Venting Thread

[brush]

41 minutes ago, Schwarzwald said:

 

 

I feel you--that's why I didn't apply to MAs that don't fully fund a sizable group of incoming students. If poor ass public schools can fund their graduate students, Tufts and Brandeis sure as hell can.

Edited March 14, 2016 by brush

[502845824]

I can't do it. I was seriously considering only two more programs, having whittled down the list of five. But there is no way in hell I'd be able mentally and emotionally to handle being 8+ hours from my family and significant other in order to go to the best program I got into, and it wouldn't make sense to go to the lower ranked one. I just know it wouldn't work. I sent emails to all of my programs rejecting their offers today, and I'm going on the non-academic job market tomorrow. I just thought I should post this. Sorry, everyone. Being able to do philosophy just is not as important to me as being near my family and partner. I sincerely apologize to anyone I have inconvenienced, and I wish you all the best. I hope you all get to stay near your loved ones.

[kant_get_in]

34 minutes ago, oldhatnewtricks said:

I can't do it. I was seriously considering only two more programs, having whittled down the list of five. But there is no way in hell I'd be able mentally and emotionally to handle being 8+ hours from my family and significant other in order to go to the best program I got into, and it wouldn't make sense to go to the lower ranked one. I just know it wouldn't work. I sent emails to all of my programs rejecting their offers today, and I'm going on the non-academic job market tomorrow. I just thought I should post this. Sorry, everyone. Being able to do philosophy just is not as important to me as being near my family and partner. I sincerely apologize to anyone I have inconvenienced, and I wish you all the best. I hope you all get to stay near your loved ones.

Wow. Respect. Best of luck to you and yours! 

[dgswaim]

41 minutes ago, oldhatnewtricks said:

I can't do it. I was seriously considering only two more programs, having whittled down the list of five. But there is no way in hell I'd be able mentally and emotionally to handle being 8+ hours from my family and significant other in order to go to the best program I got into, and it wouldn't make sense to go to the lower ranked one. I just know it wouldn't work. I sent emails to all of my programs rejecting their offers today, and I'm going on the non-academic job market tomorrow. I just thought I should post this. Sorry, everyone. Being able to do philosophy just is not as important to me as being near my family and partner. I sincerely apologize to anyone I have inconvenienced, and I wish you all the best. I hope you all get to stay near your loved ones.

Woah.

[MVSCZAR]

1 hour ago, oldhatnewtricks said:

I can't do it. I was seriously considering only two more programs, having whittled down the list of five. But there is no way in hell I'd be able mentally and emotionally to handle being 8+ hours from my family and significant other in order to go to the best program I got into, and it wouldn't make sense to go to the lower ranked one. I just know it wouldn't work. I sent emails to all of my programs rejecting their offers today, and I'm going on the non-academic job market tomorrow. I just thought I should post this. Sorry, everyone. Being able to do philosophy just is not as important to me as being near my family and partner. I sincerely apologize to anyone I have inconvenienced, and I wish you all the best. I hope you all get to stay near your loved ones.

You can still do philosophy, though!! Even if going into a grad program doesn't make sense right now. Just stay in the soup! 

[AnotherKantFan]

16 hours ago, oldhatnewtricks said:

I can't do it. I was seriously considering only two more programs, having whittled down the list of five. But there is no way in hell I'd be able mentally and emotionally to handle being 8+ hours from my family and significant other in order to go to the best program I got into, and it wouldn't make sense to go to the lower ranked one. I just know it wouldn't work. I sent emails to all of my programs rejecting their offers today, and I'm going on the non-academic job market tomorrow. I just thought I should post this. Sorry, everyone. Being able to do philosophy just is not as important to me as being near my family and partner. I sincerely apologize to anyone I have inconvenienced, and I wish you all the best. I hope you all get to stay near your loved ones.

Very courageous and thoughtful - good luck with your future endeavours!!

Which programs have you declined? (Any chance it was Stanford and/or Yale?)  

[502845824]

10 hours ago, AnotherKantFan said:

Very courageous and thoughtful - good luck with your future endeavours!!

Which programs have you declined? (Any chance it was Stanford and/or Yale?)  

Yale was in fact one of the programs I declined. I hope that helps you.

[philosophe]

14 hours ago, oldhatnewtricks said:

Yale was in fact one of the programs I declined. I hope that helps you.

Wishing you the best in your non-philosophical career. You gotta do you. 

If you don't mind my asking, which other programs did you decline?

