We all recall that great line of dialogue delivered by Tom Hanks in A League Of Their Own. It came to mind when I read the astonishing headline that Magnus Carlson, the world chess champion, had resigned after one move in a game against a strong teenage competitor, charging that the young man was cheating.
Cheating? There is no cheating in chess. How could you possibly cheat?
Well, now that there are computer programs that are way stronger than any human chess player, it is at least conceivable that a player might devise a way to be fed a move found by a computer program.
Sigh. I prefer the old days
55 comments:
Ordinarily, it would have been impossible for Carlsen to have concluded, correctly, that Niemann was cheating on just the first move.
But they were not playing in person. They were playing online. And it is possible that under these circumstances Niemann was cheating. In point of fact, Niemann, who is now 19, was caught cheating on chess.com when he was 16. I play about 3-4 games a day on chess.com, and I sometimes have the impression that my opponent is simultaneously repeating each move on a computer, using a programs which calculates the best next move. Chess.com has a program which is supposed to detect such cheating, and it has on occasion reversed a loss I had based on the conclusion that my opponent was cheating. If, in fact, Niemann was cheating, he should be banned from competition for life.
I don’t understand how anybody could know after only one move that one’s opponent was cheating. Thinking is relational; it’s connecting, whatever else it may be or may involve. It takes (at least) two data to tangle, so to speak. Maybe Carlsen has intuitive (anschauende) powers that escape the rest of us (or me anyway), but I have to think that’s there’s something epistemologically suspicious about what he seems to be claiming. You can’t know what even a computer program is up to from one “move” or pixel. Of course, there may be a lot more to this story, but in any case 1 isn't enough.
@Fritz As you say, a lot more to the story. e.g., past history of cheating, including banning from chess.com . The Guardian has some coverage about the past events. Minimally, Niemann is a creep and likely a cheat. What Carlsen was likely doing in *this* latest episode was saying: I'm not playing this creep.
Fritz -- there is indeed a backstory. Just a few days ago Niemann beat Carlsen in a tournament in a full game, under shady circumstances. This latest resignation on Carlsen's part was a statement about that, not about cheating in a game that was only 3 moves in (which is as you rightly say impossible).
On Prof. Wolff's point -- there are many reasons to prefer the old days when it comes to chess. The game is a lot less risky and intuitive now than it used to be; far fewer exciting games at the top levels. I don't really know why someone would want to become a grandmaster in chess anymore, now that so much of the work is in memorization of lines suggested by chess engines.
70 years ago the Japanese novelist Kawabata published The Master of Go, which treats the difference between a traditional style of play and a 'modern' style, more aggressive, inelegant, with a 'just-win' attitude. At roughly the same time Yasujiro Ozu had moved to his inter-generational films (Late Spring, Tokyo Story, etc.) as a different way of exploring the post-WWII decay of traditional life styles and a new aggressive assertiveness among the young (which Ozu treats favorably, at least with regard to the search for loving marriage). And in Beyond a Boundary C. L. R. James describes how shocked he was in 1950 to learn that college basketball players in the U.S. were taking bribes from bookies to fix games. James reflects that "These young people had no loyalties to school because they had no loyalties to anything. They had a universal distrust of their elders and praeceptors . . . Each had had to work out his own individual code."--Perhaps there's something similar now in the sense in living in the period of late (?) neoliberalism with its collapse of the sense of the commons and traditions of fair play and decency, which viewed otherwise from below were genteel hierarchies. Perhaps.
"These young people had no loyalties to school because they had no loyalties to anything."
Maybe, or perhaps they took note of the coaches with seven figure salaries and how their work left the schools bucks up while they were out of luck because of being "amateurs."
