European countries present.

Anything like the elaborate university machine of France, with its throttling influences upon individuals is unknown here. The spectacle of the Rathdistinction in its innumerable spheres and grades, with which all Germany is crawling to-day, is displeasing to American eyes; and displeasing also in some respects is the institution of knighthood in England, which, aping as it does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife as well as one's self so easily to dazzle the servants at the house of one's friends. But are we Americans ourselves destined after all to hunger after similar vanities on an infinitely more contemptible scale? And is individuality with us also going to count for nothing unless stamped and licensed and authenticated by some title-giving machine? Let us pray that our ancient national genius may long preserve vitality enough to guard us from a future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!

"The Ph.D. Octopus" was published in the Harvard Monthly of March 1903

Richard Rorty

Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey...

"Like suddenly throwing open a bunch of windows in a very stuffy building"-T.Alexander

"Social progress is not a matter of discovering the essential nature of the state or of one's 

nation or of one's society, it's a matter of becoming a more rich, interesting society than in the past."

 

[M]y own version of pragmatism... makes no pretence of being faithful to the thoughts of either James or Dewey (much less Peirce, whom I barely mention). Rather, it offers my own, sometimes idiosyncratic, restatements of Jamesian and Deweyan themes. My choice of themes, and my ways of rephrasing them, result from my conviction that James's and Dewey's main accomplishments were negative, in that they explain how to slough off a lot of intellectual baggage which we inherited from the Platonic tradition. Each of the three essays, therefore, has a title of the form '— without —', where the first blank is filled by something we want to keep and the second something which James and Dewey enabled us, if not exactly to throw away, at least to understand in a radically un-Platonic way. The title 'Hope in Place of Knowledge' is a way of suggesting that Plato and Aristotle were wrong in thinking that humankind's most distinctive and praiseworthy capacity is to know things as they really are – to penetrate behind appearance to reality. That claim saddles us with the unfortunate appearance–reality distinction and with metaphysics: a distinction, and a discipline, which pragmatism shows us how to do without. I want to demote the quest for knowledge from the status of end-in-itself to that of one more means towards greater human happiness. 

My candidate for the most distinctive and praiseworthy human capacity is our ability to trust and to cooperate with other people, and in particular to work together so as to improve the future. Under favourable circumstances, our use of this capacity culminates in utopian political projects such as Plato's ideal state, Christian attempts to realize the kingdom of God here on earth, and Marx's vision of the victory of the proletariat. These projects aim at improving our institutions in such a way that our descendants will be still better able to trust and cooperate, and will be more decent people than we ourselves have managed to be. In our century, the most plausible project of this sort has been the one to which Dewey devoted his political efforts: the creation of a social democracy; that is, a classless, casteless, egalitarian society. I interpret James and Dewey as giving us advice on how, by getting rid of the old dualisms, we can make this project as central to our intellectual lives as it is to our political lives.

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope

==

Rorty on democracy, in Achieving Our Country... Three days after the 2016 presidential election, an astute law professor tweeted a picture of three paragraphs, very slightly condensed, from Richard Rorty's "Achieving Our Country," published in 1998. It was retweeted thousands of times, generating a run on the book — its ranking soared on Amazon and by day's end it was no longer available. (Harvard University Press is reprinting the book for the first time since 2010, a spokeswoman for the publisher said.)

It's worth rereading those tweeted paragraphs:

"[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet."

Mr. Rorty, an American pragmatist philosopher, died in 2007. Were he still alive, he'd likely be deluged with phone calls from strangers, begging him to pick their stocks... (continues)

==

Rorty on participatory democracy. “The cultural Left has contributed to the formation of this politically useless unconscious not only by adopting “power” as the name of an invisible, ubiquitous, and malevolent presence, but by adopting ideals which nobody is yet able to imagine being actualized.

Among these ideals are participatory democracy and the end of capitalism. Power will pass to the people, the Sixties Left believed only when decisions are made by all those who may be affected by the results. This means, for example, that economic decisions will be made by stakeholders rather than by shareholders, and that entrepreneurship and markets will cease to play their present role. When they do, capitalism as we know it will have ended, and something new will have taken its place... (continues)

==

Rorty on Dewey. The philosopher whom I most admire, and of whom I should most like to think of myself as a disciple, is John Dewey. Dewey was one of the founders of American pragmatism. He was a thinker who spent 60 years trying to get us out from under the thrall of Plato and Kant. Dewey was often denounced as a relativist, and so am I. But of course we pragmatists never call ourselves relativists. Usually, we define ourselves in negative terms. We call ourselves 'anti-Platonists' or 'antimetaphysicians' or 'antifoundationalists'. Equally, our opponents almost never call themselves 'Platonists' or 'metaphysicians' or 'foundationalists'. They usually call themselves defenders of common sense, or of reason. Predictably, each side in this quarrel tries to define the terms of the quarrel in a way favourable to itself. Nobody wants to be called a Platonist, just as nobody wants to be called a relativist or an irrationalist. We so-called 'relativists' refuse, predictably, to admit that we are enemies of reason and common sense. We say that we are only criticizing some antiquated, specifically philosophical, dogmas. But, of course, what we call dogmas are exactly what our opponents call common sense. Adherence to these dogmas is what they call being rational. So discussion between us and our opponents tends to get bogged down in, for example, the question of whether the slogan 'truth is correspondence to the intrinsic nature of reality' expresses common sense, or is just a bit of outdated Platonist jargon. In other words, one of the things we disagree about is whether this slogan embodies an obvious truth which philosophy must respect and protect, or instead simply puts forward one philosophical view among others. Our opponents say that the correspondence theory of truth is so obvious, so self-evident, that it is merely perverse to question it. We say that this theory is barely intelligible, and of no particular importance – that it is not so much a theory as a slogan which we have been mindlessly chanting for centuries. We pragmatists think that we might stop chanting it without any harmful consequences...

