Vichy Army:Um, 99% of economics you see in a University beyond intro micro is bogus and ridiculous nonsense.
Can anyone name one other academic field (that, as a consensus, is taken seriously) where "99%" of it is "bogus and ridiculous nonsense"?
"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman
Metus: Can the two of you, Ryan and DD5, point out examples for your claims?
Can the two of you, Ryan and DD5, point out examples for your claims?
Both mainstream political science and sociology are as distant from scientific and logic habit of mind as astrology is or any other mystical and religious fields of study.
How can you understand the nature of political systems and any other social institutions and organizations without grasping even the most basic fundamentals in economics? Impossible!
I wouldn't claim economics is taken seriously though. Laymen are quick to point out that "economics isn't a science" and "people aren't rational".
Well, laymen are idiots when it comes to economics. Most laymen think economics is "all about money" and that the job of the professional economist is to predict stock prices.
Good thing that political science has had a pretty steady trade deficit with economics in recent years then. Game theory is pretty much a staple of political science theorizing nowadays.
Just admit it: the Cultural Studies example deflates your attempted point in the OP.
Oh come on, even sociologists regard cultural studies as a joke.
Cultural Studies is a huge part of the academic scene. It is true that its prestige has dwindled (especially since the Sokal affair). But there was a time when cultural studies, as a field, was the darling of the academic world. That proves that, at any given time, a field, the thinking of which is generally accepted in academia, can be entirely wrong-footed.
Generally accepted by who? Econ departments? Somehow I can't imagine Heckman or Lucas haven't much patience for cultural studies.
The parts of mainstream linguistics concerned with "physical" things, such as the physiology of speech, the acoustics of speech sounds, voice recognition, and so on, are fine, but the parts of it concerned with "mental" things, such as syntax, semantics, and so on, are almost useless. They suffer from the same methodological problems that the Austrian School economists say that the mainstream economists suffer from. They try to use the methods of natural science to figure out things such as syntax, semantics, and so on, and it just doesn't work very well. What they end up coming up with is just a mess of ad hoc, disjointed, and disintegrated descriptions of natural languages.
You seem to be confused; I will answer as a mainstream linguist myself. Modern linguistics merely says that language is mental and rational, which isn't useless and also isn't controversial. Therefore it must be separated from the structuralist/behaviorist assumption that language can be separated from psychology or that it is merely reflection of stimuli. Whereas before, linguists passed the mental off as unimportant games for the psychologists to deal with. From here, a set of deductive principles are taken from implicit knowledge about language (that must possess in order to jump the hurdle of the 'poverty of stimulus' of being able to speak but not having grammar lessons). You can find these by looking at corpus data and positing theories about the structures of language (there are a number of sets of binary principles and parameters that make up all the languages; and we get at this by looking at syntax in ordinary sentences). This is also the case not just in semantics and syntax, but there are similar theories in phonology. Far from being another natural science (sociolinguistics, which is more heavy-data driven is out of fad), it is trying to find logico-deductive principles in the same way as the Austrian school is. It is outside mere empiricism for the same reason, too.
There is also the case that this work has implications for psychology, brain science, and evolutionary biology. But these fields feed data into linguistics, usually, as much as linguistics feeds them ideas.
To answer the original question. Melbourne has a degree in 'Ufology'. While some colleges in the UK have degrees in 'parapsychology' (ghost busting).
John Ess: You seem to be confused[.]
You seem to be confused[.]
Have you ever disagreed with somebody, but not thought that they were confused?
John Ess: Modern linguistics merely says that language is mental and rational, which isn't useless and also isn't controversial.
Modern linguistics merely says that language is mental and rational, which isn't useless and also isn't controversial.
I have no idea what you are talking about. (You didn't define those terms.)
John Ess: Therefore it must be separated from the structuralist/behaviorist assumption that language can be separated from psychology or that it is merely reflection of stimuli. Whereas before, linguists passed the mental off as unimportant games for the psychologists to deal with.
Therefore it must be separated from the structuralist/behaviorist assumption that language can be separated from psychology or that it is merely reflection of stimuli. Whereas before, linguists passed the mental off as unimportant games for the psychologists to deal with.
I don't think that you understood what I meant, but I also don't think that it is your fault. I don't think that I explained my argument well enough, so I will try to do that right here.
