Fostering Reality of Life

I could be wrong, but I’m not.

~ jozef imrich, a well known failed poet in corridors of power everywhere ... From unpublished manuscript "Nothin’ Matters, and What if It Did?"  Time spent looking at screens spent each day by Czechs, Ausies and eyes-people in different countries, graphically illustrated

 
Winter Pilhov  Czechoslovakia 1979

The science of looking smarter, richer - just smile (that taxing grin)

 George M. Felis 

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this as a professor, but a significant part of what you demonstrate by earning a college degree has nothing to do with what you actually learn in college: completing college is partly about showing that you have the discipline to show up and do the work—whether you want to or not, whether you’re interested in it or not, and regardless of the distractions life presents—because whatever career you pursue, the first and most valuable qualification you can have is the discipline to show up and do the work, no matter what. That’s why many employers preferentially hire people with college degrees even when the work doesn’t require a degree — and that’s why I would be acting unethically if I let you pass this class even though you didn’t show up and do the amount and quality of work required to pass it. Finally, although I doubt you will appreciate this perspective now, I also honestly believe I would be doing you a disservice if I helped you avoid the negative consequences of your own choices and actions — because in the long run, no one can.

Platonic forms explained in an animation in the style of an old-fashioned video game. No, I don’t know why.

This paper holds that philosophy is and has always been relevant to life. The history on this matter is against the likes of Kripke and Soames who claim otherwise, even when it comes to the recent Analytic tradition. But, even more importantly, we argue that even if this history is not quite right, that philosophers have both moral and instrumental reasons for making their work public.

So argue two graduate students in philosophy, Matt Chick (Washington University, St. Louis) and Matthew LaVine (Buffalo), in a paper entitled “The Relevance of Analytic Philosophy to Personal, Public, and Democratic Life,” in Essays in Philosophy.