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Breaking! Breaking! U profs discover existence of human mind

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From Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic:

As the fall semester begins, 15 professors from Yale, Princeton, and Harvard have published a letter of advice for the class of 2021.

Think for yourself.

The “vice of conformism” is a temptation for all faculty and students, they argue, due to a climate rife with group think, where it is “all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion” on a campus or in academia generally.

Mmmm, yes. Especially if one who opposes the group think could get expelled, fired, burned out, or end up in the hospital, …

They warn that on many campuses, what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of public opinion” doesn’t merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views:

It leads them to suppose dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them. Since no one wants to be, or be thought of, as a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies. Don’t do that. Think for yourself. More.

Given that coddled Millennials refuse to tolerate any idea that challenges them (triggers!), could we simplify these profs’ advice?:

Quit looking, acting, and sounding like a prison riot. Unless a prison riot is truly what you are. And in that case, those of us who are still a free society will know what to do. If your profs told you to do that garbage, they have given you some really bad advice and you should change profs, disciplines, or schools.

Get free now. And don’t thank us. Thank yourself for the rest of your life.

See also: The war on freedom is rotting our intellectual life – including the sciences

Comments
Our Pavlovian educational system would have a lot of trouble with this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309533409_Beyond_Einstein_non-local_physics It reforms two important equations known for over 100 years, but the reformation is only "obvious" to those who do NOT have a college education.BrianFraser
September 1, 2017
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Gpuccio: The idea of a self, a transcendental subject, can be empirically affirmed without any further reference to wider problems. Nobody can deny that in each of us there is a subject that unifies the perceptions. It can be empirically observed by each one of us in oneself. It is an observable fact.
Indeed. Not only is the self an observable fact, without it, there would be no observable fact at all.Origenes
September 1, 2017
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Origenes: "P1: Unification of representations takes place. P2: Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations. Therefore, C1: The human soul or mind is a simple unified substance." Very good! :) I usually call it the "transcendental subject", the I that refers to itself all its perceptions and representations. "Mind" is more often used to mean some more or less specific set of representations, so it's probably less appropriate. "Soul" is certainly fine, even if it has some more philosophical implications (like that of "substance"). The idea of a self, a transcendental subject, can be empirically affirmed without any further reference to wider problems. Nobody can deny that in each of us there is a subject that unifies the perceptions. It can be empirically observed by each one of us in oneself. It is an observable fact.gpuccio
September 1, 2017
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P1: Unification of representations takes place. P2: Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations. Therefore, C1: The human soul or mind is a simple unified substance.Origenes
September 1, 2017
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The document won't help. SJWs are accustomed to assuming that the "dominant opinion" means right-wing theocracy, and "actual bigots" are Christians. The document allows those automatic mappings to remain. If the writers really wanted to break through, they would need to SPECIFY EXPLICITLY, with names and places, that they DON'T mean the usual automatic associations.polistra
August 30, 2017
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I almost had a heart attack! I thought someone beat me to discovering the quantum mind... Please don't fool around like that again News! lolJ-Mac
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