[Metanoia]

On 3/15/2016 at 8:56 AM, oldhatnewtricks said:

I can't do it. I was seriously considering only two more programs, having whittled down the list of five. But there is no way in hell I'd be able mentally and emotionally to handle being 8+ hours from my family and significant other in order to go to the best program I got into, and it wouldn't make sense to go to the lower ranked one. I just know it wouldn't work. I sent emails to all of my programs rejecting their offers today, and I'm going on the non-academic job market tomorrow. I just thought I should post this. Sorry, everyone. Being able to do philosophy just is not as important to me as being near my family and partner. I sincerely apologize to anyone I have inconvenienced, and I wish you all the best. I hope you all get to stay near your loved ones.

With an application season as promising as yours, this is courageous and deeply admirable. I hope you can get closer to the "good life", whichever way you choose to go about it.

[Swann]

Something I've been thinking about during this application process is the role of students play in culture or society more generally. What I mean is, I am wondering if students, qua students, serve a productive role in society. The reason I've been wondering about this is because of the reaction I get from acquaintances or relatives when they hear I am applying for further schooling: "Oh...you're still in school?", "How much longer before you get a real job?", etc.

The comment that sparked my thought on the issue was when someone asked, "What do you do?" and I said, "I'm a philosophy student." "That sounds interesting," they replied,  "what are you going to do after that?" "Well," I told them, "I've been in the process of applying to PhD programs, so hopefully I will start that in the fall." What they said next offended me initially (though, they didn't mean it to come off as offensive): "No, I mean, what are you going to do in order to be productive." At first, I thought, "well, I am already being productive. Academic work is real work." But then I started really wondering about the extent to which students are—despite my belief that academic work is real work and not just homework, busy work, mere training, etc.—playing a productive role in society. I've been a little stuck not only on how to answer this question, but even on how to approach it. 

The application process is stressful enough, and now I've been stressing over the role, or nature, of what it is I am even applying myself towards. The question is not really what philosophy does for society, or philosophy's real application(s); rather, its about being a student more generally. I'm curious if any of you have thought about this question. We have all decided to take our lives as students very seriously, so I'm guessing I'm not alone in wondering about this question. I'm also curious to hear from those of you with MA(s), since you've spent more time in school without reaching your "real job", and have probably had to put up with comments like these for a while longer. So: are students, as students, productive? Is the life of the student just a preparation for real productive work?

[gughok]

57 minutes ago, Swann said:

Something I've been thinking about during this application process is the role of students play in culture or society more generally. What I mean is, I am wondering if students, qua students, serve a productive role in society. The reason I've been wondering about this is because of the reaction I get from acquaintances or relatives when they hear I am applying for further schooling: "Oh...you're still in school?", "How much longer before you get a real job?", etc.

The comment that sparked my thought on the issue was when someone asked, "What do you do?" and I said, "I'm a philosophy student." "That sounds interesting," they replied,  "what are you going to do after that?" "Well," I told them, "I've been in the process of applying to PhD programs, so hopefully I will start that in the fall." What they said next offended me initially (though, they didn't mean it to come off as offensive): "No, I mean, what are you going to do in order to be productive." At first, I thought, "well, I am already being productive. Academic work is real work." But then I started really wondering about the extent to which students are—despite my belief that academic work is real work and not just homework, busy work, mere training, etc.—playing a productive role in society. I've been a little stuck not only on how to answer this question, but even on how to approach it. 

The application process is stressful enough, and now I've been stressing over the role, or nature, of what it is I am even applying myself towards. The question is not really what philosophy does for society, or philosophy's real application(s); rather, its about being a student more generally. I'm curious if any of you have thought about this question. We have all decided to take our lives as students very seriously, so I'm guessing I'm not alone in wondering about this question. I'm also curious to hear from those of you with MA(s), since you've spent more time in school without reaching your "real job", and have probably had to put up with comments like these for a while longer. So: are students, as students, productive? Is the life of the student just a preparation for real productive work?

I think this is a good question.

At the same time, I have at best an apathy toward conventions of social productivity (this does not endear me to most).

Therefore, my answer is really incredibly (perhaps unsatisfactorily) simple: I'm doing what I like.

If that isn't good enough for someone, at this point IDGAF. I don't feel obligated to greater society when a niche already exists for what I want to do, and when that niche itself contains plenty of people I can help by mere cooperation. If I ever defend the "productivity" of what I do it will be in a selfish interest of maintaining the position itself; it will be because I'm at risk of losing my niche, i.e. because philosophy is at risk of losing its position in academia. And even so, I wouldn't be ambivalent toward using sophistry to maintain philosophy. If it's easier to make up some bullshit about why philosophy is useful, then I'll do that and get back to doing the philosophy I like (of course, there are plenty of good and easy arguments for philosophy's utility, to be deployed as needed, but sometimes a little bit of convincing nonsense can save a lot of dull time and effort).

