qualiafreak
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Posts posted by qualiafreak
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This sounds like a really personal decision and hard to give advice for... Really depends on what you want in your life long term. I wouldn't think of retaking courses as setting you back, if medical school is definitely what you want to do.
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I'm still waiting to hear from UW-Madison, CU Boulder and UConn. I'll be totally happy with GSU if none of these pan out though so I'm trying not to feel too anxious. Though I did lay in bed repeatedly refreshing my e-mail for an hour this morning after receiving the mistaken acceptance e-mail from Boulder.
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Update: it was a mistake
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Although I have got a very good offer, I am still waiting to hear from another school which is tied-for-top with my currently admitted one. So the wait is annoying, because even if I get an offer, I should start talking to people to find out which school I want more.
My advice is to do that now. Decide whether you would accept the offer if it came through so you're not left scrambling on the 15th if it comes then.
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I got an email from the graduate school at UC Boulder saying I had been granted admission. I was halfway down the wait list and was recently told there had been no movement. Seems like a mistake, especially because it was an automated email? You'd think they could personally send acceptance emails since they only admit 4 a year? Did this happen to anyone else?
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Yeah, feel really hopeless after being wait listed for funding at many universities.
It just takes one, don't give up hope yet ~
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Anyone wait listed or accepted to Colorado? They told me not to expect any word until on or after the 15th. So helpful!
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Ahhhh!!
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Bumping this - I'm considering UConn. Is it an exaggeration to say there is nothing to do in or near Storrs?? I know it is small but from looking at yelp it looked like there were lots of restaurants and things nearby. Perhaps you're comparing it to an actual city? For reference, I grew up in a town with literally only a gas station. No stores, no coffee shops, no restaurants or anything. There was a city about 30 min away, not huge but enough. I was fine. I'm more of a homebody anyway. But I do like to have restaurants and coffee shops to study at nearby. So considering this, would Storrs and it's vicinity probably not be as bad for somebody like me?? Academically UConn seems perfect for me but I have heard only bad things about the city..
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You may really need to think about your long term career trajectory. If you want to get a tenure track job as a Philosophy professor in an even mildly respected school, an unranked PhD is likely not going to get you there. A top MA might not either but, it might, if it helps you get into a well respected PhD. If you're open to someday teaching at a community college, maybe teaching outside philosophy, or doing something different, you might be able to make the case for going with the PhD if you love the program. If the unranked phd posts placement, look at in in depth and see if you would be happy where past students have ended up. If they don't post it, it might be worth asking about. If it feels like the perfect program for you of course take that into account, along with your overall goals and whether you believe it can get you there.
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Hello,
This thread seems mostly about where to live, safety, and expenses - very helpful! Can anyone speak to cultural features of St. Louis? Things to do? What are the people like? Does it have a general feel? Does it give the big city vibe? Anything anyone can offer in terms of what it's actually like to live there I would really appreciate it! I'm considering UMSL.
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Totally. Even if you feel a tiny bit awkward, that's nowhere near as weird as you might feel having to make a decision on where you're going to be for the next 5-7 years without having ever been there. At least that's how I see it!
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Yeah philstudent, that's what I was saying. It was in response to the person above me who seemed like they thought they wanted to accept a program early when they still were on a wait list at their top choice. I didn't understand what possible benefit accepting early would have.
Has anyone heard any more from Colorado? I got notified of my wait list, I responded, and then nothing. Is that normal? All my other places responded after that..
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I feel for you overoverover!!! My heart leaps every time my email dings but then it's always coupons haha. I think we may have to wait until after the visit weekend to hear more but who knows
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I agree with jjb919. I do think that GSU is very good in mind, as aduh said, but I don't know much about Houston. If it is true that they are also renowned for mind and if it is true that they place to higher-ranks than GSU in that AOI and it is true that their funding offer is much greater, I say that seems like the obvious choice.
