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rphilos

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Everything posted by rphilos

  1. The programs you're aiming for generally recruit people from the top 1%, if not the top 0.1 or 0.01%, of academic ability. Even if it were possible for you to be admitted, would you really feel good about being in an environment where your peers will be much more academic? It sounds like you would be a valuable member of a lab as a technician. You don't need a PhD to be a technician.
  2. It's a difficult call. Your GRE scores are obviously in the right range for top philosophy programs, including MIT. For anyone but a logician there would be no reason to think about retaking. Some logic programs might expect Q a few points higher. I get the impression that the Group in Logic and Methodology of Science at Berkeley, for example, cares about your math-related GRE scores. But I would think that your results are good enough for admissions committees to take your application seriously. If your other credentials demonstrate your competence in math and logic, will retaking the test and doing a little better really make a difference? Maybe it would be worth retaking the test only if it's not going to take time away from other activities that would help your chances of admission. If you do take it again you can be relaxed, knowing that even if you mess up you have perfectly fine backup scores.
  3. If discussion aimed at getting at the truth bothers you, why are you studying for a PhD? Almost everyone I know (including myself) is partnered with a classmate. Fortunately, no sexual harassment policy is so insane as to say that a classmate merely asking another out could be harassment.
  4. I think this is an unfair comment about me, since I specifically said that you are justified in making a complaint against the person who harassed you. I even suggested that you tell his wife what happened, which would probably be worse for him than a Title IX complaint.
  5. Is "mental gymnastics" just your way of describing "rational thought." If there's something wrong with my arguments, quote what I wrote and explain why it's wrong.
  6. I have already said that you are justified in making a complaint, based on the information you revealed. But I'm disturbed that you put scare quotes around the word "unfairly" to describe the false accusations made against the USC football player. In that case, a neighbor who didn't know the facts made a complaint, the girlfriend told Title IX officers that she was not abused, and the boyfriend was punished anyway. Now the supposed victim in that case hired a lawyer to defend her boyfriend. If you struggle to see the "unfairness" of that, and the damage that can result from false accusations, that is a problem.
  7. Guilty as charged. It's very sad that you and some others on this forum don't care much about morality, and are unable to follow my arguments. I thought this was supposed to be a message board for scholars.
  8. Good comeback. I guess you won the argument.
  9. A large percentage of people are not capable of learning social norms well enough to always avoid inadvertently making others uncomfortable. This article talks about a professor (on the autism spectrum) who was driven to suicide by the pain of continually offending his colleagues: http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-speech/ You keep saying that reports to a Title IX office aren't "accusations." I'm not sure what you mean. American Heritage Dictionary defines "accusation" as "A charge of wrongdoing that is made against a person or other party." The only reason to submit a report to a Title IX office is to inform them of some sort of wrongdoing. You say a Title IX investigation is "is not a disciplinary process." I guess an "investigation" is not a "disciplinary process" per se, but Title IX investigations can lead to serious, formal punishments. And, as a matter of fact, there are countless examples of Title IX committees committing travesties of justice (I gave one example above where Title IX officers expelled a USC student from the football team for abusing his girlfriend while the girlfriend kept protesting that he was innocent).
  10. telkanuru, can you please provide evidence that I caricatured TakeruK? TakeruK said that you "should not have to justify or...determine whether or not the action they are complaining" about fits the definition of sexual harassment. They say: "If anyone feels that something is amiss, they should make a report/complaint" and "the Title IX coordinator decides that the report/information is actionable." TakeruK explicitly says that you should make a complaint even when you were offended by someone who "just doesn't know the social norms," which in practice means disproportionately reporting people who are on the autism spectrum or are for some reason socially impaired.
  11. I said that accusations of sexual harassment should be justified. TakeruK objected. I explained why I think it is morally wrong to make unjustified accusations. Multiple people (e.g., @NoirFemme) down-voted my posts saying that we should be careful about making accusations potentially based on false information or innocent misunderstandings. The vast majority of the people commenting on this thread said that the behavior described by OP in her original post was a clear-cut case of sexual harassment, even though the facts given in the original post did not support that verdict. Making false accusations is itself a horrendous, socially destructive thing to do. What I am trying to "accomplish" with my back and forth with TakeruK is to encourage people to rethink their immoral position that false accusations aren't a big deal.
  12. I never said anything about a possible victim of sexual harassment having to "confront" her harasser. I merely said that "You should only make accusations if you are justified in doing so," and that feeling "uncomfortable" is not, per se, a justification. Suppose a woman turns down an unattractive classmate for a date, he never makes advances toward her again, but she feels awkward and "uncomfortable" being in the same room with him. I wouldn't deny her feeling, but she would not be justified in filing a complaint. Filing a complaint and letting the Title IX office sort out whether wrongdoing occurred would itself be very wrong. As to whether or not Title IX investigations are technically "criminal charges," this is an irrelevant semantic issue. Title IX investigations can lead to criminal charges and all sorts of other serious penalties, such as being expelled or loosing your job. Some people do engage in sexual harassment, and bad things ought to happen to them. But unjustified reports/charges made to the Title IX office lead bad things to happen to good people. Look at this story: A neighbor witnessed a USC football player and his girlfriend roughhousing, misinterpreted it as assault, and reported it to the university. USC's Title IX office expelled the man from the football team, even though his girlfriend repeatedly told the Title IX investigators that she had not been abused. Now the girlfriend hired a lawyer to try to compel the Title IX office to accept the fact that she wasn't abused, and make them stop punishing her boyfriend. This is what happens when you take all accusations at face value without asking for justification.
