Brian Leiter points to a short essay by John Perry about his colleagues in philosophy, and excerpts this scene:
[A] thought about this wonderful and interesting group of people, my philosophical colleagues. I have a very distinct memory of arriving at the Eastern Meetings of the American Philosophical Association some years back, when they were held at a hotel in Baltimore. The meetings began just after a National Football League playoff game had been played in that city, and the previous occupants of the hotel seemed to be mainly people connected with this game. Since I was flying from the west coast, and had to attend some meeting or other in the early afternoon of the first day, I arrived the night before most of the other participants. I was able to watch the amazing transformation that took place as the football crowd checked out and the philosophy crowd checked in. The NFL people were large, some very large, most quite good-looking, confident, well-dressed, big-tipping, successful-looking folk; the epitome of what Americans should be, I suppose, according to the dominant ethos. We philosophers were mostly average-sized, mostly clearly identifiable as shabby pedagogues, clutching our luggage to avoid falling into unnecessary tipping situations. We included many bearded men— some elegant, some scruffy— all sorts of interesting intellectual looking women; none of the philosophers, not even the big ones and the beautiful ones, were likely to be mistaken for the football players, cheerleaders, sportscasters and others who were checking out. The looks from the hotel staff members, who clearly sensed that they were in for a few days of less expansive tipping and more modest bar-tabs, were a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. The talk, as philosophers recognized each other and struck up conversations, was unlike anything that ever had been or would be heard in that hotel lobby: whether there are alternative concrete possible worlds; whether there is anything in Heidegger not better said already by Husserl; whether animals should be eaten; not to mention topics that aroused truly deep passions, mostly related to proper names.
What a wonderful group of people, I thought, and how wonderful, and lucky, that the world has managed to find a niche for us. Even if philosophy had no real intellectual content at all — was as silly as astrology or numerology certainly are, or as I suspect, in dark moments, that certain other parts of the university are— it would still be wonderful that it existed, simply to keep these people occupied. Especially me. What would I be doing without this wonderful institution? Helping people in some small town in Nebraska with their taxes and small legal problems, I suppose, and probably not doing it very well.
It would take very little to apply this to physicists (or scientists, or academics more generally) as well as philosophers. We tend not to bring up Heidegger, but we do argue about alternative possible worlds all the time.
More importantly, it’s the second paragraph that hits home. How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where society is sufficiently robust and diverse as to put aside a bit of its resources in order to foster a tiny group of people whose professional duty it is to think deeply about the secrets of the universe. I am reminded of the dedication page in the most poetic general relativity textbook ever written, Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler:
We dedicate this book
To our fellow citizens
Who, for love of truth,
Take from their own wants
By taxes and gifts,
And now and then send forth
One of themselves
As dedicated servant,
To forward the search
Into the mysteries and marvelous simplicities
Of this strange and beautiful Universe,
Our home.
November 27th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
Wow, poetry about theft! How could I miss it all these years?
“Who, for love of truth, Take from their own wants”?!?
How about “Who, under the threat of imprisonment, Are relieved of the product of their toil”?
Grrrr…
November 27th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Although I may occasionally whine about the difficulties, let me add: How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where women, as well as men, are allowed to think deeply about the secrets of the universe.
November 27th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
That is a very nice essay, with many other interesting points…one can certainly think about theoretical physicists as fitting the same mold as the described philosophers, but maybe not physicists in general- I have some colleagues who are doing very concrete things, building things with their hands, and I suspect they would want to think about themselves as the football (or rather hockey) croud, especially if one believes that romanticized description in the essay…
It is refreshing to see a celebration of the academic profession, I still remember how awe-inspiring it was for me to enter a university campus for the first time, and how luxorious it felt to be exposed to all these wonderful ideas…It is good to be reminded how lucky we are.
November 27th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
More modest bar-tabs? Philosophers?
I have experienced a paradox overload and must shut down now.
