[Vision2020] Error Corrected: Re: Health Education: A Conspiracy? A bit off the subject now though

[Joe Campbell]

Scott Anderson, conservative columnist for the M-P Daily News, studied
philosophy at WSU. You can lead them to water but you can't make them
drink -- contrary to some conservative fears about the Academy!

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
> I stand corrected that U of I Professor Emeritus Nick Gier did not
> supervise Pastor of Moscow's Christ Church Wilson's thesis in
> Philosophy at the U of I.
>
> I should have checked on this issue before making this implication...
>
> I'm relieved that Gier did not appear angry at my false suggestion...
>
> Sorry.
>
> I try to fact check what I post publicly, but I seriously erred in this case.
>
> On 11/26/10, Gier, Nicholas <NGIER at uidaho.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Ted,
>>
>> Thanks for your post and all the others who posted on this thread. Let me
>> correct, once again (I've done this on the Vision previously), that I did
>> not direct Doug Wilson's MA thesis.  We wisely agreed that someone else
>> should be chair and that I would not even be a member of his committee.
>>
>> In light of your comments about freedom of the will, it is significant to
>> note that was Wilson's topic.  In the early days he defended free-will but
>> now that he is a "crawling-across-cut glass" Calvinist he no longer believes
>> in it.
>>
>> By the way, check out the New St. Andrews website and the first item about
>> "I'll meet you in the alley."  This is muscular Christianity in the extreme.
>>  Did they expect this to appeal to young women recruits?  I guess that the
>> message for them is that at NSA they will meet "real" Christian men.
>>
>> Ken: I'm happy to inform you that the UI philosophy department has saved
>> itself by turning to applied philosophy.  We had one of the few hires this
>> year and we are now searching for a person in environmental philosophy.
>> Sadly, both positions are not tenure-track but renewable appointments.
>>
>> Tenure is slowly disappearing at the nation's universities and our dominant
>> position in cutting edge research will be lost. Recent literature has
>> emphasized that fact that one of the reasons for U.S. dominance in the 20th
>> Century was publicly funded research at land-grant universities by tenured
>> or tenure-track professors.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>> Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus
>> Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com on behalf of Ted Moffett
>> Sent: Fri 11/26/2010 2:25 PM
>> To: Kenneth Marcy
>> Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Health Education: A Conspiracy? A bit off the
>> subject now though
>>
>> Consider the students at New Saint Andrews college in Moscow, many of whom I
>> am sure would score high on the SAT, and have IQs well above 100, yet also
>> consider that their views are in many respects consistent with the Tea Party
>> on important issues, one of which is anthropogenic climate warming, which I
>> think is the most critical problem facing humanity.
>>
>> Tea Party darling Sarah Palin is well known for making scientifically
>> laughable statements on global warming; and her pro-fossil fuel industry,
>> opposition to government regulation of CO2 emissions stance I think is
>> common among so called "Tea Party" followers: global warming is a hoax or a
>> fraud.
>>
>> Speaking of teaching Philosophy as a means to increase the educational and
>> critical thinking skills of the public, consider that Pastor Douglas Wilson
>> of Christ Church, involved with the religious ideology behind New Saint
>> Andrews, has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Idaho.  U of I
>> Professor Emeritus Nick Gier, if I recall correctly, supervised Wilson's
>> thesis...
>>
>> I suspect that if tested on their academic logical capabilities, Wilson, as
>> well as many New Saint Andrews students, would do reasonably well.
>>
>> My point in simple: many people who should have developed critical thinking
>> skills, who are intelligent, who are reasonably educated about the world on
>> many levels, still assert an anti-science and anti-progressive agenda,
>> refusing to accept as probable that humans evolved from simpler organisms,
>> or that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is substantial, both
>> very hotly debated.in the public sphere, regardless of the scientific
>> evidence that the debate is warranted.  Many also oppose gay or women's
>> rights on specific points, gay marriage or abortion.
>>
>> Ed Iverson from New Saint Andrews College (librarian with some science
>> education credentials) has written several op-eds in the Moscow/Pullman
>> Daily News attacking the integrity of climate science, as does the well
>> known blog right-mind.us, hosted by a well known member of Christ Church,
>> who appears to be an intelligent person, while he in my opinion applies a
>> rather extreme confirmation bias filter to climate science findings, devoted
>> to undermining the science supporting human impacts on climate.
>>
>> Belief in "free will" can distort an objective analysis of the evidence
>> regarding why human beings believe what they believe on many important
>> issues in life.  Why are most people born in Iran Islamic, and most in the
>> US Christian?  "Free will?"  No, they are conditioned by their culture into
>> the dominant ideology, with biologically based needs for conformism at
>> work.  They may appear to be making free choices about their religious
>> beliefs to their own minds, but this is often illusion.
>>
>> We are emotional socialized animals who for the most part make decisions