Philosophy and Social Hope

Dewey on democracy...

A Happiness of Bluebirds

Margaret Renkl finds her bird:

This year isn't living up to my hopes, so I am learning to hope in a new way.

 

I don't laugh much anymore. I am grieving a mismanaged pandemic that has taken too many of us and driven too many others to despair. I am grieving the assaults on American democracy by my fellow Americans. I am grieving the brutal news of the environment, which worsens with every new study. When a suicide bomber blew up a historic section of this town on Christmas morning, it felt entirely of a piece with a terrible, endless year. Surely, I thought, 2021 would be better.

 

But 2021 has not been better. The U.S. Capitol was invaded by U.S. citizens provoked by a U.S. president. Pandemic deaths are approaching half a million. The Doomsday Clock remains set at 100 seconds from disaster. My dog died. It all adds up to a sorrow that is both unimaginably vast and far too close to home.
I have faith in the promise of spring, but right now spring feels like just another cold concept, like the concept of herd immunity and the concept of reasonable Republicans. I know such things exist, but these days that knowledge feels more like a theory than a conviction...

 

And maybe it's enough in February, in these days that are so close to turning warm and bright and green again, when we are so close to being released from the prison of our homes, to think of happiness as neither distant nor grand. Perhaps it would help to remember that even now happiness is only what it has ever been: something that lights before us, immediate and insistent and always fleeting. Not a promise at all but a temporary gift. It lands, and lifts away, and returns again, ever flashing its wings.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/opinion/2021-happiness-bluebirds.html?smid=em-share

"American philosopher"

 

Who dares think a nation? What is the status of philosophy in a nation founded by philosophers? What are the risks of practicing philosophy in America? Does America have a "native" philosophy? Eight short films about philosophy in America and American philosophy by Phillip McReynolds.

Richard Rorty, Bruce Wilshire, John Lachs, Richard 

Bernstein, and Doug Anderson on The Ph.D. Octopus.

"The real philosopher" vs. "the other philosopher... 

who makes you sit in the classroom and listen"-Doug Anderson

"Philosophical ideas are confined to one percent of the population and they tend to be cosmopolites who are not easily identified with their country....Dewey's dreams of participatory democracy will never come true." Richard Rorty talks about John Dewey.

 

Show, don't tell

I'm trying...

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see. https://t.co/zpvrC2kR7r
(https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1358330194524831744?s=02)

America the Philosophical

The title is no joke.

Carlin Romano delivered a recorded Lyceum lecture at MTSU in 2013, talking about his book which surveys the surprising depth and breadth of American thought (in and out of academia)...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345804708/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_fabc_AJG9B9HBR3VPE0C0CE39

Richardson's James

Recapping Robert Richardson's bio of William James, on U@d2 (re-posted June-July 2020) ... 

• WJ 13 -- "a mystery of rightness"
• On first looking into Chapman's Dayton*
• WJ 12 -- penultimate
• WJ 11 -- "headfirst"
• WJ 10 -- "the deepest thing in our nature"
• WJ 9 -- relax
• WJ 8 -- at home
• WJ 7-"talk,talk, talk, words, words, words"

• WJ 6-“Farewell”
• WJ 5-"doing and creating"
• WJ's "thinking places"
• WJ 4 -- "Sustaining a thought"
• WJ 3--“The moral business”
• WJ 2 -- skimming gulls
• Richardson's James (1)
• Emerson's opinion of your opinion of someone else'...
• Robert Richardson, farewell

Philosophy, science, and pragmaticism (sic.)

 An old post to U@d, Friday, January 18, 2013

We talked a bit on Opening Day, yesterday, about the relation between philosophy and religion. We'll continue that discussion all semester, along with the question of how philosophy relates to science and to everything else. As for science... 

Every Opening Day every semester,  it seems, I follow my colleague Mary into James Union Building Room 304 and find this on the board:

That’s Charles Sanders Peirce, the “pragmaticist” (“ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers”). In case you find either Mary or CSP (or both) difficult to decipher, here’s what he said… followed by what I think of what he said:

Philosophy is that branch of positive science (i.e., an investigating theoretical science which inquires what is the fact, in contradistinction to pure mathematics which merely seeks to know what follows from certain hypotheses) which makes no observations but contents itself with so much of experience as pours in upon every man during every hour of his waking life.  CSP

I think Charles & Mary are on the right track, to call attention to everyday experience as the raw material of philosophy. Quotidian, commonplace, ordinary experiences and exceptional, rare, out-of-the-ordinary experiences happen to people. What has existence must have its reflective moment.

But, must philosophy aspire to the status of a science? I say no. (Think of Emerson, or for that matter Emily Dickinson.) This may just be a semantic hairsplitting, depending on how much of the vast range of possible-plus-actual experience the “scientific philosopher” is prepared to reflect on, and how much she is prepared to jettison in the name of positivity.

My view: there are many diverse and legitimate forms of philosophical reflection. Some look less like science than like poetry. They all have their place.

And maybe Peirce thought so too. He definitely had his poetic/metaphysical flights: agapism, cosmic love, firstness and secondness and thirdness, his metaphorical likening of philosophy to an impassioned marriage (“The genuis of a man’s logical method should be loved and reverenced as his bride”-Fixation of Belief 1877).

“It will be seen that pragmatism is not a Weltanschauung but is a method of reflexion having for its purpose to render ideas clear.” As James said: philosophy and metaphysics are just an “unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly.”

The consensus here is kind of Thoreauvian, isn’t it? “Simplify, simplify.” And how do you do that, in our discipline? Clarify, clarify. Science can help, and so can the poet.

Posted by Phil at 1/18/2013 05:00:00 AM