Affirmative Action for Conservative Professors

[Agathon]

Originally posted by skywalker

Agathon - I believe it has been said before, but I think the students in your classes on formal logic should be a very interesting case study.

I'm not the one that has problems with logic. People call me illogical when they really mean that one of my premises is false - that wouldn't make me illogical, just mistaken.

Since law requires responsibility, does that make any proponents of law inherently religious? I "believe" in free will, in the sense that my actions are a product of my mind and physical laws - would you call me religious? Free will is a philisophical concept, not a religious or scientific one.

Really, then why were the philosophers who introduced it in the current sense particularly interested in the problem of reconciling human action with the existence of an omnipotent God?

And why is the notion of moral responsibility we have dervied from a notion of sin?

Plato doesn't talk about free will and Aristotle is a compatibilist. The chief worriers about free will were Boethius and Augustine - who were unsurprisingly Christians.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
I would argue that the perception of free will is a philosophical construct.

Implies perception, and not actual free will. Physical laws ought to have no influence over actual free will.

I'm with Agathon on this one.

Need I explain, again, why a deterministic (or even probabilistic) universe is not in any way inconsistent with free will?

*sigh*

I make my decisions, no one else. Free will is the ability to make decisions for oneself. My mind makes decisions based on sensory information and its internal structure, based on the laws of physics.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
I'm not the one that has problems with logic. People call me illogical when they really mean that one of my premises is false - that wouldn't make me illogical, just mistaken.

"Free will is a religious concept, not a scientific one," is an analytic a priori statement, and thus to assert it is illogic

Really, then why were the philosophers who introduced it in the current sense particularly interested in the problem of reconciling human action with the existence of an omnipotent God?

And why is the notion of moral responsibility we have dervied from a notion of sin?

Plato doesn't talk about free will and Aristotle is a compatibilist. The chief worriers about free will were Boethius and Augustine - who were unsurprisingly Christians.

More illogic - ad hominem this time. Did ANY of the ancient Greek philosophers talk about free will? (I don't recall any that did from the unit I just finished on them in history, and my own researches, but I could be wrong.) If not, the simplest explanation is that philospophers happened to start debating free will sometime after Europe was Christianized, and thus would obviously be trying to reconcile God with their philosphies.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by JohnT

So to some up, the reason that conservative views fare badly at university is mainly because they are not intellectually respectable.

I would say that the reason why conservative views fare badly is because they are not copacetic with a group of people who think they know more than everybody else - after all, the idea that other people* know how to run their lives better than the intellectual elite is particularly galling to that very elite: it calls into doubt their worthiness, their importance, their cherished beliefs.

*especially those nasty, ignorant masses.

But when we elect people to run governments and be university professors we do so in the hope that they do know more than us.

Saying that the masses are ignorant is just an emotional appeal. Sure, most people know a lot less than I do about Greek philosophy. That doesn't mean they are stupid - it's just a reflection of the fact that they haven't spent the time I have learning about it. Same goes for politics - here everyone thinks he's an expert, but only the expert really is. The corolllary of this is that the "expert" has to submit himself to questioning by anyone who asks, rather than just pontificating to people. And for the record, most university professors I know are happy to answer questions from the layman for the simple reason that they are employed for the public good. If people here ask me something about Plato, I'll try to give them an honest answer if I have the time, because the public pays my wages. And you'd be surprised how often people want to know about him.

Most Conservative views (except those on economics) fare badly because they are ignorant views. Just ask a social scientist about the war on drugs.

In short, most views that are not, in a broad sense, in accordance with or at least take notice of the "secular scientific" worldview are rejected. As Ming has proved on this forum, any attempt to say why homosexuality is wrong really requires a religious standpoint.

I'm not picking on Ben either, I'm not saying that religion can't help people or that it has no redeeming features whatsoever. What I am saying is that it has no place in social policy because we live in a secular state.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by skywalker

Originally posted by Agathon
I'm not the one that has problems with logic. People call me illogical when they really mean that one of my premises is false - that wouldn't make me illogical, just mistaken.

"Free will is a religious concept, not a scientific one," is an analytic a priori statement, and thus to assert it is illogic

It's based on historical claims. Hence it is no more analytic than my claiming that "atomic weight" is a scientific concept.

Really, then why were the philosophers who introduced it in the current sense particularly interested in the problem of reconciling human action with the existence of an omnipotent God?

And why is the notion of moral responsibility we have dervied from a notion of sin?

Because our ordinary notion of responsibility is concerned primarily with effects. You want to sort out the people who are dangerous by nature from those who are dangerous by accident. Correspondingly, you want to sort out the people to whom it's beneficial to give incentives from those who only accidentally produce good outcomes.

It's only when you start thinking of divine reward and punishment that the outcomes become less important than one's mental state. Kant pointed this out very clearly with his conception of the "good will". And surprise surprise, he was clever enough to realize that only if God existed would this make sense.

