Dieting for the mind

 We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.- Alain de Bottin "On Distraction" in City Journal

I actually read this article to take a break from reading an article on Haeccity, Pierce and Duns Scotus. Reading philosophy had the advantage of requiring less secondary reading than other disciplines. The relative depth of thought appealed more than reading repetitious papers that seemed to qoute each other. Now, of course, I can easily download more scholarly articles than I could possibly read each day.

Is this really learning, given the impossibility of knowing everything? A phd, they say, knows more and more about less and less. As their knowledge of a very narrow object grows- for example Galopagan sea snails, or a particular Shakespearean sonnet- they have less time to consider anything else. That is to say, anything else save it's relationship to their object of study.

My day is a steady stream of information- some scholarly, some journalistic, some personal- and on diverse topics. However, as my personal and professional relationships increasingly involve the academic disciplines of philosophy, art history and game studies(video, not strategic), my focus has begun to drift away from some issues. perhaps, in a decade or so, I will reemerge ready to reengage topics like freedom of expression without solely referring it to the phenomenological consideration of the visual culture/art history of digital games.

moreover, that stream of information is not merely cognitive. Affective information, feelings the heart also infuse my moments. Joy, pride at writing something good, frustration with administrative details, lust and love and gentle affection, not to mention the loneliness of a writer. Psycho- motor information also takes up my day. As a phenomenologist, how can I ignore the particular sensations of cool morning air blowing through the window, guided downwards by the curtain and spilling out across my legs? The pleasant stoicism of doing pull ups and dips on the apparatus i have scattered through my apartment, so i can do more than just sit at the computer, reading and writing.

Yet all this can distract from my work at hand? This balance between focus and obsession, between depth and narrowness.(These sentences without verbs:) each moment has its individual call for attention, specific, and necessary. My problem is to hear that call and respond to it appropriately. Perhaps, sometimes the correct response is not to hear it at all.

Making a declining grade; Academic freedom and grade schemes

So why bother going to University? You can outsource your education and probably get better results. Supposedly fifty percent of Business students cheat.

The raises the question of how valuable a higher education really is.

Some responses, like that of Denis Rancourt, challenge and contest the bums- in- seats approach to mass education. Listening to The Current this morning, its clear that most people like having a clear metric, whether or not it is a useful metric. Giving all A+ upsets some people because the whole debate threatens the perceived reputation of a given University. For Frank Appleyard, a student at the University of Ottawa, was also interviewed by The Current that seemed to be his main concern. Prof Rancourt's point was that the grading system impedes learning, so giving all A+s to his students was a way around that problem. The truth is, fourth year physics students probably like learning about physics, so an automatic A+ probably doesn't encourage laziness. Rancourt argues it opens up a spirit of inquiry, rather than grade chasing.

Stanley Fish, noted this approach to grading constitutes irresponsibility. The counter-arguments  to Prof. Fish's argument are historical(totalitarian and authoritarian states impose limits on how to answer certain questions) and a practical one- a professors job is not to be right, but to be clever. They have to ask questions nobody else has the time or inclination to try and answer. When their research is fruitful, for example, we get new approaches to medicine, as from basic research on genetics. When the freedom to ask these questions is curtailed, answers are imposed, as with Lysenkoism in the former Soviet Union. In a climate of academic freedom the dead ends have been explored and put to rest as with Lamarckism, which was the legitimate but erroneous hypothesis that acquired traits could be passed on genetically.

The university used to provide a place for scholars to ask and explore questions. The answers subsequently were available to who ever wanted them. Students followed along this path. Those who didn't want to become professors didn't bother with University.

Now the BA seems to have replaced the high school diploma. And research is looked upon by government and business as requiring a guaranteed outcome, which misses the point of academic freedom to follow research questions and train future scholars. This education reflects the broadest possible concerns in a given discipline. How could this education but include a political element, even if that politics is of tacit compliance, which is what Anna Maria Tremonte and Stanley fish seem to favour, judging by her interview of Prof's Fish and Rancourt.