I didn't mean that the mainstream linguists treat speakers like we say that the mainstream economists treat actors, in a confused and psuedo-empirical way. I meant that they treat the natural languages like that. They see the natural languages as the ultimate givens, and go from there, just like the astronomers see the movements of the planets, asteroids, and so on, as the ultimate givens, and go from there.
We can see that attitude in the fact that the mainstream linguists often say something like that no language is better than any other language, and that saying that a part of a language used to be better, or even saying that it used to be worse, is just the idle, confused talk of laymen. They say that it doesn't make sense to say that our language is better or worse than any other language, or even better or worse than any other possible language, simply because languages are just adjusted to our way of life, nothing more, nothing less. The "primitive" language of a group of hunter-gatherers isn't any less sophisticated than that of businessmen in a developed country; they are just suited to different purposes; they just developed differently for different ways of living. We in fact might have a tiny fraction of the amount of categories that they do for plants and animals, because we don't care about it, where they do, because they are hunter-gatherers, where a huge part of their way of life is distinguishing between different plants and animals. Their language is suited to hunter-gathering, and our language is suited to other things. Neither is better; neither is worse. They are just there. We can't criticize them, just like we can't say whether the orbit of a planet is "correct" or not. They are just given to us. They are unquestionable, and are the foundation of our science.
John Ess: From here, a set of deductive principles are taken from implicit knowledge about language (that must possess in order to jump the hurdle of the 'poverty of stimulus' of being able to speak but not having grammar lessons).
From here, a set of deductive principles are taken from implicit knowledge about language (that must possess in order to jump the hurdle of the 'poverty of stimulus' of being able to speak but not having grammar lessons).
Okay, well, let's see what that means.
John Ess: You can find these by looking at corpus data and positing theories about the structures of language (there are a number of sets of binary principles and parameters that make up all the languages; and we get at this by looking at syntax in ordinary sentences).
You can find these by looking at corpus data and positing theories about the structures of language (there are a number of sets of binary principles and parameters that make up all the languages; and we get at this by looking at syntax in ordinary sentences).
Which is exactly what I think the problem is.
They use text from natural languages as the data to develop their theories, but doing that is sterile. Text from natural languages are just history. Just like in economics, you need the theory before you can interpret the history. Everything that Ludwig von Mises said in Human Action about economics applies to linguistics. We need a theory, which we get "a priori", before we can interpret history, which, for economics, are prices, business cycles, and so on, and, for linguistics, are natural languages.
John Ess: Far from being another natural science (sociolinguistics, which is more heavy-data driven is out of fad), it is trying to find logico-deductive principles in the same way as the Austrian school is. It is outside mere empiricism for the same reason, too.
Far from being another natural science (sociolinguistics, which is more heavy-data driven is out of fad), it is trying to find logico-deductive principles in the same way as the Austrian school is. It is outside mere empiricism for the same reason, too.
I don't see how this follows from anything else that you said.
John Ess: There is also the case that this work has implications for psychology, brain science, and evolutionary biology. But these fields feed data into linguistics, usually, as much as linguistics feeds them ideas.
I don't know where that is supposed to fit into your argument against me.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
I still stand by my 99%, since everything that even resembles real economics in the main stream is usually methodologically wrong, defined crazy and used to come to ridiculous and unsupportable conclusions that anyone with a brain and eyes could see (except for University graduates, because they are trained to be ignorant).
Modern 'higher learning' is a joke. You're better off going to Barnes and Noble and talking to people on blogs.
“Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.” - Benito Mussolini"Toute nation a le gouvernemente qu'il mérite." - Joseph de Maistre
Ufology, parapsychology, and other quack sciences like cryptozoology don't conform to my caveat: there needs to be a consensus among thinkers that the field should be taken seriously.
P.S. I seriously don't believe Cultural Studies, or any offshoot of postmodernism, was ever wholly-accepted by a consensus of thinkers in a multidisciplinary sense, and that's long before joke articles were submitted to trendy pomo journals. Chomsky fueded with these fools decades ago, for instance.
Chomsky is bogus, too.
Vichy Army: Chomsky is bogus, too.
Are you talking about his linguistics?
I'm talking about his everything, baby.
Vichy Army: I'm talking about his everything, baby.
Well of course. Let's hear your argument against his linguistics.
His whole theory is built on syntax; language isn't syntax, it's semantics. He also has wonky views on evolution which seem to stem from his egalitarian fantasies.
I don't know, besides the whole socialist thing (which like ancap views is intertwined in his politics), his political views aren't too bad either.
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.