Plato doesn't talk about free will and Aristotle is a compatibilist. The chief worriers about free will were Boethius and Augustine - who were unsurprisingly Christians.

More illogic - ad hominem this time.

Jesus ****! This is NOT an ad hominem argument. Where did I attack the character of any of these men as a basis for refutation - I simply noted their views. That's not even an argument, but an historical claim, so accusing me of a fallacy is to show your own ignorance of what a fallacy is.

Did ANY of the ancient Greek philosophers talk about free will? (I don't recall any that did from the unit I just finished on them in history, and my own researches, but I could be wrong.)

The Stoics worried about predestination and God's omnipotence. You probably didn't read their stuff because it is all in fragments (like the Presocratics' work). They were a major influence on later theologians (and on enlightenment figures like Hume).

Aristotle in the NE talks about the different ways in which we can say a person is the cause of an action. He gives what is called a compatibilist account (the very first one).

If not, the simplest explanation is that philospophers happened to start debating free will sometime after Europe was Christianized, and thus would obviously be trying to reconcile God with their philosphies.

I think that's also the case, since it is much more pressing when divine judgement is involved. I thought you were disagreeing with me - why say basically the same thing? Why would they start debating it then unless it was intimately bound up with a religious conception of the world. And you'll find that all these philosophers, from Augustine onwards, were working within the Judeo-Christian tradition or its Islamic offshoot.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by skywalker

I think liberalism is winning because intellectual != intelligent. It's always fashionable to be "liberal" among academics.

No - it's always fashionable to try and poke holes in every other academic's ideas for your own gain.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
It's based on historical claims. Hence it is no more analytic than my claiming that "atomic weight" is a scientific concept.

free will is based on history?

Because our ordinary notion of responsibility is concerned primarily with effects. You want to sort out the people who are dangerous by nature from those who are dangerous by accident. Correspondingly, you want to sort out the people to whom it's beneficial to give incentives from those who only accidentally produce good outcomes.

It's only when you start thinking of divine reward and punishment that the outcomes become less important than one's mental state. Kant pointed this out very clearly with his conception of the "good will". And surprise surprise, he was clever enough to realize that only if God existed would this make sense.

Huh? I missed something here - you only punish the person who is "responsible" for a crime.

Jesus ****! This is NOT an ad hominem argument. Where did I attack the character of any of these men as a basis for refutation - I simply noted their views. That's not even an argument, but an historical claim, so accusing me of a fallacy is to show your own ignorance of what a fallacy is.

You are arguing that free will is religious because the people who came up with it were religious. That's essentially attacking the argument by attacking the arguer.

The Stoics worried about predestination and God's omnipotence. You probably didn't read their stuff because it is all in fragments (like the Presocratics' work). They were a major influence on later theologians (and on enlightenment figures like Hume).

Actually, we did study them, and the Stoics were fatalists - which shows that the lack of free will is also "religious"

Aristotle in the NE talks about the different ways in which we can say a person is the cause of an action. He gives what is called a compatibilist account (the very first one).

I know those - the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The first three are essentially just "laws of physics" things, and the third is ridiculous - the concept that something exists in order to fulfill a need, rather than the other way around, is stupid. I don't see what it has to do with free will, though (except inasmuch as the final cause is religious in essence).

I think that's also the case, since it is much more pressing when divine judgement is involved. I thought you were disagreeing with me - why say basically the same thing? Why would they start debating it then unless it was intimately bound up with a religious conception of the world. And you'll find that all these philosophers, from Augustine onwards, were working within the Judeo-Christian tradition or its Islamic offshoot.

What's the point, though, that they were religious? I'm not religious, and I think the fact that I have free will is justifiable on perfectly nonreligious grounds. Free will = I determine my actions. Since I determine my actions, I must have free will.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by skywalker

Originally posted by Agathon
It's based on historical claims. Hence it is no more analytic than my claiming that "atomic weight" is a scientific concept.

free will is based on history?

Don't be deliberately obtuse. If we want to know how an idea came into being and reached its present form we look at its history.

Free will doesn't make sense given the scientific world view. We can have a view of free will where my decisions are caused by my beliefs and desires, but that's not the kind of freedom most people associate with free will. Historically, some people have posited an immaterial soul to explain why our desires and decisions are not subject to ordinary causality.

Huh? I missed something here - you only punish the person who is "responsible" for a crime.

And ordinarily that means punishing the person whose beliefs and desires caused him to commit the crime rather than someone who did it out of ignorance or under duress. It's valuable to be able to distinguish causes in this way because we don't end up killing or locking up people who are not likely to do bad things in future.

It is one thing to give that account and another to suppose there is some magical thing called free will which removes my decisions and mental states from causality.

The former is consistent with a "deterrence" view of punishment, the latter with a "retributivist" view of punishment. Conservatives are almost all retributivists.

You are arguing that free will is religious because the people who came up with it were religious. That's essentially attacking the argument by attacking the arguer.

