The Abysmal State Of Higher Education

From the NYT:

"Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

"The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.

"The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors."

Since college, I have always held the notion that all original ideas (short of the insane) have been spoken for. The kinds of theories and ideas that graduate students base their theses on are quite often mere critiques of other critiques of an original source.

"...his best student was doing his dissertation on how the medieval theologian Duns Scotus used citations."

No one is going to come up with a new perception of Plato's dialogues or Kant's metaphysics. Those were the new ideas, and now we have reached the end of original thinking (see excerpt above) -- I am fully aware that I am making a very bold (and probably controversial) declaration on intellectualism. I think science is the only field in which there can be further discoveries and inventiveness. As for most other fields of knowledge, we are merely trying to perfect what it is that we already know.

Work and Boredom

Friedrich Nietzsche published a much underrated book in 1887 entitled "la gaya scienza", or "The Gay Science". Note: he meant "gay" as in "happy", not "homosexual". It contains, among other things, the story of the 'madman' who declares that "God is dead". That's another post all its own, and so I wanted to present a passage that touches on the issue of 'work and boredom'.

Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery if only it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise, their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure; they actually require a lot of boredom if their work is to succeed. For thinkers and all sensitive spirits, boredom is that disagreeable "windless calm" of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds. They have to bear it and must wait for its effect on them. Precisely this is what lesser natures cannot achieve by any means. To ward off boredom at any cost is vulgar, no less than work without pleasure. Perhaps Asians are distinguished above Europeans by a capacity for longer, deeper calm; even their opiates have a slow effect and require patience, as opposed to the disgusting suddenness of the European poison, alcohol.

It's something to think about. Although, I think the last sentence could be omitted.

What Am I Reading?

The short and simple of it would be to say: nothing. I quit on "Shadow Country" after 104 pages. The story, and the way it was told, was great; but it was not keeping my interest. I've been in the mood to read some philosophy. I did pick up Philosophical Investigations last night, and it keeps me thinking. Stay tuned.

My Problems With Language

A thought has kept me uneasy for quite some time. It deals with the complexity of language. I think few people take into consideration what is actually expressed with their choice of words. The example I am specifically referring to is a common expression.

"My name is X" versus "I am X"

They appear to be two equivalent statements (propositions), but they are far from it. While both denote a name (a word) that references an object (a person), the referential claims are distinct. To say 'my name is X' is to devoid the expression of any meaning. A name is a name; a word. That is all. To say 'I am X' is to bridge the gap between the word and its actual object.

"My name is X" = [X --> W --> X] or [W --> X --> W] (self-referential)

"I am X" = [X --> W --> O]

Now, of course, let us address the issue of 'symbolic' names. There can be names that fuse with their objects. If someone were to say 'my name is George W. Bush', one would not merely take the name as a word. That particular name, as a mere example, will forever denote a single object.

We can conclude that external factors, outside the limits of language, affect how language references itself. There are several volumes of philosophy, I'm sure, that address these issues ad nauseum. For now, these are the thoughts that occupy my mind.

Daily Dose of Mind Fuck

From Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus":

4.002 Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is—just as people speak without knowing how the individual sounds are produced. Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes. The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.