Niemann didn't really beat Carlsen at an over-the-board tournament in shady circumstances recently - there is no evidence whatsoever that there was any cheating in that occasion. Yes, Niemann was caught cheating when he was 12 and then when he was 16, which he has admitted to, but this is neither here nor there now, given that he's been under great scrutiny in recent years and nothing of note has surfaced. And Carlsen didn't resign against Niemann at an online game ever more recently because he thought Niemann was cheating - he quite after his first move in protest, but Carlsen has been asked to provide evidence for any cheating and none has been forthcoming so far. A lot of defamation going on here, methinks.
Hmm. I doubt that college basketball coaches were making seven figure salaries in 1950.--"These young people had no loyalties to school because they had no loyalties to anything."--C. L. R. James. Part of James's point was that schools in the U.S., unlike the schools that James had grown up with in Trinidad, did not attempt to instill a 'fair play' and/or communalist ethic, in sports or other pursuits; instead the U.S. was (and is) afflicted with an ethos of competitive individualism and a morality of the end justifying the means. I played a lot of sports at schools all over the U.S., from Virginia to Hawaii, and shared something of James's abhorrence of cheating; but this was more a matter of familial chest-thumping (By God no one in my family would ever cheat!) than having been exposed to and imbibed an educational ethos of fair play (I have no recollection of that ethos being promoted in any of the dozen or so schools and universities I attended; and as a teacher at 8 or so colleges and universities I can confidently state that cheating is of course omnipresent in classes). Still, BY FAR the worst cheating in sports I ever experienced was as a graduate student at UC Berkeley playing informal basketball games at the school gym: pretending to be fouled; making up infractions; dangerous play in vicious fouling, including intentional tripping and shoving of unprepared opponents). That didn't surprise me then or now, as a major aspect of the amoral academic system is its duplicitous meritocratic ideology and its near-universal encouragement and rewarding of achievement solely accredited to individuals qua asocial beings. No promise of wealth was needed; cheating and harming others to get one's way seemed to come rather naturally to elite graduate students.
John Rapko,
Unlike you, I'm perhaps one of the world's worst athletes, always the last boy chosen for all teams, but I was subjected to physical education classes and sent each year to summer camp where we played sports all morning and afternoon, my parents trying to make someone out of me who I was never going to be.
I observed the same Hobbesian competitive cheating in all sports that you describe above, which contributed to my life-time adversion to sports in general as well as to my general Hobbesian view of humanity.
However, it's not just a U.S. phenomenon. I taught English in la Universidad de Santiago during the 80's and all students cheated.
During my first semester teaching I taught composition and had to assign the students a long term paper as preparation for their senior thesis. Students could chose the topic that they wanted to write on. I received the papers and realized that they were all plagiarized, no one was capable of writing such perfect English prose as the papers exhibited.
I went to the dept head and asked him what to do. He looked at me like I was crazy to worry about such things and suggested the following grading system: 20% presentation and neatness, 20% spelling, 20% punctuation, 20% grammar and 20% student's contribution. That way everybody got 80%, a passing grade since they had all copied from sources with perfect grammar, spelling and punctuation, etc.
...it is at least conceivable that a player might devise a way to be fed a move found by a computer program.
US chess grandmaster furiously denies using ANAL BEADS to win match against world No.1 Magnus Carlsen - as Elon Musk cracks joke about the bizarre rumor
The article has a pic at the bottom with this caption:
Latvian-Czech grandmaster Igors Rausis was caught red-handed (above) cheating during a tournament in 2019 by consulting a smartphone in the bathroom
Something to add is that Carlsen hasn't said it's because of cheating. Carlsen hasn't said anything at all, and is communicating through insinuation. Which is rather prissy behaviour, if you ask me.
It's extremely unlikely that Niemann cheated in the over-the-board match that started all of this off. It is understandable that Carlsen feels someone who has cheated online in the past be invited to premiere events. But Niemann isn't the only top GM who has done this, of you believe what the other GMs say, and Carlsen's reactions are totally unwarranted, in that NOBODY withdraws from round-robin tournaments, because it ruins the event for everybody. To put it in perspective, Karpov withdrew from one, but his father had just died. That's three kinds of thing that counts as an excuse.
