MorganFreemanlives

its a pity this is what discussion has reduced to. calling any position but dominant liberal status quo "offensive" or that intelligent human beings are sponges that when exposed to offensive talk are helpless to the effects of imitation.Is it that radical to think that offensiveness is not passive objective sensation, but partially a mechanism of feeling inadequate to how you view yourself in proportional to how others think of you? within the limits of decorum, it is not my duty to make sure no one is offended by my views. From this mentality, to limiting free speech is but a mere hop. well, like i said, i have no interest in perpetuating this or "getting educated" by a perspective which fully supports shutting down inquiry and discussion because it is "offensive". you even got offended that i praised jewish and certain asian cultures for highly valuing education, and you are surprised that i find your perspective suspect? .for all its worth, i fully acknowledge income inequality, gender and racial bias, xenophobia and so forth, what i oppose is the morally degrading approach you purport to solve these problems which i take to be a case of the medicine being worse than disease. anyways, i just came to delete the rest of the profile. good luck to all those who applied this year, i decided to postpone my application till next year. i decided that a year break will do me some good.

ok, this downvoting stuff has gotten silly. if i do decide t return to gradcafe , it will be anonymously or with a non-posting account because this is just ridiculous. The best part is that right after i said 5. that the downote system propagates an image of a user which makes one more likely to get down votes for even harmless comments, it is exactly what happens.

. if you actually want to discuss this without hang a nervous breakdown or highjacking a forum after i said i will leave it be, just message me. otherwise, i will take it that you just want the last word. But if people are curious to my response to this... 1. english is my 2nd language, and i may have a mild form of dyslexia, have you thought that as a possibility? 2. i dont take science to be a tabula rasa endeavour where i passively learn about laws of the world, nor is your thesis as obvious as you take it to be. im objecting to a morally suspicious interpretation of the correlations that have been found, for it treats "minorities" , which i suppose would include me, as helpless victims of a systematic bias as if my attitude, of either rising to the occasion or meekly taking this abuse is entirely beyond our sphere of influence as individuals. 3. you completely misunderstood, diligence to look for refers to information about what grad schools look for in applicants, specialization by department ect which is now easily available to almost anyone thanks to the internet, so the resource disadvantage for minorities in this specific endeavour has been mostly mitigated 4. well I can throw facts back at you like the percentage of nobel price winners that are of jewish descent relative to their population, or the fact that there is discrimination Against asian americans in the higher education system, and its so evident that schools that are strictly merit-based like caltech have almost 50% asian populations. 5. i oppose the silly downvote system entirely, it had nothing to do with you specifically. i have seen here firsthand last year that if a person here has a controversial opinion here, they are likely to get downvotes just for that but what really makes it counter-productive, is that if you are already seen as someone who has a few downotes consistently, voting tendency will be warped to downvote almost anything such person posted or to not receive an upvote when others clearly would have received one. i dont want to name folks, but poor dfinley and vineyard last year got this treatment even when they posted sensibly. now let it rest, or get the last word when i clearly said if you actually want a discussion , to just message me, i dont care either way.

by this do you mean as a department rule or professors doing this themselves? one of my professors, makes us write a first draft and only putting your ID as a name, and and then he will re-distribute papers so that other students can provide feedback. the problem with this method however is that its success is proportional to the quality of the student body of the class. in an intro class this would prove disastrous. as for blind grading, one or two professors do it in my department. i personally oppose it, as it often gets in the way of student-professor relations. for example, if a professor can't associate a name with a particular style of writing and argumentation. although the professor can provide paper specific feedback, suggestions on patterns found in multiple papers becomes more tedious for the prof if you use a blind grading system. the best blind grading i think happens when the prof simply doesnt bother to learn anyone's grade lol.

all im saying is cultures that put more emphasis on education are, all else being equal , more prone to have members pursue academic careers. empirical data will obviously show implicit biases, i haver never doubted that. what i do in fact actively doubt, is to make URM a category to begin with, which is constantly assaulted by waves of static prejudices which cannot be remedied and significantly counteracted by a lot personal decisions. This and treating us as a group is no better, than saying "they coudnt do any better as individuals , so they need an extra push", and ironically that attitude itself is a benign form of objectification even well-intentioned. but i will stop here. im gonna lose more of those rep points if i challenge the status quo and i cannot live losing those.

