
Put the “Ph” Back in PhD - pooya72
http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2015/summer/forum/rethinking-put-the-ph-back-in-phd/index.html
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jimrandomh
I don't think the problem is with PhDs failing to engage with philosophy, but
rather, with the name "philosophy" having been hijacked and turned towards
something that isn't worth studying. When you say students should learn more
epistemology, I'm 100% on board - but when you say students should learn more
"philosophy including epistemology", I suddenly anticipate them being exposed
to a bunch of low-quality thinking reflecting long-dispelled confusions.

Most of the good philosophy work has moved to other labels, like
"rationality", out of a need to distance itself from the concentrated
confusion being taught in universities. If you want to teach good philosophy,
great! But please, please don't expose your students to the concentrated
confusion that passes for most of philosophy; apply a strong filter and teach
your students to apply that filter themselves.

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littletimmy
It may be that philosophy is not worth studying, but this is something a
person has to realize for himself. As Wittgenstein said, it is a ladder that
must be thrown away AFTER a person has used it.

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jimrandomh
Or... they could skip the Wittgenstein and go straight to Kahneman, Yudkowsky
and Pearl. Why would you study something that you expected to later decide
wasn't worth it, when there's so much good stuff?

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littletimmy
Mainly to identify the good stuff. So let's take the example of the subject
political economy. Political economy has a rich philosophical tradition. You
start at Hobbes, then you've got Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Marx, Ricardo, Mills,
Keynes, Hayek, Friedman... Each of these philosophers cites a previous
philosopher and has transformed our thinking of political economy in some way.
You cannot just ignore all of them because then you'd have no clue about how
the world came to be the way it is and when you read contemporaries you'd have
no frame of reference. So, who do you eliminate?

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jimrandomh
There is a difference between learning philosophy, and learning the history of
philosophy. We don't need more historians; we need people able to think
clearly about hard questions. Not understanding how the world came to be the
way it is would be unfortunate, but the opportunity cost of making everyone
study history is just too high.

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littletimmy
Thinking about hard questions absolutely requires history, particularly in a
field like economics. Studying macroeconomics without knowing the history of
political economy is useless.

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dbecker
When Casadevall (and others) argue for more ethics and epistemology in the
first year of a PhD program, they should be transparent that they would take
away time and attention for much of the material currently taught in the first
year of PhD programs.

I'm not arguing that it's not a worthwhile tradeoff. I just wish we were more
transparent about these tradeoffs when discussing what we add to a curriculum.

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misnome
I don't necessarily see that this is particularly relevant. The point of a PhD
is surely to show that a student is _capable_ of performing at the very peak
of their field. The well-roundedness should come later, and just like an
undergraduate degree is not "Job Training" and postgraduate one doesn't
instantly make you a leading scientist.

Also, from what I saw of other students doing PhD's in the US, they already
take several years longer than us in Europe because of the lack of
specialisation in undergraduate degrees - they spend the first few years in
effect "Catching up".

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c_prompt
Conceptually, I agree with his view that without a better understanding and
appreciation for philosophy, humanity is limited by the progress science
makes. But if I'm understanding his reasoning, he wants more philosophy so
that scientists can become well-rounded generalists, reduce competitiveness,
and better communicate to voters and politicians. These might be valuable
benefits but, to me, humanity could benefit most if scientists had a much
better understanding of rational ethics. IMO, universities are churning out
too many unethical scientists and, for proof, I offer how much money goes into
government-related projects (e.g., weapons, surveillance, control). A rational
understanding of ethics is needed to reduce the research and funding of the
plethora of destructive and control-oriented efforts. Not to mention that if
scientists ever truly learned rational ethics, they'd no longer ask for
government grants as they'd know it's wrong to take stolen money.

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disgruntledphd2
I was totally with you until the last sentence. I suspect our definitions of
rational ethics may differ. Quick, to the philosophers, they can solve this!

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vezzy-fnord
The issues facing scientific advancement and discourse have nothing to do with
a lack of "thinking big" in postgraduate education. A lot of people do think
big, but there are plenty of economic barriers - some intrinsic, others
artificial, that prevent whatever vague idealism the author is going for.

Nor is it the fault of scientists that voters and politicians do not
understand them. More often than not, it's a refusal to understand or apathy
towards doing it. In fact, politics is not inherently concerned with factual
information almost at a fundamental level. If voters have no drive to
autodidact, there will be no one out there to spoonfeed them information.

Quantitative skills are already part of scientific practice at its core. So is
ethics, particularly over the past half century. Learning to code and debating
utilitarianism will not change anything that the author is concerned about.