Now, this isn't to say that I have no interest in demonstrating the practicality of philosophy to "society" (which is just a big circle-jerk enveloping this little one - I prefer this to the larger). But, whenever I endeavour to make any such demonstration, it won't be because I care about advancing civilization qua civilization - it'll be because I want to get people to help me and my fellows do philosophy, and what better way to do that than to show them how it's relevant to them? Everybody wins!

So, broadly speaking, if I'm to comment on "the role of students play in culture or society more generally", I would describe my role (not speaking for anyone else) as this: I'm trying to be happy, and in the doing so I hope to make others happy insofar as happiness can be shared among people who fall into our little corner of the world; but I won't go out of my way to advance humanity to some arbitrary apotheosis. After all, "productivity" tends not to extend far beyond one's immediate circle. An office job, with its office culture and its office goals and office collaboration and so on, is no more inherently productive than five years at grad school, with its grad culture and grad goals and grad collaboration. You can touch at least as many lives as a grad student as you can working in an office cubicle (sorry, don't mean to be picking on this one example, it's just what came to mind). The criticisms you describe simply demonstrate the prejudice of people who've subscribed to some illusory convention that only certain forms of productivity are genuinely productive. Because, let's be honest: unless you're literally growing potatoes or building houses, what you do for money is in response to some biologically unnecessary request that someone else has, and to engage in chauvinism there is just dogmatic.

Anyway I hope that wasn't too dreadful a ramble; the sun is heating this room to uncomfortable levels and the words have just been spilling forth from my brow.

[MentalEngineer]

1 hour ago, Swann said:

Something I've been thinking about during this application process is the role of students play in culture or society more generally. What I mean is, I am wondering if students, qua students, serve a productive role in society. The reason I've been wondering about this is because of the reaction I get from acquaintances or relatives when they hear I am applying for further schooling: "Oh...you're still in school?", "How much longer before you get a real job?", etc.

The comment that sparked my thought on the issue was when someone asked, "What do you do?" and I said, "I'm a philosophy student." "That sounds interesting," they replied,  "what are you going to do after that?" "Well," I told them, "I've been in the process of applying to PhD programs, so hopefully I will start that in the fall." What they said next offended me initially (though, they didn't mean it to come off as offensive): "No, I mean, what are you going to do in order to be productive." At first, I thought, "well, I am already being productive. Academic work is real work." But then I started really wondering about the extent to which students are—despite my belief that academic work is real work and not just homework, busy work, mere training, etc.—playing a productive role in society. I've been a little stuck not only on how to answer this question, but even on how to approach it. 

The application process is stressful enough, and now I've been stressing over the role, or nature, of what it is I am even applying myself towards. The question is not really what philosophy does for society, or philosophy's real application(s); rather, its about being a student more generally. I'm curious if any of you have thought about this question. We have all decided to take our lives as students very seriously, so I'm guessing I'm not alone in wondering about this question. I'm also curious to hear from those of you with MA(s), since you've spent more time in school without reaching your "real job", and have probably had to put up with comments like these for a while longer. So: are students, as students, productive? Is the life of the student just a preparation for real productive work?

Here's my (personal) answer: Graduate students aren't students. With the exception of a few rich bastards on fellowship, we have a job, and it's not to go to class and write papers. At the least, we TA, and most of us will teach our own courses within a couple of years. That's our utility to the university, that's why we get paid, and it's plenty damn productive. The fact that we like the subject we teach enough to do coursework and research on it is almost incidental.

[dgswaim]

2 hours ago, Swann said:

Something I've been thinking about during this application process is the role of students play in culture or society more generally. What I mean is, I am wondering if students, qua students, serve a productive role in society. The reason I've been wondering about this is because of the reaction I get from acquaintances or relatives when they hear I am applying for further schooling: "Oh...you're still in school?", "How much longer before you get a real job?", etc.

The comment that sparked my thought on the issue was when someone asked, "What do you do?" and I said, "I'm a philosophy student." "That sounds interesting," they replied,  "what are you going to do after that?" "Well," I told them, "I've been in the process of applying to PhD programs, so hopefully I will start that in the fall." What they said next offended me initially (though, they didn't mean it to come off as offensive): "No, I mean, what are you going to do in order to be productive." At first, I thought, "well, I am already being productive. Academic work is real work." But then I started really wondering about the extent to which students are—despite my belief that academic work is real work and not just homework, busy work, mere training, etc.—playing a productive role in society. I've been a little stuck not only on how to answer this question, but even on how to approach it. 

The application process is stressful enough, and now I've been stressing over the role, or nature, of what it is I am even applying myself towards. The question is not really what philosophy does for society, or philosophy's real application(s); rather, its about being a student more generally. I'm curious if any of you have thought about this question. We have all decided to take our lives as students very seriously, so I'm guessing I'm not alone in wondering about this question. I'm also curious to hear from those of you with MA(s), since you've spent more time in school without reaching your "real job", and have probably had to put up with comments like these for a while longer. So: are students, as students, productive? Is the life of the student just a preparation for real productive work?