*someone who has cheated on the past SHOULD NOT be invited, I mean
This is the Carlsen-Niemann Affair, sort of the story that refuses to die. Having followed this particular thing, I think there is no reason whatsoever of to suspect him of cheating.
s. wallerstein--
I'm impressed by your 100% plagiarism rate. My highest was around 60%: About 20 years ago I was teaching a class on 'Critical Theories of Popular Culture' at an art school in the Bay Area. The first papers came in, and as I read through them I had a growing sense of plagiarism. Finally I'd had enough when I came to a paper whose opening sentence began "Like other celebrities discussed in this chapter, Greta Garbo . . . " with the sentence ending with footnote #7. The next class meeting I told the students that if they had plagiarized, they had a choice: after class I would stand outside in a small grove nearby. If they came to me and admitted that they had plagiarized, they could re-do (or rather, do) their paper and submit it the next week with no penalty. If they didn't admit it, I would take their paper straight to the Dean and recommend that they be expelled. After class I strolled out to the grove, gazed off into the distance for a few minutes, and then turned to see 14 of the class's 22 students lined up.
John Rapko,
John Rapko
John Rapko: I'm talking about 40 years ago and my memory may not be perfect, maybe one or two researched the paper, but I don't think so.
These kids were training to be future English teachers: they had zero idea of the university as a space for exploring new ideas or of intellectual growth or a place where you meet the great minds of Western (or Eastern) culture. For them the university was a place you had to go in order to become a certified professional and thus, have a certain income and job status, which beat selling shoes or being a secretary (they were mainly women).
Regarding the issue of plagiarism, I have a question regarding what constitutes plagiarism. I know of a student who attended a well-known private university who was charged with plagiarism. The professor used the following definition of plagiarism:
“Plagiarism is the theft of someone else’s words, work or ideas. It includes such acts as (1) turning in a friend’s paper (or a paper purchased online) and saying it is yours; (2) using another person’s data or ideas without acknowledgment; (3) copying an author’s exact words and putting them in your paper without quotation marks; and (4) using wording that is very similar to that of the original source but passing it off as entirely your own, even while acknowledging the source.”
The student in question was charged with violating the 4th element in the definition: she had paraphrased a passage from a study, and had given proper attribution to the study and the journal in which it was published, but because she paraphrased the passage and did not use quotation marks, she was charged with plagiarism. She contested the charge, but the charge was sustained by the university’s Review Board and she was given a failing grade for the course. It was the student’s senior year, and due to the failing grade, she was not allowed to graduate. She had to return the following semester to retake the course, and was required to attend a course on ethics as well.
I believe that the 4th element as internally inconsistent: If, in writing a paraphrase of the language in the original source, the writer provides attribution to the author and the original work, how can the writer be accused of “passing it off as entirely your own”? Providing attribution is acknowledging that the writer is not “passing it off as [his/her] own.” This makes absolutely no sense to me.
Much plagiarism that I dealt with involved word-for-word copying, such as giving an answer or a section of a paper that was simply pasted in from wikipedia or some article available on-line. I only occasionally dealt with purchased papers, but it was quite amusing one time when two, uh, 'student-athletes' handed in identical papers, except that one changed the other's verbs to synonyms, or active to passive construction every few lines; and neither version could possibly have been written by the young scholars. I wouldn't count #4 as plagiarism unless the very similar wording was quite lengthy; and even in such a case I would just write in the margin that the wording should have more of the feel of the student's own thinking and have the student re-write the passage and re-submit the paper. The described case of the student who was failed strikes me as one of the countless instances of institutional sadism and assaults on young people by the demented miscreants who run schools. After the revolution we'll put an end to such procedures, and re-educate the so-called educators.--At UC Berkeley one of what seemed to me the most common kinds of plagiarism in writings classes (I t.a.-ed or taught about a dozen sporadically over 25 years) was easy enough to detect, but more difficult to prove: students on sports teams or in fraternities or sororities would plainly have an archive of papers on common topics in writing classes, and so would submit as their work some paper from a past class. It was easy enough to spot because the paper wasn't in the student's style. If I was in a tough-guy mood, I would call the student in and ask them to explain how they came to the ideas and how they went about researching and writing the paper.--My general attitude was that plagiarism bugged me only because it caused me to spend more time on my loathsome, soul-destroying teaching duties. I certainly never thought less of a student because of plagiarism (in any case it was surely preferable to the papers that called me a Nazi or pointed out how stupid I am or told me to go fuck myself (all actual instances)), and just returned the paper and told them to give a real one. One should not trouble young people unnecessarily.
