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Friday, March 19, 2004
Method
A gratifying aspect of my job is seeing how far students progress over the course of their college careers. As if by magic, they generally end up better writers, clearer thinkers, and more interesting people. It seems like magic because it is almost impossible to detect any progress at all within a given semester or even a given year.
Unfortunately, being able to see progress only over the long term makes it remarkably difficult for me to develop my craft. I can work with a student to understand a particular philosophical position or to improve a particular paper, but I rarely see that improvement lead to a more general improvement in ability. The paper written at the end of the semester is not much different from the one written at the beginning. In fact, when I look at the progress that students make over their college career, I honestly cannot conclude with any certainty that I played a part in it at all.
How then does one improve in a job when there isn't clear feedback over performance? There are, of course, any number of performance measures, i.e., assessment tools, but they are largely useless. Am I a better teacher now than I was eight years ago? I think so, but I don't really know. What an odd thing to not know if you are improving in your occupation.
When I began, my teaching style was mainly Socratic, meaning that I mainly asked philosophical questions and pushed students to formulate their answers. What I have discovered, however, is that students don't generally have second thoughts. They can become more articulate in explaining their position, and can sometimes recognize when their position has difficulties, but they can't really formulate a new position to address those difficulties. Either they are left speechless or they just reinvent their original position in different words.
This would seem to point to a defect in the Socratic method. If I am trying to draw truth out of my students, but they don't have much to offer beyond their initial take on things, where can I go? Perhaps I can draw a number of positions out of different students, and place these positions side by side, but that doesn't usually remove the paralysis. When confronted with two positions that are equally plausible yet inconsistent, the student will affirm both: "it is a little of one and a little of the other." This isn't exactly Hegelian dialectic.
I have come to think, however, that my view of Socratic method is itself too narrow. Socrates doesn't just ask questions and then torture the answers. He also tells odd and mysterious stories about ancient lands, the underworld, and the afterlife. He is the midwife, of course, helping to deliver the opinions of others, but he is the poet too, and sometimes the sophist.
One of the most important professors in my college experience was a sophist. He was from Hungary (the Iron Curtain was still up) and was one of these traveling European cosmopolitans who would follow the money anywhere, especially if it landed him in sunny southern California. His teaching consisted mainly of telling stories of 20th century European high-brow culture. He had a syllabus because the university demanded it, and we sometimes read books, but usually he just talked about people and books and left it up to us to find them in the library if we wanted. It was utterly enchanting, even for a provincial like me. I don't know if I learned a thing.
I'm not sure if I have it in me to be enchanting. I am drawn to the ugly Socrates, the one who is unafraid to undermine the apparent beauty of common opinion. There was a beauty to Socrates too, however, which is what made him dangerous to the Athenians. Can I make beautiful speeches as well?
I am working on my con, both short and long.
Eddie 3:23 AM
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Nagging Doubts
Apparently I'm not the only one confessing to some belief in relativism. Well, Aaron isn't actually confessing to it, but he is having doubts, in this case doubts about whether judgments of taste can be made objectively. ("Objectively" is my word, not his; I suspect he would put it more precisely.) The idea that taste is subjective is the most common relativism around, so Aaron's battle against it has been quite instructive for me, especially given my ignorance of both good taste and theories of taste. Nonetheless, when the mighty make a misstep, the rest of us must do what we can.
I've recently returned, after a hiatus of over a decade, to reading Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence by Andre Hodeir. (Stop laughing.) Hodeir wants to write a book for jazz that is akin to Descartes' Discourse on Method, so that should give you some sense of how seriously he believes that objective foundations can be found for art. To satisfy his readers that such a project is even plausible, he opens his preface with the following:
"As his taste becomes more refined, the admirer of Alfred de Musset abandons him for Verlaine. One who was brought up on Hugo dedicates himself completely to Mallarme. These intellectual changes generally occur in one direction rather than the other, which is much less plausible."
Who is it expressing himself in this way? Paul Valery, who here gives a golden rule of one's own esthetic evolution, the only criterion of taste that is confirmed by common experience. In the field of music, this evolution reflects not only the refinement of taste, but also the awareness of certain objective realities that do not always appear at the outset.
