Out of curiosity what did you answer in this poll? I’m
Assuming you are qualified to make a formal assessment of someones level of education based on a few comments on a web forum?

I said bachelor's degree. And I don't mind being more specific: I hold a dual degree in Philosophy and in another field and my senior thesis was on the intersection of the two. I have a master's in the other field and I am working on a PhD therein. Hence my knowledge of how academia works.

I would have pursued a career in philosophy, but it's a tough job market for which you have to be willing to move and I really like where I'm living and I like my chosen field just as much as philosophy. But sometimes the bug strikes me and I wind up here talkin to y'all.

:nerd:

Of course, if this counts as education... — SophistiCat

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT)?

His wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

You can also try to check out his subreddit; https://www.reddit.com/r/nassimtaleb

NNT has a similar history to Thales of Miletus:

Taleb considers himself less a businessman than an epistemologist of randomness, and says that he used trading to attain independence and freedom from authority.[33]

Until a few years ago, I could not easily afford to spend an inordinate amount of time on something like the epistemology of randomness. Back then, I still had to make money.

B.A. magna cum laude in Religious Studies from an ivy league with heavy philosophy component ...looks like I'd better upload a copy of my diploma to "prove it" though, right? ...seeing as how there's a credentials cop who checks on this thread once an hour to flame others?

Hence my knowledge of how academia works. — Artemis

With how much student debt have they saddled you in exchange for their worthless paperwork?

Expensive paperwork from the academia, which translates into enslaving IOU paperwork to the banksters and/or other scumbags of the ruling elite, does NOT signal that someone would be smart or competent.

These days, it rather signals the very opposite.

Furthermore, at least 80% of the subject matter taught at university does not satisfy the epistemic definition for the term "knowledge".

What a ridiculous scam. A fool and his money are easily parted ...

Since other people are posting more details than just a poll answer I guess I should post something about myself too.

I’ve got a BA summa cum laude in philosophy, and besides the basic lower division intro, historical surveys, logic and critical thinking stuff, I did upper division studies on Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, and topical courses on metaphysics, philosophy of space and time, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, free will, theories of justice, and political philosophy.

I'm self-taught. My main areas of interest are hellenistic philosophy (mostly scepticism. cynicism and stoicism), philosophy of science, daoism and certain folks with a connection to the school of Brentano.

The Republic is certainly a good read. Whether you side with Plato’s views or not it offers an approach into most modern issues in society.

Dialogues can be quite misleading, but overall I found Plato to be crisp enough is his thoughts rather than pandering to heavily toward this or that bias of opinion.

Thank you. I’ll keep his name in mind next time I order some books.

Are there any particular essays of his currently online I could look at that you’d recommend as a general overview of his perspective?

I agree that schools in America are outrageously expensive. And I agree that capitalism has pushed especially for-profit schools to accept more and more students who are ill-prepared for college and push them through despite lacking performances. And it's certainly not the only way to educate yourself provided you have the right attitude.

But all that doesn't really lead to the logical conclusion that nobody stands anything to gain from studying and researching a subject intensely under the tutelage of people who've also studied and researched these fields intensely.

Or perhaps, when you have brain cancer someday, you'll prefer some random guy off the street to do your surgery over the doctor who went to medical school and was taught how to do it right?

But all that doesn't really lead to the logical conclusion that nobody stands anything to gain from studying and researching a subject intensely under the tutelage of people who've also studied and researched these fields intensely. — Artemis

Education hasn't changed for 150 years. It is still the same schools and largely the same curriculum. Every other industry has changed drastically. How comes?

Of course, there's now Coursera, Udemy, Edx, and so on.

Subscriptions are typically priced from $39 to $89 per month for access to one Specialization, with no long-term commitment required.

The pricing for online education looks much more reasonable anyway.

Furthermore, if you want to engage in cheap credentialism, you can "get a degree" in much cheaper countries. In some places, it's only $500/year. You may not even need to fly there (just do it online). Since employers in the USA happily hire Indian engineers with Indian degrees, why wouldn't they hire you with a cheap, credentialist, foreign degree?

Or perhaps, when you have brain cancer someday, you'll prefer some random guy off the street to do your surgery over the doctor who went to medical school and was taught how to do it right? — Artemis

Maybe he will also prescribe me some opioids and make sure I join the breakfast club of dead bodies?

My knee-jerk reaction is to engage extensively in jurisdiction shopping.

If the situation is markedly different between two different countries, then the reason for that is almost always some government bullshit.

You can fly to Vietnam or Mexico, have your operation in an upmarket private hospital over there, first-class everything, spend a month in a holiday resort for recovery, and then fly back, all of that for a tenth of the price that it would cost you to have the operation locally in the USA.

And no, I do not necessarily trust doctors, or anybody else for that matter. Why would I? It is always necessary to do your research, ask for second opinions, and so on. If it becomes clear that everybody keeps saying something different, then that is indeed a problem.