"How much longer before you get a real job?"

My response: "How long before you spend some time thinking seriously and carefully about something for once in your life?"

[gughok]

2 minutes ago, dgswaim said:

"How much longer before you get a real job?"

My response: "How long before you spend some time thinking seriously and carefully about something for once in your life?"

This is really the winning answer right here.

[MentalEngineer]

10 minutes ago, gughok said:

This is really the winning answer right here.

My Tinder profile, of all things, includes the phrase "I make less than a welder. So what?"

[MentalEngineer]

Different vent: why did it take Maryland an extra week to send my rejection email after changing my status in the application system?

[dgswaim]

4 minutes ago, MentalEngineer said:

Different vent: why did it take Maryland an extra week to send my rejection email after changing my status in the application system?

I wondered the same thing. I know who I'm rooting against in March Madness now.

[gughok]

7 hours ago, Abendstern said:

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding going on here. The people asking "What are you going to do with that?" or "When are you going to be productive?" are asking this in large part because they don't understand what it means to be a graduate student in the humanities more generally. First, they don't realize that almost always tuition is covered and living stipends are awarded. That alone would make them realize how good a deal it is to be a grad student. Even so, they aren't just saying "What are you contributing to society?," but more probably (especially if the question is coming from family), "How are you going to save for retirement, buy a house, start a family, etc." There can be little doubt that those things, while doable, are much more difficult as a grad student -- you will be less far along in almost every other aspect of your adult life than your professional counterparts. These are fair questions and something everyone should seriously consider before attending grad school. So there are legitimate concerns here, but obviously I agree that they can be adequately addressed. I've worked in real corporate jobs for nearly 4 years now, so I fully understand the difference between doing a day job and pursuing something you're passionate about. I usually use these sorts of interaction as an opportunity to educate people on how philosophy helps inform discussions across disciplines, and, given my interests, especially in the fields of law and politics.

But I think there's another thing we are missing here: many jobs outside of philosophy provide more direct benefit to society, not just builders and welders. Cancer research, doctors, public defenders, social workers, heck, even the average lawyer and politician has a more direct, tangible impact on their fellow humans. There is a real ethical difficulty facing would-be academics going into a subject without such obvious benefits: is the intrinsic value of pursuing a PhD enough to justify the alternative of, say, helping to find a cure to cancer, or helping to alleviate poverty and hunger, or even just making a ton of money as an investment banker in order to donate it to people who could really benefit? I know I can answer this question, but it isn't as simple as saying "I like doing philosophy." That, to my mind, would be a pretty poor reason for ignoring the suffering of your fellow humans when you--a young, intelligent person--could really benefit them in a meaningful way.

 

You make good points, of course.

Regarding your first paragraph: yeah. If the question is how doing philosophy is going to be productive for myself, that's both understandable and easily answered.

Regarding your second paragraph, and particularly, "pretty poor reason for ignoring the suffering of your fellow humans" - yes and no. On the one hand, I mentioned my "apathy toward conventions of social productivity", which I'm sure many share (and many don't). On the other hand (and this gets into my rationalization of my apathy), I feel it's a bit misled to imply, as you are, that there's some sort of zero-sum game going on where my contributions are going to be difference makers in one way or another, and it's up to me to justify putting them in one place rather than another. What I mean is that med schools take a certain number of students: if it's not going to be me, it's going to be someone else. Same with law schools. There are limited jobs for public defenders and social workers, and someone will pick them up. Even revolutionary innovators are, within an order of magnitude, replaceable: consider how the intellectual environments of their time pushed Leibniz and Newton to invent calculus at the same time! Had Leibniz decided to stick to discussing monads, we'd still have Newton's calculus (albeit with its rather wonky notation).

My point is that your suggestion that I, "a young, intelligent person--could really benefit them in a meaningful way" implies that either it's important for me to be the one helping others, or that if I don't do it, nobody else will. I don't think either of those are true. As long as someone is doing the helping, I don't think it has to be me necessarily. And someone will - my not applying to Johns Hopkins med school and getting in, not that I would get in, means someone else did. To turn the tables: suppose I was considering a career as a doctor, and someone told me I'm ethically obligated to contribute to society by advancing philosophy. I would reply that if I'm not the one doing the contributing, someone else will gladly take my place, with the case-in-point that if I had gone into medicine there would be one more spot at the grad schools I've received offers from for someone else to do philosophy.