No. I argue that they came up with it because it is required to solve certain problems that theism creates. That is not an ad hominem argument.

Actually, we did study them, and the Stoics were fatalists - which shows that the lack of free will is also "religious"

Their view is more complex than that. They also want to understand in what way your decision is yours and in what sense you exercise agency over your own life. I once wrote a paper on this which I will have to dig out.

I know those - the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The first three are essentially just "laws of physics" things, and the third is ridiculous - the concept that something exists in order to fulfill a need, rather than the other way around, is stupid. I don't see what it has to do with free will, though (except inasmuch as the final cause is religious in essence).

Because you are thinking of the wrong treatise. That stuff is in the Physics and the Metaphysics. I am talking about the Nichomachean Ethics, specifically Book Gamma which deals with voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary action. It has little directly to do with the four causes.

What's the point, though, that they were religious? I'm not religious, and I think the fact that I have free will is justifiable on perfectly nonreligious grounds. Free will = I determine my actions. Since I determine my actions, I must have free will.

Do your beliefs and desires determine your actions? If so, what determines them? Are you a physical creature subject to causal laws? If so, how do you fit free will in (the old Quantum mechanics argument doesn't work because then your free will is no more under your control than the decay of a radioactive particle is under its control).

Free will is a ridiculous concept. If our will really is free then why aren't we surprised by our own decisions? How is it that we can largely predict what other people are going to do?

[Agathon]

As for the Stoics attitude to free will. They faced criticisms that their determinism made their moral exhortations worthless and the idea of a moral life as an attainment worthless too. After all what would be the point of trying to do the right thing if everything was going to happen anyway?

If you want a good discussion, pick up The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics edited by Brad Inwood. There is a paper called "Stoic Determinism" by Dorothea Frede in it that is quite good.

[Berzerker]

Presumably this only concerns the humanities and social sciences (and probably excludes economics departments and business schools which are much more right wing).

Yes, when it comes to the real world - economics and business - conservative teachers dominate and when it comes to group hug therapy over the evil white man running the world the liberals dominate.

[Agathon]

*Surprised that history and poli sci have nothing to do with the "real world".

[Ben Kenobi]

Agathon:

Good post. Tracking down where ideas comes from, I believe we would call that Epistemology? I'm not sure how that would be different from history, since we are just dealing with ideas, and not events.

I argue that they came up with it because it is required to solve certain problems that theism creates.

They faced criticisms that their determinism made their moral exhortations worthless and the idea of a moral life as an attainment worthless too. After all what would be the point of trying to do the right thing if everything was going to happen anyway?

A debate which can also be applied to Islam, in their views of predestination. It is only by developing a concept of free will can one avoid the problems of determinism.

People are not entirely predictible, and sometimes our decisions do surprise us. I know mine do sometimes, but we would not anticipate many sudden changes, due to the fact that we change slowly over time. In fact, I'll bet we get less surprised by our own actions as we get older.

The former is consistent with a "deterrence" view of punishment, the latter with a "retributivist" view of punishment. Conservatives are almost all retributivists.

Interesting. I would consider myself more on the deterrence side of things, yet I would be a conservative as well. Of course, this also has to do with my belief that there is no one who cannot be rehabilitated, or at least, at the time of sentencing, no way to be sure that we have a person who cannot be rehabilitated.

[Ramo]

The reason why professors are typically on the left is simply that rightwingers generally value money more than leftwingers. And since academia isn't all that profitable compared to most professions that require highly educated people, educated conservatives go off to more lucrative areas like the corporate ladder instead of competing with educated leftists in the academic world. And this is true not only in liberal arts, but most fields. That's why, for instance, physics profs aren't usually conservative.

Business is an exception of course, but that's because you have to be evil (thus on the right) to study business. That's also why business is such an intellectually vapid field (no smart leftists to compete with the stupid conservatives. ).

[Ned]

Originally posted by Asher
Another thing an "intellectually responsible" person would be able to do is differenciate between "Conservatives" and "Religious Conservatives".

Not all Conservatives are religious, not all Liberals are atheists, so stop pigeonholing to make a convenient argument.

Right.

To me, a conservative favors liberty over equality. This has nothing to do with religion. The concern for liberty leads both to democracy and to free market economics.

It also leads to Roe v. Wade and the stong protection of the right of privacy. But this is where the left/right gets confused as the religions oppose abortion. The right of privacy is essentially a conservative position.

I also find it interesting that the left has adopted much of the ethos of Christianity without given Christianity any credit whatsoever. To be concerned for the poor and to recognize the essential equality of man is Christian! The Christian ethos has lead to the abolishment of slavery and to the protection of all downtrodden classes. This ethos is the source of all empowerment movements. Christianity is the very core of liberalism.

[rev]

I also find it interesting that the left has adopted much of the ethos of Christianity without given Christianity any credit whatsoever. To be concerned for the poor and to recognize the essential equality of man is Christian!

No, it's human. Christians can be human, too.