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There are some circularity mistakes in there (e.g. "They have whatever meaning they have because and only because people understand them to have that meaning"—a meaning is precisely that which is understood, so you can't use understanding to ground meaning). But to quickly address what's arguably my most controversial but I think wholly justified point, re: "I don't even see how anything but popular understanding of a term determines its meaning".
Premise 1. Popular understanding/usage is an empirical fact about what is the case.
Premise 2. Meaning is a normative concept: there are correct and incorrect ways to use a term; equivalently, definitions of meaning are about what ought be the case (regarding utterances).
Premise 3. ~Naturalistic Fallacy: facts about what is the case can't in themselves justify facts about what should be the case (if you even want to call these latter "oughts" facts, anyway).
Concl. Popular opinion can't determine the meaning of any given term.
(It's a rather safe instance of Kripke's Rule-Following Paradox, which more widely tries to show that no facts whatsoever determine the meaning of any given term. (My use of it is ironic, since Kripke's own solution to the problem was to appeal to majority opinion; virtually every commentator has pointed out this ironic flaw in Kripke's solution.)
I recommend seeing it it as saying less about the nature of "meaning" than the nature of "determining," in the particular case of meanings. (This turns it into just a general philosophical problem of normativity: wtf?))
P.S. I specifically said "I don't pretend to know" the right theory of meaning here. But my "nonsense" remark was just a lame joke about the "decay of language" or whatever (although it is a plausible reductio ad absurdum of the majoritarianism view: all it takes, on the view you've offered, for this forum to literally become nonsense is enough people to start talking differently).
And your words-represent-mental-concepts view, I take it, is basically Jerry Fodor's. Just mentioning that in case you didn't know / are interested; but it's a notoriously sketchy philosophy with a lot of problems: if the words represent the concepts, then what are the concepts doing? Representing external objects? Then why aren't the words representing those objects? What has the middle-man of mental understanding-states done but kicked the can down the road, displacing the burden of explanation? Is all meaning just "representation" anyway? (Certainly not.)
In your first paragraph, you say that meaning is simply "that which is understood." In your second, you say that understanding is empirical and therefore can't be used to determine meaning. Did you mean understanding in a different way in each of these contexts? If meaning simply is understanding, and understanding is empirical, is it possible meaning itself is empirical too? What reasons do you have for premise 2? Does it simply feel to you as though meaning must be something "over and above" the natural world, because if it weren't things seem to turn in on themselves and become "meaningless?"
I get that concept/representation views are sketchy. I do not tend toward Fodorian viewpoints on this. The way I understand Fodor, he believes there are literally sentences in the head that encode a "language of thought." I think the way our brain communicates concepts is in a way more complicated than any spoken language in existence as of yet and therefore can communicate a larger range of specific ideas. The middle man of understanding does not simply kick the can. It attaches phenomenality. If there were no experiencers, there would be no meaning. Consciousness is "meaning endowing," not words.
As for the idea that "linguistic experts" etc should be determiners of the "proper" meaning of a term instead of the population majority... Perhaps, but there are two different senses of what is proper here. Imagine that there is an isolated small community within a larger community. Imagine that the linguistic experts have agreed on the right way to speak. In the smaller community within the larger one, 100% of people prior to their decision had been speaking in the "wrong way." 10% of people in the community have read the manual the linguistic experts sent out and begin speaking the correct way. In one sense, they are speaking properly because they are following rules. In another sense, they are speaking nonsense because no one around them understands them. Even if I were to contend that there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way to use words, objectively, there still may be cases in which it is appropriate for one to use the word the wrong way - when it facilitates understanding. And the conditions are not just "ideas in the person's head, words in a dictionary, etc." It depends not only on ideas in the person's head, but also the ideas in the head of the person or persons to which they are speaking.
