Freudian slip?

Freudian psychoanalysis may be passé in the early 21st century (especially among empiricists!), but who can resist a Freudian explanation for slips of the tongue?

In a conference presentation discussing the causes of environmental harms, the female (and feminist) speaker unwittingly referred to androgenic causes rather than anthropogenic causes. Need I mention that the social context of the conference was far from friendly to women (see post below)?

What are teaching evaluations good for?

Over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, Dr. Freeride evaluates a recent study of how student academic performance is correlated with teaching evaluations.

The study is Carrell, S., & West, J. (2010). Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors Journal of Political Economy, 118 (3), 409-432

Like other studies of the effectiveness of teaching evaluations, it shows that high evaluations of teachers are correlated with grades (good grades match with good evaluations). But it also yields some surprises, such as that the students of more experienced instructors in the first of several calculus courses had lower performance in that first course but better performance in subsequent courses (no matter who taught the later courses). One possibility is that inexperienced teachers are more focused on getting students through the course at hand but less skilled at (or less focused on) teaching higher-level, critical skills.

Here is part of Dr. Freeride's analysis:

To my mind, this is a more complicated situation than students picking up inadequate study skills or teachers just teaching to the tests. Students are often surprised that learning a subject requires learning a sequence of increasingly more sophisticated models, or increasingly more sophisticated analytical techniques or methods of approximation, or what have you. Learning the next chunk of knowledge in the line is not just a matter of adding more on, but also of recognizing the problems with the chunk of knowledge you learned before. This is a surprise to many students...

One conclusion of this study, that student evaluations of faculty performance don't indicate that the students have learned all that we want them to, is no surprise at all. This is part of why institutions that care about teaching hardly ever rely on student evaluations of teaching as the only source of data to evaluate faculty teaching. (At my university, for example, there is regular peer reviewing of teaching, and these peer reviews are important in retention, tenure, and promotion decisions.)

But can even peer review yield insight into how to teach in a way that sticks? At first, I was skeptical that a study of calculus teaching can show much about evaluations and philosophy teaching. But in one respect, we do have this same issue of continuity. Many of my students think that what they are supposed to learn is the course content. Well, sometimes it is... But for the most part, I hope they're noticing the moves I make, and the moves that the various authors make, the writing skills and the argument analysis skills. Our courses aren't sequenced because learning in one class about what Theodor Adorno had to say about pseudo-individualization will not be helpful in another class on internalism about justification in contemporary epistemology. Nonetheless, a student can learn to do things in the first course that will help her excel in the second course. I'm just not sure that those things (and how well they are taught) are what wind up getting evaluated.

Life of a Female Philosopher

Most of the time, the life of a female philosopher at a philosophy conference is the same as a male philosopher’s. Schmoozing, rehashing the last talk over coffee, last-minute work on your paper.

So, how can you tell that you’re a female philosopher at a conference?

1. At the Eastern APA, do you get on the elevator and realize the other philosophers are silently staring at your chest?

2. When discussing your talk with the commentator before your presentation, does a friend of the commentator walk up ask you “Who are you here with?”, meaning “Which male participant are you an appendage of?”

Interdisciplinary Science

I've been thinking about interdisciplinarity lately. What it is, what sorts of problems of inquiry it's good for, what the obstacles to interdisciplinary research are, and how interdisciplinarity differs from other options such as multi-disciplinarity. This seems like a job for: social epistemologists!

The NSF has released a study on US doctoral dissertations that can be identified as conducting interdisciplinary (science?) research. (NSF results here.) On the survey of earned doctorates, doctoral candidates were asked to identify their primary and secondary field of research. In 2008, 27% of respondents indicated that their research was interdisciplinary.

From Science magazine's report on the study:

It's an article of faith among science policymakers that interdisciplinary research is essential to address society's most pressing technological challenges, from energy independence to improved health care. But don't ask them to measure it. The National Academies' upcoming assessment of doctoral research programs, for example, asked departments what percentage of their faculty members were associated with other programs. But the data "aren't very satisfactory," says Charlotte Kuh, study director. Part of the problem is the fuzzy definition of an interdisciplinary program, she adds.

The standard for what counts as interdisciplinary is not set very high, since the fields are cut fairly finely and research that straddles closely related fields is counted as interdisciplinary. Thus, a research project in ecology and plant pathology counts as interdisciplinary. So does endocrinology and environmental toxicology. Thus, 81% of respondents in the biological sciences who considered their research to be interdisciplinary listed a secondary discipline in the same broad field as their primary discipline.