I think it depends partly on how close the paraphrase is. If it's a really close paraphrase, prob better to quote directly and use quotation marks. The issue here is not attribution (which, in the example, was given properly) but rather when quotation marks are required. But to give someone a failing grade in a course for this one instance seems excessively harsh.
These instances are not always intentional/witting or fully conscious (though very often they are, of course). I'm fairly sure that at least some of us have given proper attribution but then realized we were paraphrasing too closely or even quoting and didn't use quotation marks. If this sort of thing happens once in a long paper or dissertation, it's regrettable and a mistake but, assuming the footnote/attribution is there, not that big a deal, imo, unless it's not an isolated instance but happens repeatedly.
N.b. above was in reply to Marc.
To J. Rapko -- V. surprised to hear of these papers that insulted you. Wd have been unheard of to do that back in the day (cough -- meaning when I was in college).
John and LFC,
Thank you for your input.
Part of the problem was that the course was a science course, and the references were all scientific articles whose scientific terms were difficult to find synonyms for which were not the terms themselves. The student did not want to use a series of quotations one after the other, and therefore used paraphrases which she thought adequately deviated from the original.
Basically, I am not someone who searches his past for traumatic events. But an experience sometimes comes to my mind that probably had a considerable influence on my "moral feeling". I was probably 6 or 7 years old, when a teacher claimed that a picture I had painted had in reality been painted by my father.
"indubio pro reo" is probably one of the most difficult principles for our sense of justice ever formulated. To follow this principle is perhaps even an impossibility. At the very least, it is an imposition, especially in societies that are as morally charged as ours.
What Magnus Carlson is doing is very bad. He abuses his popularity and, if you like, his "market power" to be prosecutor and judge and executioner in one person.
Plagiarism is growing in higher education due to the imbalance between students able to search online and find relevant texts to copy or slightly edit and professors not able to search the Internet without artificial intelligence tools or software that catches copied writing by machine observation. Plagiarism is extremely bold at the University of Prince Edward Island where I have taught for 29 years and many overwhelmed professors have given up on weeding it out locally.
The oddest plagiarism I have ever seen is when my students copied sentences from my own course lectures, modifying one or two words with synonyms (minor editing), and then not even referencing the text properly. They are instructed to show evidence that they are using the course lectures in their composition (short quotes is what I had in mind, or partial sentences), and rather than read and digest the lectures (a key skill they seem to lack due to their bad composition habits), they steal whole sentences from the person about to mark their essays as if I will never notice. The students doing this were mainly international students and they were doing it in an online philosophy course elective.
In my Moodle Forums, I also have students who rather than composing an original comment, copy another student's comment and paste it into the forum as their own comment (thinking that I would not notice the same remarks in a forum of about 50 students). This happens in a situation where I am asking for a personal reaction and the undergrad students can't be bothered to read the text they are supposed to comment on, or keep up with the lectures, so they steal the work of another student and consider the job done.
I would estimate cheating/plagiarism rates at about 10-30% of my students, with most of it very unsophisticated bullshit and obvious dodging of the difficult assignment. None of my assignment topics are open and general topics any more, always extremely specific and require students to use pre-selected texts or materials on Moodle system which I put there to help them and where I can observe how they handle the texts and original composition from those sources, and also see whether they are using the online materials at all and how much time they spend online on my course materials (whether they are following my specific composition instructions or using Google to find a related essay that seems to fit the criteria I have laid out).
