Yesterday I took a test that will likely have a significant impact on the trajectory of the rest of my life. That test is called the LSAT, or Law School Admission Test. Because of the significance of this test, I spent countless hours preparing and practicing. Consequently, I am very happy that it is now (hopefully) in the past. All that is to say that I will have a significant amount of time restored to my life that was eaten up by preparation over the last few months. And I hope to dedicate a portion of that time to this site with the introduction of some new features - one being some book reviews.
With this restoration of time comes a return to one of my favorite pasttimes - reading. And I have a serious backlog of books crying out to be read - and reviewed. Here is a partial list of books that I will be reading in the immediate future that I hope to briefly review and consider on this site (in no order):
1. Save the World on Your Own Time, by Stanley Fish (I hope this book is as good as I expect it to be)
2. Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA, by Grant Farred
3. Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, by Yuval Levin
4. The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity, by Matt Miller
5. Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality, by Charles Murray
6. In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, by David Post
So stay tuned for thoughts on these books - and check them out if you are currently experiencing a dearth of reading options. And if you have any suggestions, as always please send them along!
Thanks for reading y'all and I promise to make the site better in the months to come.
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8 years ago
I wish you the best on your LSAT score and I'm sure you did great anyway. If not though, there are plenty of other profitable avenues not involving the dismal experience of lawyering, haha. All the best!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat is academic inquiry? In it's most objective and positive sense it might reflect the exlusive use of induction and informal/formal logic. The problem is, and what I think Stanley Fish ignores, every syllogism in logic and every inductive exercise must start with a premise, and that premise is almost always a biased feeling or conjecture which is incapable of being proved.
ReplyDeleteIn this regard it's inevitable that university professors share their own political/religious/social convictions in the classroom. If they don't, then a textbook or another source will, nuggets of "objective" information that no doubt have their anchors in one bias or another. There is always a default bias, and in this regard Stanley Fish's strange assertion that we should only teach "analysis" is much a futile one.
Did you read the book already?! Haha.
ReplyDeleteI definitely don't agree with the notion that every premise almost always is a biased feeling, i.e. the cat is black, therefore it is hard to see the cat in the dark. Where is the bias in that premise?
As far as a conjecture which is incapable of being proved, unless you are taking a deconstructionist (I realize that you are in France...) approach to language I dont understand what you mean. And if you are, then I certainly cant argue against since I know too little about the ideas.
I can sympathize with the notion that bias is to some degree inescapable within certain fields - for example the writing of history. But my guess is that Fish would advocate for a Great Books style approach to curriculum (maybe not though), again I havent read the book yet. "Introduce students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry" is what he argues for. This is devoid of bias, if you are introducing without judging, for example, the political philosophy propounded by Machiavelli in The Prince. As far as practical application of this approach I remain curious: does Fish advocate for a discussion of issues or an individualistic interpretation by the student? Reading philosophy with students is one thing, facilitating a conversation and leaving bias out is an entirely different (though not impossible) task. Of course you could bias equally the various disparate arguments thereby negating the bias...
This is what I found so frustrating about Earlham: they are the ultimate offenders in that which Fish wishes to rid from academia. So many Earlham professors feel it their god-annointed task to imbue in their students their own moral/political/social ideas and sentiments. This is a travesty in higher education and it completely waters down the academic experience. Instead of reading St. Augustine or Dickens or Aquinas or Eliot or Darwin, profs have us read nonsense (can produce list if you want, its too embarrassing to write) that aligns with the overarching goals of the class, and not coincidentally their own ideas. This BS has to stop and Im glad Fish puts his neck out for such a noble endeavor. But I still need to read the damn book!! Haha...
Haha true true... I just think it's perfectly fine that professors offer their own opinions, as long as they frame it as such (big emphasis here) and not as something closer to the truth, if you know what I mean. We need someone's bias to know how a proper argument is made, and how to react to it. Let me know how the book turns out!
ReplyDeleteI have three book suggestions for you:
1) Nudge, by Sunstein
2) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, by Schumpeter
and 3) The Problems of Jurisprudence, Richard Posner