I don't disagree that it would be meaningless to randomly say "Hello" mid conversation. How does this in any way show what I've said to be extremely naive? In that case, the understanding is only on the end of the speaker. The context has to be appropriate and the listeners as well. You've said it's naive to think that successful communication of ideas = successful use of words. Then the examples you gave were not successful communication of ideas, so I don't see how they were relevant. I know there are epistemic problems here and it is clearly much more complicated. I know there are some problems with my view of meaning and that representational views bottom out in things being essentially meaningless in a sense. I don't have any emotional attachment for there needing to exist some objective meaning. If linguistic experts should be able to decide the proper usage of terms, their criteria for decision making should be things like removing ambiguity, making key distinctions - all for the purpose of creating a language that maximizes effective communication, or most efficiently enables speakers to get their ideas across. In contexts where the linguists' rules failed to do that, it would be appropriate to break them.
Edit:
P.S. This is SO OFF TOPIC I'm sorry
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Accepted at UConn!!! It feels so good, especially after last year's shut out. I hope to see you overoverover and reixis there!
Did you get in off the wait list or was this the first you heard from them?
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I don't think it's awkward as long as you word it properly, I'd do it. It would be awkward to just show up to visitation days non invited, but not to simply ask if it would be okay for you to come visit the campus since it's one of your top choices. Don't expect them to pay for it or anything, though.
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Thought I'd chime in on this and this point alone:
"I don't pretend to know what metaphysically determines the correct way to use a term, but it sure as hell ain't a popularity contest, lest we've all been speaking nonsense."
I disagree and, in fact, I don't even see how anything but popular understanding of a term determines its meaning. Unless you want to argue that only the original inception of a term can validly determine its meaning??... How do you think language developed in the first place anyway? It's not like terms a priori have meaning. They have whatever meaning they have because and only because people understand them to have that meaning. And I don't think this means "we've all been speaking nonsense." What it means is simply that communication isn't perfect. Words I utter represent concepts in my head, and yours do as well, but those concepts rarely if ever will match up perfectly. The meaning itself isn't in the word, it's in our head. Only subjectivity can attach meanings to things. Words aren't perfect for communicating meaning (perhaps connecting our brains directly would be), but they're the closest thing we've got currently and we can do quite a lot with them. So, if most people use a word a certain way, then it can therefore be understood that way. The "right" way to understand a word is in the way it's being used at that particular instance, and the "right" way to utter a word is in the way that is most common for one's context, so as to facilitate understanding on the other side - operating under the assumption that the "right" way to communicate is the way in which understanding and concept mirroring (is that a thing?) are maximized.
P.S. I'm not a linguist and haven't read up enough on this topic to truly make the assertions I'm making. I'm just making them for the sake of conversation because these are the things I think about when I think about the meanings of terms. If this is your field and I'm just so completely wrong it infuriates you, I'd love links to articles. I'm procrastinating.
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@qualiafreak: thanks for this! Unfortunately I can't visit any of the places--part of the reason I asked this question is that it's so hard to judge without doing so. In the end I'm just really happy to have offers at all--this whole process is such a drag--so wherever I end up I'll be happy, but I do wish I could visit to make it less of a blind decision. Everything I've learned about the UConn program is very positive, I have to say, I'll certainly let you know if I decline it!
That's too bad! It does seem pretty wild making a 5-7 year commitment somewhere without seeing it first, but I might have to do the same thing if I hear about one of my wait lists last minute. I've heard great things about UConn too. Based on your prospects I really think you can't go wrong. Deciding between programs is hard, but also one of the best problems you can have. Good luck!
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Thank you all so much for the helpful insights! You've given me a lot to think about. I'm just hoping I get the GSU fellowship, then my choice will be clear.
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Why though? Why not wait? Do you get some benefit from accepting early? It sounds like that's what you want to do, and it's your choice to make of course, I'm just not sure I see why you would accept something this early if you think you might rescind your acceptance..
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Right, I know there is courtesy is involved but this is a major life decision - politeness shouldn't deter you from trying to know all your options before deciding. That's why I recommend choosing just one of the programs you're excited about, and declining the rest. I agree it's not courteous to sit on an acceptance if you know you won't take it, but at this point I think it's too early to accept an offer when there's a wait list you're more excited about.
Decisions 2015!
in Philosophy
Posted
Congratulations!!! That sounds like it will be a great experience!!