As John Rapko observes above in comments, this disrespect of composition by students and snarky behaviour about assignments just makes the teaching job even harder to take or justify. And it is getting worse due to class sizes, no more in person exams, and administrative pressure not to charge students with any cheating because it is bad for business, and should be handled more informally instead. I am burned out by this unreasonable student behaviour far more than I used to be impacted, it wears down your idealism and enthusiasm for teaching composition.
I can only agree with Tony Couture's sentiments in the preceding comment. But Tony's 'oddest plagiarism I've ever seen' pales in comparison to this doozy (once again from UC Berkeley about 20 years ago): A student asked me if she could record my class lecture on the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Sure, why not? Then she handed in as her final paper a word-for-word transcription of my lecture, including my frequent 'er's' and 'umm's'. I was new in the department, so I went to the department chair and asked her how to handle the matter. The chair advised that since the student was a good person and was involved in community work, I should just give her a 'B' and pass her. And so I did.--I swear that every word of this story is true.
Professor Wolff,
Apologies if you've seen this already (and for being off-topic), but it looks like the Charles Mills essay on Lord of the Rings that you've referenced a few times has recently been published in the Southern Journal of Philosophy. You can find it here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/sjp.12477
Thankfully it's not pay-walled.
John Rapko,
My stepmother recounts how one of my younger brothers came home from elementary school crying one day because he did not get an A on a test. When she tried to console him and told him he shouldn't be so despondent since Sister So-And-So, the teacher, knew he was a diligent student and he would have plenty of chances to get A's on future assignments, he replied that he wasn't so upset that his own grade had not been an A—he was upset because all the other kids had copied his answers and didn't get A's as a result.
As for your student, I would have fried her ass. And I would have been very suspicious of any other advice the department chair gave in the future. You weren't grading the student on her community work, and a "good person" wouldn't have pulled a stunt like that.
Eric,
Yes, I felt and understood the impulse to fry. But the combination of my peaceable nature and cowardice-and-cravenness-inducing need for a job swayed me toward following the Chair's 'advice'. My other teaching gig at a different college was at that time in peril from a new Dean who wanted to replace the frightfully old-fashioned and out-dated philosophy of art I taught with so-called 'cultural studies', so by ignoring the plagiarism I was trying to 'fit in' to the ways of that corrupt department. I'd already struggled a bit in my first semester there after their star graduate student yelled 'F**k you, f**k you, f**k you!" at me across the seminar table. It was pretty routine to give everyone in the graduate seminar an 'A', and so I really stood up for myself by giving him a 'B', thereby sparking a little scandal and campaign of covert retaliation. #TrueTalesofTeaching
John Rapko,
Having been in similar circumstances, I solidarize with you. In my experience no student who has a good sob story to tell the dean ever fails a course, even if they didn't answer a single question on the final exam. And the student who appears most stupid in class is very inventive and creative when it comes to making up a sob story.
John Rapko,
Lying, as we are painfully learning from current political events, unfortunately is not limited to students. It too often afflicts adults, including adults applying for academic positions. You may recall that sometime last year I asked your opinion about a candidate who applied for a professor position at a community college in Michigan. She obtained the appointment, instead of my client, who claimed he was discriminated against based on his age and his Hispanic nationality. I argued that the college’s claim that she was more qualified was a pretext, because her application clearly indicated that she had lied regarding one of the required qualifications for the position: prior experience teaching at a community college. Her c.v. indicated that she had never taught at a community college; but on the questionnaire she completed as part of the application, she claimed she had previously taught at a community college in excess of 4 years, a clear prevarication. My client, however, had satisfied all of the required qualifications, as well as all of the preferred qualifications.
During her deposition, she maintained that the question on the questionnaire was ambiguous, and asked the combined number of years the applicant had taught at a community college or a 4-year college. I obtained a affidavit from a professor of English and Literature at the University of Michigan, who attested that the question was unambiguous and that the winning candidate’s interpretation was strained.