In sum, I suppose I agree that there's an ethical problem, and I've provided the answer I think works for me. Unless I've got reason to think that I'm superhuman in skill at something I could make a monstrous contribution to, or if I think I can do something that's irreplaceable, there's no reason for me to feel ethically obligated toward a certain altruistic profession. And I, at least, don't think I satisfy either of those conditions.

[Establishment]

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding going on here. The people asking "What are you going to do with that?" or "When are you going to be productive?" are asking this in large part because they don't understand what it means to be a graduate student in the humanities more generally.

While I might agree this is true, the issue is that people then conflate their ignorance about what philosophers do, with their incorrect assumptions of what we do (nothing, intellectual bullshit). So it'd be one thing if someone is generally curious about what it is that philosophers do, but instead their questions are typically singed with some denigration.

In terms of questions of what do philosophers contribute to society... my elliptic answer would be that philosophy helps makes a society great in the same way that Beethoven and Back, Michelangelo and Bernini, Homer and Shakespeare, and Malick and Tarkovsky help make a society great.

[philstudent1992]

1 hour ago, gughok said:

You make good points, of course.

In sum, I suppose I agree that there's an ethical problem, and I've provided the answer I think works for me. Unless I've got reason to think that I'm superhuman in skill at something I could make a monstrous contribution to, or if I think I can do something that's irreplaceable, there's no reason for me to feel ethically obligated toward a certain altruistic profession. And I, at least, don't think I satisfy either of those conditions.

This is a pretty transparent rationalization, if you ask me. Surely you don't think it's the case that for every possible thing you could do that would increase the good more than doing philosophy would, there's someone else who will do that thing if you don't. For it is patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it. Surely you don't take this attitude toward small acts of charity. For instance, suppose that the next time you pass a homeless person you give him or her $5. Do you think that if you hadn't given them that money, someone else (who wouldn't have given them the money had you given it to them) would have, so their life would be qualitatively the same? In the same way, it's ridiculous to think that, for whatever more good-furthering career path you choose, if you hadn't chosen that, someone else would have done the same thing. For instance, suppose that you become an investment banker and donate oodles of money to various highly specific good causes, like buying malaria nets for some affected areas or funding projects to get clean water to villages that lack it. Do you really think that if you hadn't become an investment banker, someone else (who wouldn't have done those good-furthering things if you had done them) would have done those exact things, or would have done something equally as good with the money?

Edited March 18, 2016 by philstudent1992

[Schwarzwald]

9 hours ago, Abendstern said:

That, to my mind, would be a pretty poor reason for ignoring the suffering of your fellow humans when you--a young, intelligent person--could really benefit them in a meaningful way.

 

MFW most of philosophy is acknowledging suffering. Furthermore, Metaphysics > curing cancer. That's a brute fact in the metalanguage. 

 

15 minutes ago, philstudent1992 said:

This is a pretty transparent rationalization, if you ask me. Surely you don't think it's the case that for every possible thing you could do that would increase the good more than doing philosophy would, there's someone else who will do that thing if you don't. For it is patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it. Surely you don't take this attitude toward small acts of charity. For instance, suppose that the next time you pass a homeless person you give him or her $5. Do you think that if you hadn't given them that money, someone else (who wouldn't have given them the money had you given it to them) would have, so their life would be qualitatively the same? In the same way, it's ridiculous to think that, for whatever more good-furthering career path you choose, if you hadn't chosen that, someone else would have done the same thing. For instance, suppose that you become an investment banker and donate oodles of money to various highly specific good causes, like buying malaria nets for some affected areas or funding projects to get clean water to villages that lack it. Do you really think that if you hadn't become an investment banker, someone else (who wouldn't have done those good-furthering things if you had done them) would have done those exact things, or would have done something equally as good with the money?

I just woke up, having a good day, is it cool if I attack this, nothing personal? It's "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it." What set of facts fixes the the truth value of this proposition? There's a field of vagueness in your descriptions, but I assume it's somewhat reasonable to state you mean that: For every suffering event, there's an actor able to stop it. Of course, if there's always some suffering event, then there's always some actor stopping it, which means there's never an end to suffering, which from the perspective of someone outside the event, might make the event of attempting to stop the suffering event seem pointless. Furthermore, if for every suffering event there's an actor able to stop it, no one holds the burden to act, as gughok is right, there will be someone else to act.

Instead, let us say you mean, "For every suffering event, there is not an actor able to stop that event." The implicity here is that one should act then, because there is a dearth of action which is causing a proliferation of suffering. Of course, this gives the whole process away, as even if gughok attempts to stop some suffering, he effectively cannot by your standards, and neither can anyone else.

If you mean something more like, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering are such that for each case there is a correlating actor's power that could negate that case," then gughok need only worry about cases of suffering correlating to his abilities: Of which it is more patently the case to us that those abilities are philosophical than say, surgical or philanthropic. To this degree, gughok is still right, because someone else will act upon non-philosophical suffering cases.