November 27th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Dissident,
I take it you did not elect those that govern and tax you?
Or you disagree with the principle that to the decision of a majority, the minority should yield? Democracy?
If not please think before you shout this nonsense.
—
Beautfull text, and immensely true. It also contains a warning, for our society is developing into a direction where there is less and less appreciation for and acceptance of these orchids of the human endeavour.
We must not forget to give back our elation and enthusiasm, our sense of wonder and achievement if we are to inspire and perhaps also inform those who have released us into the wide wild beautifull unknown.
-fh
November 27th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
Sean,
A very nice piece. It is certainly refreshing and inspiring to be reminded, once in a while, that the main reason for all the work and late nights is to understand the innermost workings of the universe. Although it may seem that academia is all about glory-seeking, insidious competition and very hard work for sometimes nothing at all, well….at its heart it is only about curiosity and truth.
November 27th, 2005 at 4:57 pm
If one were to improve “other wrapping features” on the logic of mathmatics taken to generalization , then what advancements could the mathematics have taken to assume it be based on a feasible attributes describing reality? “A theory of everything.”
It is a inductive/deductive feature of Objective Truth,” that progresses along side of each other?
Mathematics(logic?) and experiment?
November 27th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
fh: that is correct, I did not elect those that govern and tax me.
Furthermore, I most certainly disagree with the “principle” that to the decision of a majority, the minority should yield, also known as “might is right”. If I go out for a walk and stumble upon two thugs, and they proceed to relieve me of my property, I resist them even though they are the majority and I am the minority. Imagine that.
Please think before you shout this nonsense.
November 27th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Dissident,
Who should fund fundamental research? The free market? Should we hope for money from a naming rights deal? The Wal-Mart Large Hadron Collider?
What alternative method of support for research do you suggest? Or should it not be supported?
Elliot
November 27th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
Elliot, who should fund ?
There’s this old piece of folk wisdom saying “put your money where your mouth is”. If you like then fund it with your own money. It’s really not a difficult concept to grasp.
November 27th, 2005 at 5:44 pm
Ooops. Previous post is partially unreadable because pseudo-markup was interpreted as HTML tags. Never mind, the concept should nevertheless be clear. The missing parts say “INSERT PET SUBJECT HERE”. It’s not just fundamental research, you know. Just about every craze out there has this or that that he or she would like everybody else to pay for.
November 27th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Nor is it difficult to grasp that, as an individual, footing the entire bill myself is beyond my grasp.
So we decided to pool our resources, and formed an organization which would fund those indeavours (not just fundamental research) which, collectively, we’d like to see funded, but which are beyond our individual pocket-books to pay for.
We couldn’t decide what to call this organization, but, after much discussion, we settled on … the government.
Catchy, eh?
November 27th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
…”more modest bar-tabs, …” ugh??
Not in my personal experience at these sorts of events. There is a considerable economic difference between the beer chugging bourbon guzzling NFL types and the wine sogged, scotch crazed philosophy bunch.
“whether there is anything in Heidegger not better said already by Husserl.” Clearly Perry is with my side on this, else he would not have phrased it quite this way. Then again, phenomenology is making an interesting come-back, particularly in the consciousness studies and researches.
I suspect that physicists and mathematicians carry around more expansive laptops and other associated technologies, but still would be much the same. As you point out all too wonderfully: “How fortunate we are to live in a time and place where society is sufficiently robust and diverse as to put aside a bit of its resources…”
I can only hope “dissident” receives only private corporate funding for whatever s/he does to earn sufficient funds that s/he can actually be taxed by some governmental entity. And of course i am sure s/he never ever uses any possible public commons, when s/he seems to prefer to use the money earned to only fund private endeavors. Anti-tax rhetoric seems to always be a personal thing that usually ends up in some necessary hypocritical contradiction. I, for one, am happy to admit that i spent my entire professional career(45 years worth, counting jobs i used to fund graduate school–hell, my undergrad full scholarship was from taxpayer generated endowments), and now retirement, being paid by public largesse for which i gladly and willingly paid my taxes and other necessary support (donations etc. to academic institutions and for my students).