I find Valery's argument compelling. The premise of the argument isn't that everyone agrees on which art is best, which is obviously untrue, but that when people have a change of taste, there are regular patterns to that change. A person may always prefer Jim Croce to Bob Dylan, but it is highly unlikely that a person who finds great satisfaction in Dylan will ever come to the conclusion that Croce is the superior artist. The reverse, however, is entirely thinkable. The same point can be made within an artist's career. I know people who prefer the Johnny Cash you hear on all of the Greatest Hits CDs to the early Johnny Cash, but I have a hard time believing that anyone who is significantly drawn to his early work will think that his later music was an improvement, while I would count myself as someone who liked his best-known hits and then fell in love with the early work.
Of course, there may very well be lateral moves in taste. I can imagine one person starting with great fondness for Merle Haggard who later becomes captivated by Willie Nelson, and another who moves in the opposite direction. If Valery is right, however, and I think he is, then the existence of progressions that can only feasibly happen in one direction is solid evidence that there is something to taste beyond the accidents of personal history. The task of aesthetics then would be to elucidate what those objective elements could be.
Nonetheless, it seems wrong to me to demand that the objective elements of taste take precedence over the subjective. It is valuable to know the difference, especially in one's own tastes, but I can't see an obvious reason to prefer one over the other. Over time, it is likely that the objective elements will push your preferences in a particular direction, but what's the hurry? As can be inferred from my own examples above, my own musical preferences are not for classical music or jazz, which generally would be considered superior to other popular forms. I have been spending some time lately with music from the 20s and 30s, so my interest in jazz has increased, but it is not an art form I have much experience with. Eventually, I might understand why students who get music degrees invariably study classical music or jazz. Country music, however, fits my world and my sense of self, and generally resonates with me spiritually. I believe I can make objective discriminations within the genre, but my preference for the genre itself is largely subjective.
As in all things, I ask WWSD (What Would Socrates Do)? Socrates sought to understand things through their perfection, while showing the Athenians their distance from that perfection. Nonetheless, Socrates never left the city, except for military duty. If I can't please the Athenians, he said, who can I please? He could have added: if I can't be pleased by the Athenians, who will please me?
Eddie 2:53 AM
Thursday, March 11, 2004
A Question
If you compare us to other species, the similarities between us greatly eclipse the differences. These similarities allow us to speak broadly of a human nature, and give us grounds for thinking that we can work out ethical and political positions that are not strictly bound to a particular time and place. For example, when Locke speaks of natural rights to life, liberty, and property, I have no significant qualms with making these rights universal.
As with any species, however, there is variation among us, and this natural variation takes on unusual significance for two reasons. First, we are a highly sensitive species. We measure our well-being very closely: I consider a doughy, undercooked waffle to be sublime, and a hard, crisp waffle to be inedible. Second, we are constantly comparing ourselves to one another, making our small differences into important marks of self-identity. How grateful I am to now have enough distinctiveness that I no longer need a favorite color!
It is inevitable, then, that a little will count for a lot with us, and thus relativism has an unassailable foothold. Is liberty a universal right? Sure. Is it a reasonable infringement upon a person's liberty to have them sit quietly through a public prayer before a high school football game? We can spill a lot of ink on this point, and employ any number of abstract principles to assist us, but I think ultimately the answer will vary according to the individual and there will be no rational recourse to bridge the difference. (There will be a political recourse, but that is another matter.) Personally, I can sit through the prayer and feel like no harm has been done, but I know others who feel it as an offense.
Does this make me a relativist? Not from a distance, but it might make me one close up.
Can I eat my cake and have it too?
Eddie 11:27 PM
I'm Back
After a week of getting caught up with grading and then being in Florida for nearly a week for spring break, I have returned. Thanks for stopping by and check back within a day or two.
Eddie 1:05 AM
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
A Puzzle
For the past two weeks, my colleagues and I have been conducting campus interviews to replace two members of my department. It has worked out that one candidate comes in a day or two after the previous candidate has left, so the schedule has been grueling. Today the last candidate comes in, and by Friday afternoon we will be done.