Perhaps you want a more broad statement that shows that everyone has the power to negate each case, so you say, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that for each case, all actors have the power to negate that case." Of course, this isn't true, the monk on a mission digging a well in Africa can't also be curing cancer in Cuba; but perhaps you want him to sacrifice the African's clean water to dig wells in Cuba, whilst curing cancer at night? It must be a sacrifice, remember, because you specifically reprimand gughok for thinking someone else might do the work. Perhaps the deck is stacked against you, and you want to state, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that for each case, all actors have the power to negate some cases." Of course, this would lead to the same effect as the one in which cases correlate to actor's power, as then an actor could necessarily only act upon cases to which were within their power, and if you grant that actors have multiple powers, then you must grant there is a sacrifice, and you're back in the same conundrum as with the monk. So, how is it "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it?" From my perspective, that seems like quite a complex worldview, nothing obvious about it.

Say you want to say, "For some cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that there exists a case inwhich all actors have the power to negate that case." But that isn't what you said. Even if you did, you'd still run into the monk problem, as would the monk have the power to do such despite his already doing something? If not, there is a sacrifice, and your presupposed hierarchy of morals is demonstrated. You also didn't say, "For some cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that there exists a case inwhich there exists an actor with the power to negate that case." The latter still takes the burden of responsibility from gughok, as he may not be the actor specified.  Likewise, implicit within your first proposition is a denigration of philosophy. You beg the question, "But is philosophy useful?" by implying that for all subsets of some type of event set, philosophy is always morally hierarchically below these sets. You do this by presupposing some moral fabric without defending it of course, as I've seen no reasons why philosophy is logically inferior charity, at any rate. Some Zizek might show that typically when people presuppose social axioms without realizing it, they're parroting the dominant ideological postion; however, that's a critique for another time.

Your idea that it is somehow irrational to think that someone will not give charity presupposes an indeterminacy of causality, which is also undefended. If the microphysical states relate in such a fashion as to configure this branch's maximal chain to yield a set of events in which gughok does not give charity, but then someone else does, it is necessary that that person did give charity, as well as necessary that gughok didn't, because for such an orthogonal branch, the set of possibilities are limited in such a way that those are the only possibilities that could be expressed in that branch. This would be relative-state defense of gughok. Of course, there are a few other ways to show that gughok's actions could be determined, without supposing the relative state formulation, the point is you've got an undefended and presupposed metaphysic.

In conclusion, between the vagueness of the descriptors in your proposition, the fallacious implicity regarding philosophy behind it, and the undefended metaphysic that frames said proposition, I don't think it is "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it."

Alright now, take it easy on me in the rebuttal, I am but a lone state-school student with no classes on Fridays. 

TL; DR Taco Bell is better than McDonald's given a Hegelian interpretation of growth in post-industrial America.

[thatsjustsemantics]

12 hours ago, Schwarzwald said:

(1) . . . but I assume it's somewhat reasonable to state you mean that: For every suffering event, there's an actor able to stop it. 

(2) . . . which means there's never an end to suffering, which from the perspective of someone outside the event, might make the event of attempting to stop the suffering event seem pointless. 

You misread. He or she does not endorse (1) or (2). What he or she meant is this: (1) there are a sufficient number of suffering events that some agents can mitigate. (2) One way to achieve productivity is to reduce the occurrence or severity of suffering events. (3) Some philosophers could have achieved greater productivity in society if they had chosen careers that mitigate suffering.

(1) is solid, Schwarzwald. You can argue, however, against (2) or (3).

Edited March 19, 2016 by thatsjustsemantics

[Schwarzwald]

18 minutes ago, thatsjustsemantics said:

You misread. He or she does not endorse (1) or (2). What he or she meant is this: (1) there are a sufficient number of suffering events that some agents can mitigate. (2) One way to achieve productivity is to reduce the occurrence or severity of suffering events. (3) Some philosophers could have achieved greater productivity in society if they had chosen careers that mitigate suffering.

(1) is solid, Schwarzwald. You can argue, however, against (2) or (3).

One of the intentions of my post is that it is very easy and defensible to misread vague statements, so yes, I did misread, multiple times. 

Why is (1) solid? Where is the analyticity in such a proposition? There seems to be no rule of logic that states the nature of some number of suffering events is such that some set of agents has the power to mitigate them. There especially doesn't seem to be one that points out gughok as part of such a set. So, if it's "patently the case," that (1), this sort of bruteness must be based in facts about the world. Although, it's a presupposition to state that there are a sufficient amount of such cases without pointing toward some set of facts about the world, which concerns my point in the original post about presupposing and implying moral and metaphysical circumstances that are not universal by any means and definitely not, "patently the case."