November 27th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
All: The amount of federal dollars which funds research in the basic physical sciences in the US is miniscule compared to our federal budget and GDP. And it is less, as a percentage of GDP, than most other developed nations spend. In high energy physics (discipline singled out only because I know the numbers) both the total amount spent and percentage of GDP is less than what the European Union invests. In the US, it is ~2.3 cents/person/year (for HEP). If Congress voted today to delete all funding for the basic physical sciences, I assure you, we would not notice the difference in our tax bill, or in the federal deficit. (In fact, if Congress deleted ALL discretionary funding there would not be much relief to our federal deficit.)
November 27th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Oops – I forgot the NSF! That raises the amount spent on HEP to 2.5 cents/person/year.
November 27th, 2005 at 7:22 pm
Non-defense discretionary funding, I think you mean.
November 27th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Dissident,
Is there, in your view, any legitimate government expense?
I’d prefer that my tax dollars were not used to support an immoral and unjustified war but in a “democracy” (well sort of) thats how it goes.
If you believe in absolutely no government expenditures at all for any purpose whatsoever, please say so and we can just agree to disagree.
Regards,
Elliot
November 27th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
An interesting possibility arises here. Suppose you include into the mix a small group of philosophers who are also avid football fans. How would they be perceived as a group – by the hotel staff, the other philosophers and the rest of the football crowd?
November 27th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
JoAnne,
Your numbers don’t sound right. Aren’t they about:
DOE: $700-750 million/year
NSF: $150 millon/year
of which $50-100 million goes to theorists.
Given about 300 million Americans, this is a bit less than $3 /year, not cents.
Whether it’s 3 dollars or 3 cents doesn’t change your larger point in the slightest.
November 27th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Peter, I think JoAnne singled out the HEP portion of the budget.
I was never aware of the numbers and I find them really surprising. In comparison, the last figure I dug up on NSERC (Canadian rough equivalent of NSF) is a budget of 850 Million CAD (for a population of roughly 30 Million?), also some provincial governments (especially Ontario’s) support science quite a bit.
My impression was always that science is very well-supported in the US, are those numbers radically different from the usual (pre-Bush) situation?
November 27th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
Oh, sorry, comparing apples and oranges here, I guess you also singled out the HEP?
Anyhow, my confusion, you guys carry on with whatever you were doing…
November 27th, 2005 at 10:54 pm
just be glad you’re not science fiction fans, who are so “different” as to appear a separate humanoid species.
(Pyracantha, just back from a science fiction/fantasy convention)
November 27th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
?What a wonderful group of people, I thought, and how wonderful, and lucky, that the world has managed to find a niche for us. Even if philosophy had no real intellectual content at all — was as silly as astrology or numerology
certainly are….”
Ouch, hurts my ‘astrological compnent’. I suppose the Cycles & Symbols conf. would have set off alarm bells….
Pirsig in the lobby, perhaps….
Intuitive arts, of course it’s nonsense…..
Now, back into the box….
November 28th, 2005 at 12:10 am
John Perry was having a special moment when he wrote this piece. He seems oddly naive for a modern philosopher.
Have to agree with Dissident: Democracy is a mirage; power is definitely not in the hands of the people (even the majority is scammed by fake “representation”).
Gov’t is a necessary evil, though – particularly in the incomprehensibly complex milieu generated by applied science.
The power-mad people in government should support science if only to keep it from being completely controlled by the power-mad people in the world of business.