In other words, how much does the survey depend on students' perception of what counts as interdisciplinary? And what sort of meaning does it give to interdisciplinarity to count closely related fields as meeting a standard of interdisciplinarity. It seems to me that if there are obstacles to interdisciplinary research (and I think there are), these are less likely to make a difference when the fields in question are agricultural science and plant pathology than when they are atmospheric science and sociology. Yet, when we hear proclamations of the tough problems that interdisciplinarity will solve, they are more often like the latter than the former.

Again, from the Science News report:

NSF officials say the survey doesn't address the larger question of how difficult or easy it is for students to pursue interdisciplinary degrees, nor the extent to which senior faculty engage in interdisciplinary research themselves. An ongoing NSF survey of academic research piloted a question about how much is being spent on such activities, and where on campus the research takes place. But that proved to be a tough question for research administrators to answer, says one program manager, and the results may not be usable.

Mountain Gorillas in the Congo

Posted with a CSMonitor article titled "Want to save Congo's endangered mountain gorillas? There an app for that" and an earlier article "Standing up for Congo's rare mountain gorillas."

In Virunga National Park,

More than 120 rangers have been killed in recent years for trying to stop the trade in exotic animals, gold, and charcoal from the park.

Philosophy Careers, Autonomy, and Self-direction

My university now offers a bachelor's degree in philosophy, and the degree program has been more successful in its first couple of years than anyone initially expected. Students are transferring in from other programs within the university, students are double-majoring (even with their other degree being in engineering!), and we've recruited students who are willing to enter from Day 1 as philosophy majors. (This is the only university I know of which makes it all but impossible to enter as an undecided major.)

But I have to admit that I have concerns when it comes to recruiting students to the philosophy major in the context of a career-oriented university. I do believe that philosophy prepares people to excel in law, law enforcement, criminal investigation, business, journalism, the clergy, politics, civil service and international development, education, market and policy research, and so many other fields. Yet, in a university where majors are seen as preparatory for disciplinary careers, the philosophy majors I know all expect to become professional philosophers.

I make no judgments about who would be a "good" future professional--there's far, far too much diversity in our profession to play that game. The problem, instead, is my suspicion that the chances of successfully navigating the route to professional philosopher are rather less probable than that of successfully becoming a lawyer, businessperson, journalist, editor, or whatever, while being more vested with mythology and no more dependent on merit. I worry about their future happiness.

So as I say farewell to students on their way to graduate school, I'll be sure to plant the idea in their heads that there are many good and fulfilling careers. And I hope that all our philosophical discussions of virtuosity, of autonomy, and of authenticity will head them down interesting and unexpected paths.

Should the path of professional philosophers seem too flat and narrow, I have two excellent examples of people who trekked off it to find their own:

Martin Noval, who was a visiting professor in my department in the 1980's (before my time here) leads treks in the Himalayas and trips through India.

Jack Turner, formerly a professor at Univ. of Illinois, Chicago is now the president of Exum Mountain Guides.

Scientific Realism

In my philosophy of science course, we've been discussing Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism and critiquing the observable/non-observable distinction. This movie is an artistic representation of magnetic fields, a useful supplement to our conversation.

The filmmakers describe their work:

Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers' produced by fleeting electrons. Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

A slide to support my previous post

By Mark Goetz.

Firing on PowerPoint Bullets

PowerPoint: yes, it's ubiquitous. Yes, much depends on the presenter's abilities. Yes, there are other poor presentation methods. BUT...

From the NYTimes:

WORLD
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of U.S. military commanders and reached the level of near obsession.

This article doesn't pull its punches!

Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making.

......

No one is suggesting that PowerPoint is to blame for mistakes in the current wars, but the program did become notorious during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. As recounted in the book “Fiasco” by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin Press, 2006), Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who led the allied ground forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, grew frustrated when he could not get Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander at the time of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, to issue orders that stated explicitly how he wanted the invasion conducted, and why. Instead, General Franks just passed on to General McKiernan the vague PowerPoint slides that he had already shown to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary at the time.

Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.

The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

And this news article links to two short opinion pieces in journals, here and here, which I'll consider putting in my next critical thinking syllabus. From the second of these, by T. X. Hammes:

Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make.

Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them.

Philosophical Minds are Everywhere

EDUCATION | April 18, 2010

The Examined Life, Age 8
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Philosophical reasoning taught in the second grade. From the New York Times:

“A lot of people try to make philosophy into an elitist discipline,” says Professor Wartenberg, who has been visiting the school, the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School of Excellence, since 2007. “But everyone is interested in basic philosophical ideas; they’re the most basic questions we have about the world.”

Gareth Matthews, a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, concluded that their curiosity and sense of wonder make children ripe for philosophic inquiry.

“The world is new to them and they want to figure things out,” says Professor Matthews, who has written extensively about children and philosophy. “Young children very often engage in reasoning that professional philosophers can recognize as philosophical, but typically their parents or teachers don’t react in a way that encourages them. They might say, ‘That’s cute,’ but they don’t engage the children in thinking further about whatever the issue is.”

Friedrich is a Macho Man

OK, time for a confession.

I've tried to take Nietzsche seriously. Really, I have. I even have a gorgeous 4-volume hardbound set I inherited from my father, a Sonderausgabe. I don't give it prime bookcase real estate, but I do hold onto it--you know, just in case I'm ever overcome with a desire to read Human, All Too Human in German.

Basically, the problem is that Nietzsche makes me cringe or giggle--or both.

It's true that the rejection of metaphysics should make his thought attractive to me. And, OK, I get it that he wrote some sensible things, like "All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses" (Beyond Good and Evil).

But what do we do about the misogyny?

"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."

Or the misanthropy?

"A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation."

My first exposure to Nietzsche was in an undergraduate existentialism class in which the reading assignment included excerpts from a number of his works. I came into class with the thought that just about everything I had read was a fancy-schmancy way of saying "Let's get high." I didn't detect a great deal of seriousness in it, much less mental stability or even genius. How shocked I was to see the reverence with which these passages were treated! Somehow ironic, given that I had interpreted parts of the assignment as a send-up of hero-worship and a goad to independent thinking and critique.

And then, there is Ecce Homo. Wikipedia:

According to one of Nietzsche's most prominent English translators, Walter Kaufmann, the book offers "Nietzsche's own interpretation of his development, his works, and his significance" (Kaufmann 1967: 201). The book contains several chapters with self-laudatory titles, such as "Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Write Such Good Books" and "Why I Am a Destiny".

I've decided that when it comes to Nietzschean scholarship, one can do no better than to turn to the Village People:

Every man wants to be a macho macho man
to have the kind of body, always in demand

You can best believe that, he's a macho man
ready to get down with, anyone he can

Funky with his body, he's a king
call him Mister Eagle, dig his chains
You can best believe that, he's a macho man
likes to be the leader, he never dresses grand

Every man ought to be a macho macho man,
To live a life of freedom, machos make a stand,
Have their own life style and ideals,
Possess the strength and confidence, life's a steal,
You can best believe that he's a macho man
He's a special person in anybody's land.

Dig my big thick mustache!

Macho, macho man
I've got to be a macho! HEY!

Village People - Macho Man (version longue)
Uploaded by scorpiomusic. - Explore more music videos.

How Is This Not Hypocrisy?

I think it's creepy that some percentage of my e-mail spam comes from paper mills.

How can it not be disturbing, then, to read about teachers rationalizing the propriety of farming out their work to grading mills?

U.S. | April 07, 2010
The Choice: That Term Paper Might be Graded in Bangalore
By JACQUES STEINBERG
If a question about your credit card statement can be handled in India, why can't the scoring of your college term paper?

The argument goes like this: freed from the tedium of grading, professors (as well as teaching assistants) can spend their time on things that really matter. Presumably that doesn't include giving useful feedback to their students. Perhaps this could be taken a step further: the grading mills could write the assignments, too, to increase their efficiency. Oooh, and perhaps they could work together with the paper mills for some overall economic efficiency--a set list of comments could be associated with the various papers it would be possible for students to buy.

This is a sure-fire recipe for squelching creativity. It treats not just students but also teachers and TA's as elements in an assembly line. I would hate to think of my teaching that way! (And in fact, don't get me started on the topic of rubrics...)

Local Event: Lecture on Science and Religion

Are some readers of this blog local to western New York?