What if the number of suffering events is such that some subset of suffering events is all that is immediately available to gughok to mitigate, but gughok does not have the means to mitigate them, so in a very real sense they are not available to gughok, but just proximally extant? (This is the question to which I suppose the propositions regarding the power to act and the monk conundrum, in my first post.) These means don't have to be material, it could be that gughok has not been afforded the perspective, maturity, or political inclinations to discern what a "suffering event," is, or that those very inclinations cause him to see some events as not suffering events that others do. This goes to my point concerning the ideological nature of presupposing moral frameworks. The proposition that there is a  sufficient number of suffering events is also contingent upon an ideological perspective, not just some facts about the world. Suffering to the proletariat is profit to the capitalists, although this is not an exclusive dichotomy. This is what I discussed when I mentioned Zizek. So, it is not "patently the case," that (1). (1) is contingent upon a set of facts about the world that has not been effectively posited or argued but only presupposed, and an ideological perspective that has been assumed but not defended.

You seem to see the looseness of (2) and (3), so I'll ignore them, although it should be obvious that the relativity discussed above also applies to both in discerning "productivity." Even stacking the deck in this argument's favor and stating that there are a finite number of suffering events and of that finite number some set are inherently mitigable, it still does not follow that gughok can  or must sacrifice a career in philosophy to be a productive member of society, or that the latter concept is even coherent outside of a very particular conception of the world, which still has not been fully explicated. Maybe he ought to based on your convictions, but the leap from "ought" to "patently the case" seems large.

Also, we should've been using this venting thread for debates this whole time. 

[philstudent1992]

18 hours ago, Schwarzwald said:

MFW most of philosophy is acknowledging suffering. Furthermore, Metaphysics > curing cancer. That's a brute fact in the metalanguage. 

 

I just woke up, having a good day, is it cool if I attack this, nothing personal? It's "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it." What set of facts fixes the the truth value of this proposition? There's a field of vagueness in your descriptions, but I assume it's somewhat reasonable to state you mean that: For every suffering event, there's an actor able to stop it. Of course, if there's always some suffering event, then there's always some actor stopping it, which means there's never an end to suffering, which from the perspective of someone outside the event, might make the event of attempting to stop the suffering event seem pointless. Furthermore, if for every suffering event there's an actor able to stop it, no one holds the burden to act, as gughok is right, there will be someone else to act.

Instead, let us say you mean, "For every suffering event, there is not an actor able to stop that event." The implicity here is that one should act then, because there is a dearth of action which is causing a proliferation of suffering. Of course, this gives the whole process away, as even if gughok attempts to stop some suffering, he effectively cannot by your standards, and neither can anyone else.

If you mean something more like, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering are such that for each case there is a correlating actor's power that could negate that case," then gughok need only worry about cases of suffering correlating to his abilities: Of which it is more patently the case to us that those abilities are philosophical than say, surgical or philanthropic. To this degree, gughok is still right, because someone else will act upon non-philosophical suffering cases.

Perhaps you want a more broad statement that shows that everyone has the power to negate each case, so you say, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that for each case, all actors have the power to negate that case." Of course, this isn't true, the monk on a mission digging a well in Africa can't also be curing cancer in Cuba; but perhaps you want him to sacrifice the African's clean water to dig wells in Cuba, whilst curing cancer at night? It must be a sacrifice, remember, because you specifically reprimand gughok for thinking someone else might do the work. Perhaps the deck is stacked against you, and you want to state, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that for each case, all actors have the power to negate some cases." Of course, this would lead to the same effect as the one in which cases correlate to actor's power, as then an actor could necessarily only act upon cases to which were within their power, and if you grant that actors have multiple powers, then you must grant there is a sacrifice, and you're back in the same conundrum as with the monk. So, how is it "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it?" From my perspective, that seems like quite a complex worldview, nothing obvious about it.

Say you want to say, "For some cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that there exists a case inwhich all actors have the power to negate that case." But that isn't what you said. Even if you did, you'd still run into the monk problem, as would the monk have the power to do such despite his already doing something? If not, there is a sacrifice, and your presupposed hierarchy of morals is demonstrated. You also didn't say, "For some cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that there exists a case inwhich there exists an actor with the power to negate that case." The latter still takes the burden of responsibility from gughok, as he may not be the actor specified.  Likewise, implicit within your first proposition is a denigration of philosophy. You beg the question, "But is philosophy useful?" by implying that for all subsets of some type of event set, philosophy is always morally hierarchically below these sets. You do this by presupposing some moral fabric without defending it of course, as I've seen no reasons why philosophy is logically inferior charity, at any rate. Some Zizek might show that typically when people presuppose social axioms without realizing it, they're parroting the dominant ideological postion; however, that's a critique for another time.