November 28th, 2005 at 1:32 am
Peter, you are absolutely right – I slipped a couple decimal points! (Please bear in mind, I was sitting on the floor of my deck, almost in the dark, too dirty to be in the house after a hard day’s work in the yard, with every muscle starting to ache….I should know better than to do calculations under those conditions! My calculations are usually much more accurate – I promise…) Anyway, thanks for catching this! In 2005, it was $713M from DOE and $72M from NSF for HEP alone, of which about $60M ($49M from DOE and $10M from NSF)goes to theorists. So it is dollars, not cents, per year per person, but that is still meaningless in the grand scheme of our federal budget and our annual tax bills.
Moshe, these budget figures have been the same for more than a decade or so. Sounds good on the surface, until you add in inflation and realize that HEP has lost about 30% of its spending power during that time. This yearly constant budget with no adjustments for inflation has come to be known as `death by a series of small cuts.’
November 28th, 2005 at 1:51 am
Thanks JoAnne, as you can see I had some problems with my own calculations, and no convincing excuse I’m afraid…
November 28th, 2005 at 3:02 am
If one doesn’t like where one’s government spends its money, either write to one’s senator (convenient if they are on the appropriations commitee), or practice tax resistance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance
Just don’t forget to send a small donation to the NSF
November 28th, 2005 at 4:16 am
Jacques: who said you should foot the entire bill yourself? Of course you can pool your resources with likeminded individuals who share your interests. That’s called voluntary collaboration. It is something very different from appropriating the resources of others who do NOT share your interests and would have none of it. That’s called theft.
JoAnne: so if you steal just a little compared to all the really big theft going on all around you, then it’s OK?
Elliot: yes, there is legitimate government spending. At the core, government is just a monopoly on the use of force. The legitimate use of that monopoly is to prevent individuals and groups from using (or threatening the us of) force against each other. That requires police and courts, for a cost O(1%) of GNP (and probably falling as the economy grows).
November 28th, 2005 at 8:53 am
Dissident,
Given that I think government spending is too LOW at this point we are clearly on divergent paths. I believe that cradle to grave health care, social support and education should be fully funded by the U. S. government (read my lips:NEW TAXES) Of course I am not for government fraud/waste and would drastically cut DOD spending. I would increase funding for scientific research across the physical and life sciences.
Cheers,
Elliot
November 28th, 2005 at 9:10 am
Elliot, your recipe has been tried over and over and over again. It has always, always, always failed.
It’s remarkable to see such inability to learn a simple lesson: if you socialize something, it will eventually collaps. Socialize all of society, and all of society will collapse – even the most autistic among us should have gotten that from the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Socialize part of it, and that part will eventually collapse – witness Western European “welfare” states turning into farewell states, as correctly predicted and wittily put by Benford many years ago.
We all seem to get that state-managed car production results in ridiculous Trabants. So why don’t we get that state-managed “cradle to grave health care, social support and education” will get you exactly the ridiculous results which we are seeing and constantly bemoaning? What kind of absurd mental block is this?
November 28th, 2005 at 10:28 am
The fact that there have been problems with the model does not imply that it is wrong. Give me a sucessful example of a society where your approach has been tried and is sucessful.
Larger societies clearly have harder scaling problems.
Thats our challenge.
Elliot
November 28th, 2005 at 11:02 am
Dissident–Norway has a GDP per capita essentially identical to the US’s, while maintaining a much smaller proportion of the population in poverty. Sweden is doing better than the UK. Iceland also makes the top 10 in GDP per capita. Scandinavia has a better economy than the rest of Western Europe, not worse.
Instantly comparing things to the USSR is absurdly ingenuine, as the violent political oppression and one-party rule are the two things that one first thinks of when thinking of the USSR, and neither of these things have anything to do with what we’re talking about. And yes, we’ve all read John Locke before.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Elliot, you said: “I believe that cradle to grave health care, social support and education should be fully funded by the U. S. government.”
The taxpayer funds the U.S government. I am a taxpayer. I don’t want to fund your policies. I want to distribute my wealth as I see fit. What are you going to do with me?