>> based on peer pressure and emotions, with powerful intellectual filters
>> unconsciously suppressing evidence contrary to beliefs in which their is
>> substantial emotional investment.  Life after death (soul?), for example.
>> The intellect, regardless of how capable or well educated, is often utilized
>> to argue confirmation bias filtered positions; and sometimes the more
>> capable and educated the person, the more convincingly they can construct
>> intelligent appearing logical arguments for positions that are in fact
>> anti-science and in opposition to human rights.
>>
>> The person who objectively surveys all the evidence on a given issue and
>> dispassionately applies logic to arrive at a conclusion is rare.
>> -------------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1 at frontier.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday 26 November 2010 07:31:18 Joe Campbell wrote:
>>> > <[snip]> ... but likely in the near future the MA program will be cut
>>> > and
>>> > I'll have undergraduate "readers" instead. <[snip]>
>>>
>>> Even if the MA in Philosophy is shelved until better economic times
>>> return,
>>> I
>>> wonder whether there may be opportunity for applied philosophy efforts to
>>> keep
>>> the Philosophy Department reasonably intact. For example, undergraduate
>>> and
>>> graduate courses in business ethics for the business curricula, economic
>>> philosophy for the economics programs, and political philosophy for the
>>> political science and public administration programs. These traditional
>>> areas
>>> could (continue to) be augmented with environmental philosophy, and a
>>> newer
>>> look at educational philosophy.
>>>
>>> On the latter topic I wonder whether we ought not examine the plebeian
>>> assumption that personal educational responsibility to society ends when
>>> one
>>> is able to drop out of high school, and that personal efforts beyond that
>>> are
>>> optional. Perhaps a better notion is that there exists some basic minimum
>>> of
>>> expected educational achievement and ongoing competence that should be
>>> expected of all adult citizens throughout their lives. As the decades roll
>>> by,
>>> the contents of that minimum may change, and with those changes, citizens
>>> are
>>> then obligated to meet those new standards, preferably, perhaps, with at
>>> least
>>> some minimal assistance to do so. For discussion purposes, I take the
>>> minimum
>>> standard to be the current requirements for public high school graduation.
>>>
>>> > Also, I think it is a mistake to think that a lack of logic or critical
>>> > thinking skills is at fault. My own view is that the fault lies with the
>>> > increase in private education and isolationism
>>>
>>> While it may be the case that pedagogical pandering to bygone ages of
>>> frontier
>>> foraging and farming may attempt to evoke rugged individualism and
>>> libertarian
>>> license, observation of contemporary circumstances suggests explanations
>>> that
>>> require less conscious and coordinated effort to attain the status quo.
>>> Simple
>>> inertia against continuing personal educational work, lethargy and
>>> laziness,
>>> combined with  mindsets disinclined toward ideas and theory, and wanting
>>> to
>>> get on with the practical realities of life, keep the majority away from
>>> not
>>> only post-secondary education but from revisiting or reviewing what they
>>> should have learned, and should still remember, from their high school
>>> years.
>>>
>>> > but my guess is that most
>>> > private schools teach as much or more logic and critical thinking as
>>> > they
>>> > do in public schools. Logic is analogous to computer hardware; even the
>>> > best is only as good as the input. As they say, "garbage in, garbage
>>> > out"
>>> > but also quality in, quality out. What counts as garbage and what counts
>>> > as quality? That's where things get tricky.
>>>
>>> Well, sure. Must we require a two-value, forced-choice, true-false logic,
>>> or
>>> may we consider other logics without their middles excluded? Some sets of
>>> circumstances suggest that maybe or neither or don't know to be more
>>> appropriate answers than true or false.
>>>
>>> And, heretical as it may be to the core of Western logic, I wonder whether
>>> logic and its interactions through various linguistic pathways within the
>>> brains resident in various cultures may not have variations that are
>>> functions
>>> of the cultures within which it resides. Different logics in different
>>> cultures,
>>> however slight may be the differences, may result in different conclusions
>>> that,
>>> unexamined, lurk near the cores of some of our more intractable
>>> international
>>> discussions.
>>>
>>> > What counts as evidence? What
>>> > counts as sound reasoning? Some answers are easy: empirical findings,
>>> > classical logic, and mathematics. But that alone won't get you far.
>>> > Unfortunately, after that point we start doing philosophy, where
>>> > reasonable disagreement is par for the course. If the answers were easy,
>>> > we'd all agree. But we don't, so they're not.
>>>
>>> Not only are unresolved philosophical questions problematical, but so are
>>> the
>>> continually troubled communications, or lack thereof, between C.P. Snow's
>>> two
>>> cultures, the scientists and the aesthetes, the left and the right
>>> brained.
>>>
>>> Newton demonstrated that effort is necessary to overcome inertia, and that
>>> effort is what is required to get some of us out of the bag of chips, off
>>> the
>>> couch, and into more active, energetic, and educationally accomplishing
>>> lives.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ken
>>>
>>> >
>
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