Mother Jones - Comments for "Philosophy!"

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answer vs response

Whow, you really took a highflying approach to lead to your question (I just hope I didn't didn't miss something entirely).

The word 'répond' in the question comes from the verb 'répondre' and what is being asked in my understanding is whether there are questions to which no form of science (no scientific discipline) provides an *answer* in the sense of a substantive full or partial explanation.

baccalaureat

Some Background:
- The philosophy test is an essay, that is the student has to choose on question out of three offered and has 2 to 4 hours (I believe) to answer, depending on your track (science, literature, economy, simili-vocational...) and if philosophy is a major or a minor there.
The difficulty of the questions and the level of exigence in the reasoning vary according to the same criteria.
You have to know that everybody has to present between about 8 and 10 disciplines at the exam, and philosophy may get with very few hours in the curriculum.

The question are likely to be more impressive tha the copies to be graded...
Anyway, no QCM at the bac. 20 years ago I graduated without ever having seen one in my whole student life.

Every year the newspapers publish some of the subjects, as a nostalgic fun for the older people.

If anyone fluent in French

If anyone fluent in French is still reading this, it seems that "response" and "answer", which have distinct (though overlapping) usages in English, both map onto "réponse" in French. In English, it seems to me an answer to "why should we be ethical?" would be something like, "we should be ethical because. . . .", whereas a response could just say, "I cannot provide an answer.", or it could reject the question as malformed, arguing that why one *should* do something is a question meaningful only within the bounds of an ethical system, and so an extra-ethical "should" is as meaningful as the molecular mass of a D major triad, or it could say "that question isn't worth our time--let's go find a way to grow algae for biodiesel!". Does the essay question call for an *answer*, or just a *response*?

Many reputable philosophers

Many reputable philosophers would argue that the question, "what existed before the Big Bang?" is meaningless, since "before the Big Bang" has no referent. I think this has something to do with temporality being a feature of the universe which is bounded by the Big Bang (and may be bounded by a Big Crunch--we don't know yet). It would be like asking, "what is the molecular mass of a D major triad?". There are plenty of grammatically sound questions that are meaningless in this way. Some, even--the "theological non-cognitivists"--argue that "Is there a god?" is also such a question.

Yes and No

He might get full marks as a student on an entrance exam for good powers of reasoning but he's still wrong.

The question, "Is there anything that humans will never know or can't ever know about the world around them?" is much to all-inclusive to be answered with "Of course" or even with yes. While, at a stretch, we might concede that we "will never" know something, it is too much to say we "can't ever" know it. It is also possible that the purpose of human life is to eventually know everything there is to know about the universe. Given this possibility and the possibility that humans may fulfill this purpose, the answer to the second part of this double-barrelled question has to be "No."

But that is not even the question posed by the exam. The question asked in the posting, "Is there any natural phenomena to which the scientific method is inapplicable?" is as good as any at getting at the heart of the original French question and the answer has to be "Yes". The scientific method exists to give objective results by removing the observer from the evaluation to get consistent, reproducible results. By definition, any natural phenomenon which includes the observer as an integral part, must be subjective and the scientific method cannot apply. The taste of ice cream is a good example. The scientific method can't give any consistent results about what preferences a particular individual might have, especially since that preference might change at any time.

French exam

There are many questions beyond science -- e.g. 'why is there something rather than nothing at all?' -- is there a god? what existed before the singularity?

Ooops

Obviously "correctly" belonged outside the quotes. Oops. I ruined the moment.

Holy cow

Holy cow! This thread is impressive. The poster above actually used "begged the question correctly" and one even further up gave a coherent explanation of the difference between NP-completeness and undecidability. My faith in the internet is restored!

Answer

Yes.

Before going into this I should remind everyone Kevin has written about this before and he still doesn't seem to get it. Heh.

Actually, I think it's a dirty Frenchie trick: in reality the ONE question is this, "Are you a Frenchman or a bastard barbarian?"