congratulations to you guys. you really jumped a lot of spots in this year's philosophical gourmet report. very impressive.

this is slightly misleading. lower grades has nothing to do with your minority status (at least not in particular). resource wise, it is also misleading because the information for this kind of stuff is widely available now in 2014 cyberspace for this with the diligence to look for it. if there is a link to resources, it is a secondary one in so far being a minority means you are less likely to go to a highly prestigious place which in turn might mean you get less preparation but i woudnt call any of this a tremendous barrier to success. a big reason why a lot of misrepresented don't get into philosophy involves culture. jewish culture and a lot of asian cultures hold a tremendous importance for education while other cultures in general are anti-intellectualist. in my case for example, my hispanic parents scoff at the idea of philosophy as a profession for a simple reason. it doesn't heal people, build bridges, or have any tangible benefit to society so they think it must be done by those that coudn't make it anywhere else. Alas if i wasnt the contrarian that i was , and fallen for this stereotypical yet highly misleading picture! im not saying minorities (and women too, i think they probably have it worse) dont suffer from prejudice in philosophy, but i think the case is highly exaggerated. unless you have professor who really is out to get you, it is not something that an iron-will and talent can't overcome.

OH YES. Bradley's Principles of Logic and Bosanquet's Logic or the Morphology of Knowledge. it is surprising exactly how much Russell borrows from these two in creating what is now modern logic. Russell's treatment of Hypothetical judgments carrying no existential import contra meinong is straight from Bradley. im glad to see others who are interested in 19th century logic.

is anyone familiar with the philo department at the University of Chicago? i know they have strong placement, unusual admission practices and are phenomenal in german idealism, but what else is there to know? why are they so successful in placement for example

since im applying to the UK I will be an international student as well. i was wondering though. when you apply to places like Oxbridge, is it better to be a U.S international student, or is it better to be considered an international from a more obscure place? i checked oxford's site the other day, and no one from my country of birth has attended oxford in quite a couple of years. now as far as financial aid goes, Americans and people of commonwealth countries have the advantage of specific scholarships just for them but say you are only considering admissions and not necessarily FA. which one of the two would increase your odds of admission more , if any? Rumor even has it being international alone already raises your chances of admissions because they get to charge you considerably more, but that may just be a myth.

i admire the calculated objectification of your freedom

it will depend on what exactly do you want to do with such ph.d. the problem is 1. those universities which do offer distance learning for ph.d are not exactly considered prestigious as far as philosophy is concerned 2. you will not have any teaching experience and 3. since this is a very recent phenomena, you will be looked as suspicious.

i think it depends on the rarity of your specialty within the department and in general. if you work on a field where a department likely has multiple people working in that field, then maybe keeping it blank makes sense, but when you have a sub specialty were even finding an appropriate faculty among departments requires doing some homework, then it can be to your advantage to write a name down.

as for me i went from , descartes -> early analytic philosophy -> spinoza -> neo-hegelianism. wittgy never impressed me but i quickly abandoned the linguistic turn in philosophy so a lot of what he said became inconsequential to my endeavors.. heidegger i never understood and grew to despise because no matter what i did , be it read the primary text and discuss it in a heidegger class , or read secondary text of varying difficulty, it always seemed either false or trivial to me. as for not reading the so called classics throughout your philosophical career, plenty of analytic philosophers do just that and hyper-specialize in a single topic or theme.i feel funny about it though because 1. you can think you have a brilliant idea when in fact you are reinventing something a not too obscure figure already postulated and 2. the history of philosophy has a bias agaisnt certain figures who were rightly lauded during their times, analytic philosophers have great prospects for reviving and improving the thought of neglected thinkers

reixis, i apologize if i was coming of as against you . its just that this ridiculous down vote stuff has to be addressed by now. its mostly a bad prejudice.