November 28th, 2005 at 11:21 am
Elliot: the fact that a model fails every time it’s tried, and that the mechanisms causing the failure are elementary and quite well understood, does that also not imply that it’s wrong?
bittergradstudent: regarding Norway, aren’t you forgetting a little detail there? Namely North Sea oil? Sure a small portion of Norwegians is poor – the Norwegian state is flush with petrodollars and using them to plug all holes. You’d have to try really, really hard to be poor in Norway. Needless to say, that’s not a normal situation. Sit down and watch what will happen with the country in a few decades, when the wells will have stopped pumping anything but salt water.
Iceland? That’s a tribe with fewer people than a small continental city and an economy based on fishing, volcanos and tourism. that’s your statistical base?
Cause it sure can’t be the socialist disaster known as the Kingdom of Sweden. If you’ll believe that it’s doing better than the UK, you’ll believe anything.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:22 am
You vote.
If your side loses the vote, well, that’s democracy.
I understand there are some nice ungoverned areas in Africa. Perhaps you could move there?
November 28th, 2005 at 11:27 am
Are you presenting a Law of Nature there, Aaron? The only way to run things is collectively, by majority rule, and those who dislike the result can leave?
Interesting.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:34 am
Democracy’s not so bad. There’s a set of rights that are based on supermajoritarian principles, and pretty much everything else is left to the voters.
I certainly haven’t come across anything better. I know that libertarianism would be much, much worse.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:51 am
Democracy may be the best way to organize a collective decision process. The intersting question is why the decision process should be collective. You seem to be taking that as a given. Why?
November 28th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Did you guys skip the classes on “ignoring the troll” in your Internet 101 courses, or what?
November 28th, 2005 at 11:57 am
The problem with libertarians is that they generally aren’t trolls; they actually believe this stuff.
Take #38 — it completely misses the point.
November 28th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
That’s just the point — the force of reason isn’t going to work here.
November 28th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
David,
You can work for the election of people who reflect your views and I can do the same.
We’ll see how things turn out.
Elliot
November 28th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Aaron, #38 does not miss the point. It asks the simple question at the core of this discussion. I note that you either can’t or won’t answer it.
Sean: so, in your view of the world everybody who doesn’t like collectivism is a “troll” and somebody beyond “the force of reason”?
Wow.
November 28th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
I never said anything about “should”. “Should” is hard. I am talking pragmatics.
November 28th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
This reminds me of the time I tried to have a rational discussion with an objectivist. Oh, what fun that was not.
November 28th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
Ahem, Dissident, if *you* believe that the UK is doing better than Sweden in keeping people out of poverty, then *you* will obviously believe anything. I think that just tells us everything about how much we need listen to your rants.
November 28th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Richard, I don’t “believe” that, I know it. May I suggest that you add some independent sources to your diet of official government statistics? Try this for a start:
http://www.timbro.com/index.asp?page=publications
Among the interesting things you will learn is that real unemployment in Sweden (not the socialist government’s cooked figures) currently runs at about 25%. And if you think that’s something made up by some vast right-wing conspiracy, you may want to check the story on economist Jan Edling and why he quit his job with socialist trade union LO after 18 years.
I’ll grant you this: they didn’t have him committed to a mental hospital for making public the figures which had been known and used internally all along, as would have been done in the old Unmentionable bloc, or declare him “beyond reason”. For that I guess one has to come here and draw the ire of Kommisar Sean.
November 28th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
This reminds me of a political discussion with my Dad….goodness but it’s going to be a looooonnnng week “at home” over Christmas.
November 28th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Yes, Timbro is a very reliable objective source. It’s like asking the Discovery Institute for facts about evolution. (OK, I just wanted to feed the troll a bit more. I will stop now.)
November 28th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
“Did you guys skip the classes on “ignoring the troll” in your Internet 101 courses, or what? ” – Sean
Sean, Jesus was crucified for being a troll, was he not? Where’s the proof that someone who says something the mainstream don’t want to hear is a troll? Surely the trolls, in a sense, are the sycophantics who kick someone just because that’s what the mob is doing.