The trial court according denied the college’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The college has filed an application for leave with the Michigan Court of Appeals to reverse the trial court’s decision. If the Court of Appeals denies the application, they will likely appeal to the MI S. Ct., which will likely affirm the MI Ct. of Appeals. Which means they will face a jury trial, and the prospect of putting the winning candidate on the stand, and face my cross-examination regarding why she lied about her work experience on her application. The potential damages for my client are significant – as of now, 5 years back-pay, with benefits; and another 5 years front pay, with benefits, which he has been denied because they failed to hire him.
John R.
I haven't done very much teaching, but spent a long time as a student in different settings (with a fairly lengthy period of employment in between).
I find it inconceivable that any student would yell "f*** you" at an instructor across a seminar table, irrespective of the instructor's status (i.e., "contingent" or full-time faculty, etc.). I just have a hard time of conceiving of any circumstances that would trigger, never mind justify, that sort of behavior. If an instructor said something the student perceived as offensive or inappropriate, the student should take it up with some higher authority, not yell abuse at the professor. This seems to me to be simply a matter of basic mutual respect: teachers shouldn't yell abuse at students, and vice-versa. I would think the "star graduate student," as you describe him, should have been subject to some kind of disciplinary action: say, a "conversation" with the Dean about expected norms of behavior, with the understanding that a repetition would likely get him expelled from the program.
Of course, I don't know the full context, I don't know you "in real life" as opposed to online, and I don't know anything about your teaching style -- but I don't think any of that would change my reaction.
I don't wish to continue recounting my tales of teaching, so for a last word on the topic I'll respond to LFC. Why would student yell 'F**k you' at me? The context was this: I was hired by the outgoing chair, who told me that he was dissatisfied with the direction of the department and wanted me "to raise the intellectual level of the department." [I think those were his exact words] So I did what I had been doing at other schools for about 5 years: a graduate seminar on philosophical accounts of modern and contemporary visual art. As I recall the readings were selections (as short as I could reasonably make them) from the writings of Adorno, Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Laura Mulvey, Wolfgang Welsch, Arthur Danto, and Richard Wollheim. (A) As for my 'teaching style', I guess it's pretty standard, albeit with no deference to received opinion on anything. The presentation is like an extremely boring, academic version of William Blake, punctuated with feeble jokes and wisecracks. In real life I'm an utter delight. (B) The 'star' student, who was only three years younger than me and already a bit of a name in his field, became increasingly agitated during the semester. At the meeting in question he snapped, said that he was tired of reading things that he didn't understand by people he'd never heard of, and delivered the 'F**k you' litany. I responded by saying that the things I was lecturing on and we were discussing were all manifestly important and central to serious thinking about contemporary art, and just continued the seminar. I brought up the incident at the next faculty meeting. One of the permanent faculty spoke right up and said, "That's not our problem. It's your class, and you should just deal with it." Thanks for your help! (C) Neither then nor now did I take any of this stuff seriously, except that I was trying to get established teaching for a living on the good side of the poverty line. (D) Much worse was a decade later when, as a 'tenured' faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute, I was the only person who publicly objected to their promotion of the animal snuff films of the 'artist' Adel Abdessemed as some kind of advanced art. The massive retaliatory campaign of slander, vilification, and denigration made the good old days of mere F**k you's seem idyllic by comparison. If anyone is interested, there's a short, incomplete account in the chapter on me and that incident in the journalist Peter Laufer's book No Animals Were Harmed; I offer some philosophical reflections on it in 'Adel Abdessemed y los usos de la carnicería', the second chapter of my little book Logro, Fracaso, Aspiración: Tres Intentos de Entender el Arte Contemporáneo.--Back to the professor, please!
John Rapko,
You write in Spanish?
John R.
