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Comment by djeastm

5 days ago

Modern philosophy isn't useful because some philosophy faculty at Duke were wrong about a rape case? Is that the argument being made here?

10 comments

djeastm

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qcnguy  5 days ago

Which group of people giving modern training in philosophy should we judge the field by? If they can't use it correctly in such a basic case then who can?

  • staticman2  5 days ago

    Did the Duke philosophy teachers claim they were using philosophy to determine if someone was raped?

    And did all the philosophers at all the other colleges convene and announce they were also using philosophy to determine if someone was raped?

    • Dylan16807  5 days ago

      > Did the Duke philosophy teachers claim they were using philosophy to determine if someone was raped?

      I don't think that matters very much. If there's a strong enough correlation between being a reactive idiot and the department you're in, it makes a bad case for enrolling in that realm of study for educational motives. It's especially bad when the realm of study is directly focused on knowledge, ethics, and logic.

      Note the "if" though, I haven't evaluated the parent's claims. I'm just saying it doesn't matter if they said they used philosophy. It reflects on philosophy as a study, at least the style they do there.

      How much that affects other colleges is iffier, but it's not zero.

      3 replies →

  • Vegenoid  4 days ago

    > Which group of people giving modern training in philosophy should we judge the field by?

    ... all of them? Or rather, the body as a whole. Pointing at one set of faculty at one university 20 years ago and using that as the sole point to say "modern philosophy doesn't seem that useful", is just not useful.

username332211  5 days ago

No. The fact that they were wrong is almost irrelevant.

The faculty denounced the students without evidence, judged the case thought their emotions and their preconceived notions and refused to change their minds as new evidence emerged. Imagine having an academic discussion on a difficult ethical issue with such a teacher...

And none of that would have changed even, even if there somehow was a rape-focused conspiracy among the students of that university. (Thought the problem would have been significantly less obvious.)