  13. Based on the details that OP has now revealed, I agree that she was sexually harassed. However, your suggestion that you should "not have to justify" charges (related to sexual harassment or anything else) before making them because the justice system will conduct an investigation is grossly immoral. If someone feels uncomfortable because they were asked out by someone they're not interested in, or if they misinterpret an off-color joke, it would be seriously wrong to make any sort of complaint against that person, even if they are eventually vindicated. Merely being accused of sexual harassment is a traumatic and stigmatizing experience. You should only make accusations if you are justified in doing so. (In OP's case she is justified.) In my description of what constitutes sexual harassment, I mentioned "persistent unwanted advances" as one kind of sexual harassment. I said sexual harassment could also involve "an explicit or implicit threat, inappropriate touching, or something along those lines," which could all be "single occurrence."
  14. orange turtle - Thanks for context. That is worse than what you originally described. It seems like he's guilty of propositioning you in a crude and inappropriate way. Is it possible that he's on the autistic spectrum or otherwise impaired at reading social situations? Still, so far he's only made one unambiguous advance, and you told him no. If he does something similar again, then I think it would count as "persistent" unwanted advances and it would be bona fide sexual harassment. Maybe you could tell his wife what happened...I'm sure she would make sure it doesn't happen again.
  15. It's very disturbing how almost all the commenters here are saying that this was definitely sexual harassment. I'm not saying it wasn't. But based on the description of the events given by OP, it's far from clear that it was. Both men and women sometimes receive romantic/sexual overtures that they do not reciprocate. It does not become "sexual harassment" merely by virtue of the fact that the person who does the propositioning is employed by the same university where you happen to be a student. Sexual harassment involves persistent unwanted advances, an explicit or implicit threat, inappropriate touching, or something along those lines. OP doesn't mention anything like. It's suspicious that OP's advisor--who presumably knows the facts better than any of us--told her that it wasn't harassment. Now OP asks if she should try to ruin this man's life by having him labeled/punished as a sexual harasser. All we've been told is that a man propositioned a woman and she turned him down. If that's the whole story, then OP's advisor was right.
  16. Does he have any formal authority over you? What exactly did he say?
  17. Agreed. According to the Grad Cafe data, people who get into competitive programs that don't require GREs (e.g., Oxford) tend to have very high scores anyway. But I think that admissions committees for competitive programs that do require GREs will be very cautious about accepting someone who did poorly even if other aspects of their application seem good. In reality, the vast majority of people with low GREs probably don't have good writing samples or high GPAs (or their GPAs are high only if they went to a noncompetitive college).
  18. What "admissions results page" are you talking about? The evidence available on the department websites suggests that the vast majority of students admitted to philosophy PhD programs at PGR-ranked departments have verbal GRE scores in at least the mid 160s, and the average is close to 170. Maybe that just reflects wishful thinking on this forum. If GREs were as unimportant as you say, I don't think the average scores of successful applicants would be so high.
  19. be., is your field philosophy? It's just not true that someone has a "reasonable chance of admission to a PGR-ranked program" with V159/Q152, or that GPA isn't a "great indicator[] of one's admission prospects." Some programs publish the average GRE scores of admitted PhD students. Even the lower-ranked PGR programs have average V scores in the 167-168 range, and Q scores much higher than 152. tbphilstudent deserves to know that before he/she spends 3 months working on applications and $1,000 on application fees.
  20. If you don't mind my asking, why do you want an MA in philosophy? Frankly, you won't be competitive, for all the reasons you mention. If you get all As for a couple semesters maybe you could get into a self-funded MA program at an unranked school. But would that be preferable to just studying philosophy on your own for free?
  21. What kind of places are you aiming for? To be competitive at PGR-ranked PhD programs I think you would need to significantly raise your V and Q GRE scores.
  22. What do you mean by "PhD programs that are worth attending"? If you mean PGR top 20--even top 40--the answer is almost certainly no. Many of those programs get literally 200-300 applications for 5 or 6 places. Even if you can make a convincing case that your GPA doesn't reflect your potential, admissions committees are unlikely to even read your application when there are dozens of others with near-perfect GPAs. If I were you I would try to get all As at a good MA program before applying for a PhD. Then you won't have to say that you learned from your mistakes--you'll show them.
  23. Given your 169V score you presumably have the verbal intelligence to do much better on the AW section. One key to doing well is using examples to support your argument. If you didn't bring examples from your outside knowledge that would explain the low score. Note that the graders tend to be liberal--regardless of your own political views, your essay should be pro-liberal. (My own score was 5.5.) If you're applying to top PhD programs it would be good if you can raise your quantitative score, too.
  24. Hi GreenEyedTrombonist The New Statesman article does claim that Breitbart, a conservative outlet, "concludes that there have been 100 in the last ten years, a remarkably low rate of ten a year." But note that the New Statesman doesn't include a link to the source being cited, which is strange since it includes links for all its other sources. The reason may be because it is misrepresenting the Breitbart article, which you can see here. Breitbart examined only "high-profile hate crimes that turned out to be frauds." It did not estimate what percentage of hate crimes that are reported to police are fake, though it speculated, for reasons given in the article, that "the number is high."
  25. andrewlavignio, "Going around questioning others' philosophical bona fides, which appears to be all you've done in this thread..." - If you read any of my posts, you would see that I presented arguments and evidence for all my claims. The only time I questioned someone's philosophical bona fides was in my response to you, because you hold yourself up as a student of philosophy. But even then I presented an argument. If you prefer to just assert your beliefs and seek out people who already agree with you to bond over your shared ignorance, maybe you should reconsider trying to be a philosopher.
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