PZ Meyers of the liberal, godless, and hilarious Pharyngula blog is speaking on the RIT campus this Thursday, April 1 at 8:30 pm in the Webb Auditorium. The topic is "The Irreconcilability of Science and Religion."

And the very next day at 3pm the philosophy department is sponsoring a philosophy of science lecture on quantum mechanics by Steve Weinstein of the University of Waterloo--should be a thought-provoking accompaniment to the seminar I'm teaching on "Physics and Metaphysics."

Feminist Theory and Analytic Sentences

I just came across a discussion of the analytic/synthetic distinction in a philosophy of science textbook (one that's still in print and available through Wadsworth).

As the only example of an analytic sentence, the (male) author gives

"All women are female"

with the further explanation that it's analytic because the "meaning of the words determines its truth and because nothing that has happened in the world, can happen, or will happen, can change its truth status."

This seems like a good time to bring up the sex/gender distinction, something that is taught in introductory women's studies classes. We may go on to question and trouble the distinction itself, but a good place to start is to note:

1. sex (female) is biological and gender (woman) is social

2. the male-female sex dichotomy does not hold perfectly in humans. Indeed, for about 1% of the human population one or more sexual features are out of step with the others--chromosomal abnormalities, hormonal abnormalities, anatomical abnormalities. Some argue that to call these "abnormalities" is itself ignorant of how common they are. Moreover, in the US, about .25% of the population has changed gender.

And yes, the beautiful woman in that image is not female.

Philosophy of Science? Get Over It!

Jon Butterworth of high-energy physics addresses philosopher of science Nick Maxwell in the pages of the Guardian:

"Come on philosophers of science: you must do better than this!"

The play:

Act I--Writer and political activist George Monbiot, in his Guardian column, contemplates why so many people are so slow to believe in and act on climate change, despite the massive amounts of data that have been available for years.

"The trouble with trusting complex science: There is no simple way to battle public hostility to climate change research. As the psychologists show, facts barely sway us anyway."

Act II--Philosopher of science Nick Maxwell interprets the problem that Monbiot is getting at as being that we can't trust scientists about climate change data because they deceive us even about the nature of what they're up to.

"Scientists should stop deceiving us: In holding that the aim of science is truth alone, they misrepresent its real aims."

Act III--Particle physicist Jon Butterworth calls Maxwell out with "Come on, philosophers of science, you must do better than this."

I have to say, I really do like Butterworth's piece, from its start:

I strive to retain respect for philosophy and philosophers, really I do. Some of my best friends are philosophers. I would hate to dismiss a whole area of intellectual endeavour as a sterile playground for clever people creating and demolishing pointless academic fashions.

To its finish:

Science often falls short of its ideals, and the climate debate has exposed some shortcomings. Science is done by people, who need grants, who have professional rivalries, limited time, and passionately held beliefs. All these things can prevent us from finding out what works. This is why the empiricism and pragmatism of science are vital, and why when scientific results affect us all, and speak against powerful political and financial interests, the openness and rigour of the process become ever more important.

All three of these have something right--and righteous--to say.

1. Monbiot is here repeating a thought that gets passed around from scientist to philosopher to political activist like a lucky coin. Namely, the science of climate change has been certain enough for a decade to justify strong political action. What has been needed is not more science (not that more science hasn't been worth doing!), but rather, more insight into motivating people and politicians and economic systems to do the compassionate and rational thing. If the problem is that anxiety causes selective disbelief, then only treating the anxiety will lead to rational action.
2. So I'm not sure why Nick Maxwell takes this as an opening to point out that there is a distinct difference between how science actually operates and the popular mythology of scientific method. Perhaps his idea is that if folks saw science as being driven by values but nonetheless a rational and trustworthy enterprise, then seeing a relation between scientists' results and their values wouldn't lead to distrust. Surely Maxwell is right that values do play a role in science--and thank goodness for that, because it is the guidance of social values that leads scientists to investigate questions like whether climate conditions could make life hard on many people rather than questions like how many grains of sand there are on the beach at Cape Cod.
3. At any rate, it's clear that there are times to do philosophy of science and other times to fight the fight. Butterworth is right: "Science is a form of systemized pragmatism." The irony here is that one need not disagree with the general thrust of Maxwell's argument to agree with Butterworth that the point misses the point. This is certainly not the only time I've seen philosophers of science think that scientists have failed to examine their own assumptions and methodologies.