What is the probability of a mix up, like Pilate and the Chief Priests, and accidentally crucify someone innocent without bothering to check the basic facts? It it zero?
November 28th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Oh yeah, and it’s very courageous to be a dissident and support the views of the rich and powerful and the big corporations. Oops I did it again.
November 28th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
btw, Dissident, Sean probably called you a troll b/c you immediately followed up his post with something that is essentially off topic, which resulted in this comment thread going completely off topic. Not that I didn’t follow along, but…
November 28th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
Richard:
1) Timbro is an independent think tank living off a trust fund which was set up for it a long time ago (so it’s not on anyone’s leash), generating a puny return compared to the billions of tax revenue being poured into the production of state propaganda constantly hammering at it.
2) You don’t really think “the rich and powerful and the big corporations” are libertarian, do you? Status quo is their interest. If you actually know any exceptions, please let me know. I sure could use a rich and powerful ally or two.
Science: thank you. Believe it or not, I believe dissent is good. Even for cosmicvariance. And for Sean.
bittergradstudent: I posted my sincere, immediate reaction to that “poem”. In my eyes, it’s a revolting exercise in hypocrisy.
November 28th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Dissident:
1) Timbro is very much the Swedish equivalent of the Cato Institute in the US. I would not regard their findings any less as propaganda than the “government propaganda” you are referring to. I am not contesting your statement that the unemployment is higher than what the state says. But what do you think it is like being poor in the UK as compared to in Sweden?
2) No, the corporations are not libertarians. They just want to make as much money as possible without any regard for anything else, which is why libertarianism (i.e., what in Europe is called liberalism) fits them very well. (Not that the really big corporations are paying much taxes anyway.)
So I suppose you, Dissident, did not go to public school, receive any publicly funded education, health care or anything? Not to mention you’re never using the internet. So who’s the hypocrit?
November 28th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Of the countries I’ve lived in, including Australia and the US, the one with by far the highest standard of living was Denmark. And from what I hear from people currently living there their economy is still doing great. Their prosperity is largely due to successful high tech industry (electronics etc), which is in large part the result of government investment (via high taxes) in education and research. To suggest, as dissident does, that the “Scandinavian model” doesn’t work, and that these countries are going down the drain, is just outrageous nonsense (akin to comparing string theory to evolution
).
November 28th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
David in comment 55 is not the same David as in comment 33. David in comment 33 is the David writing this comment.
November 28th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
Richard:
1) No. And the 25% unemployment figure is not from Timbro. It’s from the socialist trade union which founded and funds the socialist party responsible for the mess.
2) If you care to look, you will find that big corporations always align themselves with the powers that be, out of sheer necessity – the government has the guns, remember? The historical “Swedish model” was very much an alliance between the socialist party, its owner (the trade union) and big business, notably the Wallenberg dynasty. You will find an interesting account of its rise and fall among Timbro’s titles.
3) You shut somebody in a cage, then call him a hypocrit for demanding freedom after you “gave” him “free” lodging? I guess that makes sense. To you.
P.S. The Internet? You don’t really think this thing is running on state infrastructure, do you?
November 28th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
David #55, Swedes regard Denmark as borderline anarchic…
November 28th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Okay, you’ve managed to prevent a potentially-interesting discussion about philosophers and physicists and academia by starting the billionth pointless shouting match about “taxes=theft.” It’s a big internet out there — argue somewhere else. Any more off-topic comments will be swiftly deleted.
November 28th, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Sean, re-read your post, starting from “More importantly”.
Off-topic?
November 28th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
ah now the admin prevails… thank you
I thought that tangent bypassed the very essence of your post, but I could have been wrong about that too.
So anyway to keep it short.
November 28th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
Hmm..did I do that……redirect my post?
the logic is, that to keep the thinking in context of your post Sean, that one could choose whether or not to follow that link. It is relevant, is it not?
I am in the Blogosphere Sean.