Thinking about what faces us, an interesting question of probability occurred to me. Let's say that, at the beginning of the process, each candidate is equally desirable and equally likely of getting a job. There are five candidates, and two positions to offer. At the beginning of the process then, each candidate has a 40% chance of receiving an offer. At this point in time, however, we have interviewed four of the five. It stands to reason that, if the search committee agrees about who it likes most out of the first four, the college should extend that candidate an offer immediately so as to make it more likely that he doesn't take a position elsewhere. This shouldn't be prejudicial to the last candidate, since the last candidate could only receive one offer at most anyway. However, from the last candidate's point of view, it now looks like this: there are four candidates who haven't been offered a position (including himself) and only one position left to offer. His chances now look like they are 25%.
This can't be so. Surely coming last in the interview process wouldn't change the basic probability of getting a job, and yet it seems it has. What gives?
Update: Aaron has offered a solution on his website, but I have my own in my comments.
Eddie 3:32 AM
Monday, February 23, 2004
Choices Made
Mill's utilitarianism is famous for amending Bentham's original utilitarianism by introducing a qualitative rank in human pleasures. According to Mill, the intellectual pleasures are higher than bodily and base social pleasures, as can be shown from one point: those who have experienced both sets of pleasures invariably consider the intellectual pleasures more choiceworthy. I don't think Mill actually took a survey.
Whatever we might think of Mill's conclusions (I tend to prefer Bentham's philosophy), the test itself seems fairly reasonable. If a person has experience with two ways of being, the way chosen would seem to be a fair indication of what is truly good, unless we believe human nature to be so weak that it routinely chooses against its own best interest. This latter supposition has some theological support, to be sure, but it also puts us beyond the range of normal experience. If we can't trust what people do as evidence towards what they ought to do, it is hard to see how we can determine what they ought to do at all.
If I am correct in these matters, I think the conservative concept of family values needs further consideration, because it seems clear that people, when given ample opportunity, choose just about everything over their family of birth.
American conservatism is an odd bird, in that Republicans are as much defenders of classical liberalism as they are defenders of an older conservative tradition. It is hard, for example, for most American conservatives to conceive of conservatism as hostile to capitalism, but historically this is the case. Under capitalism, economic relations threaten all older forms of relation, including church and family. Human beings become human resources, and businesses relocate their resources to maximize efficiency. To keep their jobs, or to take a job making more money, people routinely leave their place of birth and extended family. An older style of conservatism found this abhorrent, and many social conservatives (like Buchanan) still do. (This is also what Marx found valuable about capitalism.)
Truth be told, people don't even need economic reasons to leave their place of birth. I teach a lot of students who come from small, south Georgia towns, and very few of them would think of returning. While many of them would speak of job opportunities, it is clear from other things they say that they just don't want to be constrained in that way. They want to make a new life.
My mother-in-law tells a similar story. She decided to leave her small town in Virginia because she realized that she would never be her own person there. When you are growing up, the people around you tend to form an opinion of who you are and will be, and it is nearly impossible to shake it. I have seen this in my own life as well. It is demoralizing to contend with these preconceptions, and frightening to think that you might just give in to them and become the person everyone expects you to be.
Families are important, and there are obviously values connected to the success of families, but it would appear that, in the life of an individual, family is mostly a transitional structure that should largely be put behind one as soon as possible. (Sentiment encourages keeping in touch, but this is a far cry from the intensity of the original family experience.) Looking at other species, perhaps this shouldn't surprise us too much. The bond between parent and offspring seems to dissipate once the offspring reaches maturity.
Why might we think otherwise? Well, I think it is true that traditional society had virtues that modern societies have lost. There is something profound about having people who have known you your whole existence. In fact, it is very difficult to have a sense of the continuity of one's life without these people. There is also something wonderful about the support that is always at hand. Both my wife and I grew up around extended family, and they were regularly available to help out with most everything. Now that I have my own children, and see how difficult it is for my wife and I to do anything that doesn't involve them, I understand how valuable it would be to have relatives nearby.
Apparently, however, these traditional goods should be considered examples of making a virtue of necessity, because when necessity no longer demands traditional arrangements, people largely choose otherwise. "Make new friends, but keep the old/ One is silver and the other gold." It doesn't look like it.
Eddie 3:43 AM
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