I won't prolong this either, except to thank you for providing the context. There's a fair amount more I could say, but in a heroic exercise of self-restraint and because I have other things to do, I'm not going to.
Speaking of the Charles Mills essay on Lord of the Rings
s. wallerstein,
No. The book is based on lectures that I gave at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá in 2009. There was simultaneous Spanish translation during the lectures. Afterwards they told me that if I wrote them up, they'd translate and publish them. I wrote them up right away that Fall, but the book wasn't published for about 5 years. Then I returned and did another lecture series, with the same scenario. That second book was translated in 2019, but then was in limbo because of covid (I guess). I was told it would be published in July, but nothing has happened. I'm currently working on an expanded English version of the lectures, which I hope to have finished before the end of this century.
s. wallerstein post-script:
Here's the table of contents and the introduction to the book: https://www.academia.edu/8553863/Logro_Fracaso_Aspirac%C3%ADon_Tres_Intentos_de_Entender_el_Arte_Contempor%C3%A1neo_Table_of_Contents_and_Introduction
John Rapko,
Thanks. If you ever get to Santiago de Chile, look me up.
You can explain Lacan to me. I don't understand him at all, but a number of interesting and understandable thinkers in South America are Lacanians.
What a pleasure reading the 11th Circuit’s grant of the government’s request for a stay of J. Cannon’s appointment of a master to review the documents which the Justice Dept. had seized at Mar-a-Lago. The three judges (two Trump appointees, Judges Grant and Basher, and one Obama appointee, Rosenbaum) ruled unanimously that all three factors relating to the right for a stay (whether the applicant has demonstrated a likelihood of prevailing on the merits; whether the applicant will be irreparably injured absent a stay; where the public interest lies) had been satisfied by the government’s arguments. The Court ruled that the master’s review of the documents must cease, and that the government can proceed with its examination of the documents. This is major defeat for Trump.
Trump’s lawyers will likely request an en banc review by the entire 11th Circuit, but given that two Trump appointees have already ruled in favor of the government, en banc review will probably be denied. Then it’s on to the Supreme Court, and we will find out if Trump’s strategy of stacking the S. Ct. in his favor will work. My prediction is that it will not.
Yesterday was not a good day for Donald Trump. I know it's a bit early, but I realized this morning that I was humming "Happy Days are Here Again." It was indeed a day to enjoy. I was surprised that the 11th Circuit decision came so quickly--less than 24 hours after briefs were filed, they issued a 29-page report. This suggests that they saw what was coming and started early. The unanimity of the decision, with two of the three judges being Trump appointees, is very encouraging, not just for this particular case, but as a sign that the judiciary isn't totally the judicial branch of the Republican Party.
"Federal appeals panel says Judge Aileen Cannon ‘abused’ her discretion in requiring outside review of seized classified documents" (Washington Post). Looks like Aileen was caught cheating, and isn’t ready for the big leagues. She had better grow up, or she'll be restricted to handling parking ticket offenses on federal property. Cannon fodder.
To change the subject: Saul Kripke died, the polymath and autodidact philosopher. He was great but not a Marxist: would that argue against Marxism or would we simply say he despite his genius, was a victim of false consciousness?
Saul Kripke was a brilliant mathematical logician, particularly in modal logic. For anyone to state that he was “a victim of a false consciousness” because he was not a Marxist would be to presume that the speaker knows what a “true” or “correct” consciousness is. None of us knows what that is, nor has the right to claim that s/he knows what that is.
I'm not a Marxist myself, but I'd wager that a Marxist would say that Kripke did not suffer from false consciousness because he was not working class, but a well-paid full professor at elite academic institutions.
Someone who is working class and does not grasp the truth of Marxism would suffer from false consciousness. It depends on your interests and perspective of class.
Marc
There are or were some Marxists who thought that the entire philosophical corpus was part of the superstructure.
I don't know who they are: there are some purists out there.
Kripke sounded like a mensch too as well as brilliant and if logic can be a tool of philosophy why not a tool of capitalism.