Your idea that it is somehow irrational to think that someone will not give charity presupposes an indeterminacy of causality, which is also undefended. If the microphysical states relate in such a fashion as to configure this branch's maximal chain to yield a set of events in which gughok does not give charity, but then someone else does, it is necessary that that person did give charity, as well as necessary that gughok didn't, because for such an orthogonal branch, the set of possibilities are limited in such a way that those are the only possibilities that could be expressed in that branch. This would be relative-state defense of gughok. Of course, there are a few other ways to show that gughok's actions could be determined, without supposing the relative state formulation, the point is you've got an undefended and presupposed metaphysic.

In conclusion, between the vagueness of the descriptors in your proposition, the fallacious implicity regarding philosophy behind it, and the undefended metaphysic that frames said proposition, I don't think it is "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it."

Alright now, take it easy on me in the rebuttal, I am but a lone state-school student with no classes on Fridays. 

TL; DR Taco Bell is better than McDonald's given a Hegelian interpretation of growth in post-industrial America.

I don't think this kind of strained attempt to be cute is productive, so I'm not going to rebut you.

[ABrown]

8 hours ago, Schwarzwald said:

Why is (1) solid? Where is the analyticity in such a proposition? There seems to be no rule of logic that states the nature of some number of suffering events is such that some set of agents has the power to mitigate them. There especially doesn't seem to be one that points out gughok as part of such a set. So, if it's "patently the case," that (1), this sort of bruteness must be based in facts about the world. Although, it's a presupposition to state that there are a sufficient amount of such cases without pointing toward some set of facts about the world, which concerns my point in the original post about presupposing and implying moral and metaphysical circumstances that are not universal by any means and definitely not, "patently the case."

The first three sentences of the above paragraph are, quite honestly, silly.  I don't think anyone here is suggesting that (1) is an analytic truth.  You're not going to be able to discern the truth or falsity of (1) by analyzing the definitions or meanings of the constituent words in (1).  Instead, as you've suggested, (1) is made true by "facts about the world" relating to the human suffering and one's ability to mitigate such suffering.  I don't really see a problem with the previous posters who have presupposed that there exists an incredible amount of human suffering in the world.  This should be pretty obvious to most people, since they need only to step out their front door, turn on their TV, or browse the internet in order to bear witness to the vast amount of human suffering in our world.

 

8 hours ago, Schwarzwald said:

What if the number of suffering events is such that some subset of suffering events is all that is immediately available to gughok to mitigate, but gughok does not have the means to mitigate them, so in a very real sense they are not available to gughok, but just proximally extant? (This is the question to which I suppose the propositions regarding the power to act and the monk conundrum, in my first post.)

Of course, it is true that there are a number of factors that could potentially impact a person's ability to mitigate the suffering that one sees around them.  This isn't really relevant to the initial question that we seem to be discussing and the comments to which you are responding.  (How is one productive as a philosopher?  How does this productivity compare to the kind of productivity we might have if we choose an alternative career path?)  In fact, what some of the previous posts seem to be suggesting is that by foregoing a career in philosophy in favor of something else (e.g., law, medicine), one can put oneself in a position to be a lot more productive with respect to reducing suffering.

8 hours ago, Schwarzwald said:

These means don't have to be material, it could be that gughok has not been afforded the perspective, maturity, or political inclinations to discern what a "suffering event," is, or that those very inclinations cause him to see some events as not suffering events that others do. This goes to my point concerning the ideological nature of presupposing moral frameworks. The proposition that there is a  sufficient number of suffering events is also contingent upon an ideological perspective, not just some facts about the world. Suffering to the proletariat is profit to the capitalists, although this is not an exclusive dichotomy. This is what I discussed when I mentioned Zizek. So, it is not "patently the case," that (1). (1) is contingent upon a set of facts about the world that has not been effectively posited or argued but only presupposed, and an ideological perspective that has been assumed but not defended.

 Sure, it's often necessary to have some set of background assumptions or some kind of "ideological perspectives" in place in order to pass value judgments.  However, I'm not sure that calling something an instance of suffering necessarily has to be a value judgement. For example, I think the fact that person is experiencing gratuitous, unwanted pain is a good reason to think that one is suffering.  Of course, many individuals will argue that the existence of suffering provides some reason to act or intervene, but simply identifying something as an instance of suffering need not always require some background assumptions about value. More importantly, is it really reasonable to assume that there exists anyone in this thread who actually holds the "ideological perspectives" necessary in order to completely discount the value of reducing suffering in our world?  If not, then the point that you are trying to make in the above paragraph is moot, and most people who have commented on this topic will have some reason to believe that mitigating suffering in some way contributes to being productive in one's career.

Edited March 19, 2016 by ABrown