The proper answer is to write either a very short sentence which is nasty or a very very long book which is nasty and arrogant.

Any stupid attempt at actually answering the question the way an American would indicates you are, in fact, an American.

Those French, they have a lot of gall using a different word for everything. They outdo the Republicans easily, as the People of Ne.

> Are there questions to

> Are there questions to which no science provides an answer?

Mais oui.
I can think of several famous ones :

What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything ?

Why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air?

Where was the stooped and mealy-colored old woman I used to call "Poppa" when the merry-go-round broke down?

Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

Back in the dark ages, I was

Back in the dark ages, I was an exchange student in a French Lycee for a year. Those kids worked their tails off. I was in the language stream, and in the 11th grade they took three foreign languages and basic calculus.

That said, when it comes to literature, it's a very regimented curriculum that involves highbrow material but not a lot of it. They might be given 25 (if memory serves) specific short texts over the course of the year, which they'd be required to analyze and explicate. Frankly, most of the philo students would know the specific text and have already had the explication drilled into them. It's not as if they're expected to know all of Schopenhauer, de Toqueville and Locke. (Of course, knowing any would be good for an American student of the age.)

At least, that's how it worked with the Literature section, whose exam is taken at the end of their equivalent of the 11th grade. (Why? Ask a Frenchman.)

FWIW, I recall reading that Japanese high schools are intensely difficult, the colleges are one long drinking party.

Re "These questions are

Re "These questions are racist." and "Wise Latinas" --- oh grow up.

Do you seriously think it is WORSE to teach children about world history than to teach them only about US history?
Do you seriously think it is WORSE to teach children about world literature than to teach them only about US literature?

If you're going to waste our time making snarky comments about how terrible it is to have children who are not ignorant provincials, please enlighten us as to exactly why it is in America's interests to have children who know nothing of the history of the Middle East or China or Africa.

The question is not CAN

The question is not CAN language betray thought? (which obviously has the answer yes).

The question is DOES language betray thought?
This is an altogether different issue, not least because if you're thinking without language, how are you thinking?
I'm firmly in the camp that any thinking above the level of "sunlight nice, warm and pretty" equates to language, and so the question makes no sense --- language and thought are the same thing. Obviously you can confuse yourself and others with language, but that is an issue of language-small, language as instantiated in me and you. The DOES question is rather about language-large, the very idea of language, assuming it's working the way it should.

(The difference is like asking "Can you see galaxies with a telescope". Obviously we can give a dozen reasons why the answer might be no --- it's a cloudy night, the telescope is pointed the wrong way, the telescope is broken, the telescope is too small --- but when the issue is one of telescopes-large, the answer is yes.)

"However, I'd be very

"However, I'd be very careful before using this as evidence of the superiority of French education. It's different, surely, but not necessarily better.
"

I've no idea what the situation in France is today. However in the 60s in high school French students split into different tracks, basically physical sciences, biological sciences, and humanities. The humanities students were still required to take a small amount of mathematics (2 hrs a week). Yet France called what its students studied in High School calculus, and tested its 2hrs-a-week humanities students on calculus, which some of the at least passed.

How was this done? The students were shown particular canned examples of problems, and told which canned formulas applied to which problems. The examiners diligently made sure that only canned problems of the appropriate sort were placed on the exam. Two hours a week was wasted, no-one learned anything useful, and an outsider could be told about the wonders of French education.

WHENEVER you compare educational systems you have to be really sure you're not being stupid.
Are the populations comparable (AP students vs "normal" students vs all students including "special needs)?
Are the ages comparable (US students tend to graduate at about 18, German at 20 or 21)?
How much nonsense of this sort of "teach to the test" is going on?

Personally I have no problem with teaching to the test IF THE TEST is not designed by morons (or those with an agenda). Unfortunately all too often tests are designed by people who are both morons and have an agenda; and this is the case world-wide, not just in America.