I'm curious what Professor Wolff has to say.
Or whether they met.
I also wonder whether Kripke was religiously observant
I agree with you about the integrity of his work; I'd like to hear from people who believe that ideology affects everything and hear their arguments
Thanks S wallerstein
Howard,
It is my understanding that Saul Kripke was an observant Orthodox Jew. Raised in Omaha, one of his achievements which marked him as a child prodigy and a genius was that he taught himself Hebrew at the age of 6, and had read the complete works of Shakespear by the age of 9.
I really don't want to get into this conversation, but there's something about Howard's comments that occasionally makes me respond against my better judgment.
For the sake of brevity, I'll limit myself to commenting on his remark that Kripke was an "autodidact" philosopher. I know what Howard's getting at, but it's a misleading description, I think.
If you glance at the Wikipedia entry or probably some other source (say, Stanford Ency. of Philosophy), you'll see that Kripke graduated summa cum laude in math from Harvard in 1962. He was then a member of Harvard's Society of Fellows. Back then, people in the Society of Fellows, an elite group, often (or usually) didn't bother to get PhDs and went on to prestigious academic careers without one. That's what Kripke did. I don't think this exactly makes him an autodidact, a word that suggests someone wholly self-taught and without much or any formal education. Now, it may be true that Kripke mostly did in fact teach himself math and logic (and philosophy), but I still don't think "autodidact" is quite the right word.
Nor am I at all sure that "polymath" (another word Howard used) applies here, though possibly it may.
Saul Kripke's father was a very famous rabbi who died, if I remember correctly at about 100. He, the father, was friends with Warren Buffet before Warren Buffet was Warren Buffet (it was a small town...). So he, the father, invested early with the young Buffet. Turned a modest amount of money into a substantial fortune. Ahh, wait, here it is: Meyer Kripke
Howard: Professor Wolff's Blog is searchable. If you want to know what he has written here about Kripke, just type in Kripke in the search box, and you'll find RPW's various comments on him (I think the entries are in chronological order).
May as well leave this here too: Madeline Kripke
Hi there LFC, the Times obituary reports Kripke regarded his school years as unnecessary and that he knew the collected works of Shakespeare by the age of nine.
That counts as an autodidact to me. I think they even used that word
It's not a wise strategy to let other people's (ie, mine) bother you, that is unless you take yourself more seriously than the facts warrant
This is mot a private boutique email, this is a public square
I do appreciate your attitude and don't let it bother me
I think you are jumping to conclusions about me, that is from limited exposure, and I could recommend a few CBT books that would help.
Lighten up, LFC, we're on the same side on many things.
I am open to feedback, so what about my comments bothered you?
Howard,
Your comments don't bother me. Carry on. CBT?
Ok, cognitive behavioral therapy. Took me a minute to get that one.
LFC said...
'He was then a member of Harvard's Society of Fellows. Back then, people in the Society of Fellows, an elite group, often (or usually) didn't bother to get PhDs and went on to prestigious academic careers without one. That's what Kripke did.'
Well, Quine was Harvard's Society of Fellows. And Skinner. Chomsky. I recall something about how the society was officially inaugurated as an alternative to the Ph.D. system, but Kripke, I think we might say here that Faculty without PhDs were fairly common at the time, and he was so productive that no one bothered to stop him and force him through a PhD program. Intriguing that there is no requirement for a professor to have a PhD. A strange thought would be that if you don’t need to learn and don’t wish to mentor there’s little point to or value in the system. A PhD in, like, philosphy, from an American university? Can we admit that the thought is an abomination? I don't mean 'go to Toronto'.
I am really not up on the history of the Society of Fellows -- there's no particular reason I should be. (But there are other examples of those who were members who didn't get PhDs -- Harry Levin was one. Way predating Kripke, to be sure.)
"A PhD in, like, philosophy, from an American university? Can we admit that the thought is an abomination?"
Um, no. "Abomination" is a word I would reserve for, well, actual abominations.
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