A medical opinion is not expensive here. They will diagnose your problem for $20-$50 including laboratory tests over here. All private service. If you don't like the first opinion, ask for a second one somewhere else.

Do girls receive education where you live? Just curious.

Right, capitalism has made education and medical care expensive in America compared to other countries.

It still does not follow that there's nothing to be gained from either.

All that follows is that these goods should be made accessible and affordable for all people who want it.

Education hasn't changed for 150 years. It is still the same schools and largely the same curriculum. Every other industry has changed drastically. How comes? — alcontali

It really depends on what you mean by "changed"? As far as curriculum goes, that only holds true in part. Plato and Aristotle and Kant are still being taught because they are still important foundations. Nussbaum and Singer and Wolff couldn't have been taught 150 years ago, because they weren't alive then, but they are being taught now. So the curriculum, in my experience, carries a healthy load of traditional as well as new content.

As for methodology, most humanities classes depend on a textbook, discussion, a knowledgeable instructor, willing students, and some writing exercises. That hasn't changed for more than 150 years. It hasn't really changed since the Ancients. It's just not a wheel that needs reinventing.

ask for second opinions — alcontali

Ah, but from whom?

Do girls receive education where you live? Just curious. — frank

Probably. There are different communities with different views on different subjects, of which I do not seek to figure out the nitty-gritty details because they are not my personal problem.

It varies by community then.

As for methodology, most humanities classes depend on a textbook, discussion, a knowledgeable instructor, willing students, and some writing exercises. That hasn't changed for more than 150 years. It hasn't really changed since the Ancients. It's just not a wheel that needs reinventing. — Artemis

I believe that you either use the machine, or else you build or program the machine, because in all other cases, you are simply trying to be the machine.

As a consequence, every time something else gets automated, particular classes no longer make sense.

You know, back in the 1850ies, when the public education system first got developed, it really made sense to be good at manual calculations and arithmetic, because back then there were quite a few clerical jobs in which you had to be good at that. It also made sense to memorize textbooks, because they tended to be expensive and also difficult to get.

I am not impressed with the amount of rote memorization that is still customary in public education. Furthermore, very few people who come out of that system have the slightest clue about epistemology.

They may have read lots of other things, but they simply fail to distinguish between knowledge and non-knowledge. But then again, that is rather a feature than a bug in the public-school indoctrination camp. I do not believe for a second that they would even like it if these students were able to make that distinction.

A lot of what the Ancients wrote, was not knowledge either. In fact, only some of it is worth reading today. But then again, the ability to determine that requires a good understanding of epistemology, and that is exactly what the public indoctrination camps will avoid.

They want to be able to bring trannies to school for them to lecture the children on gender fluidity. If the kids were able to distinguish between knowledge and mere ideology, they wouldn't believe the trannies.

I was going to respond to you, but that last paragraph disparaging trans persons made me lose my interest in anything you have to say.

I was going to respond to you, but that last paragraph disparaging trans persons made me lose my interest in anything you have to say. — Artemis

I do not have any opinion about them -- seriously who cares? -- but I would not agree that they lectured anything to my children. But then again, it is a non-issue because the other parents here wouldn't agree either, and since these schools are private, it is the parents who decide.

It also allows the government to collect lots of taxes at the source. That is what tremendously increases government power. In countries where people are generally not wage slaves, the government has way less power and way less money, which makes the government also way less intrusive. — alcontali

Which countries would those be?

Rand-y Neoliberalism's an unmitigated bust everywhere yet trolling that same old strident libertarian scheiße is still a thing? Пиздец - w/hy's t/rump f/ree!

As part of my degree I had to take a paper called 'English Moralists', and I had a deep dislike of both groups, though, in fairness, the persons studied tended to be neither. — iolo

If English is not your first language, I pre-apologize for the harsh criticism in this post of mine. Please only regard the following if you earned any of your degrees in an English-language environment.

Check your degree again. It may be fake.

- you don't take a paper. You take a course. You take a letter. Or you take a sheet of paper. When you take a paper which is not yours, you are shoplifting.

- "English Moralists" grammatically and to the uninitiated is one group. Yet you deeply disliked both groups, the other one not named, not referenced. Makes awkward reading.

- "The persons studied tended to be neither." Neither English moralists, nor...????

Maybe you meant neither English nor moralists. You have a deep dislike for the English as a group. The first thing that pooped into my mind with this interpretation was "prejudiced". Are you Irish, from south Belfast? Or a Quebecois, from Quebec City?

In all, you must have liked the course and admired the writers whose papers you read then, because they were not English, not moralists, and not English moralists and you have a deep dislike for the English, for the moralists, and therefore for the English Moralists.

Which countries would those be? — Echarmion

Republic of Haiti, Mozambique, Papua-New Guinea, etc. Maybe even Hungary, if things continue to go the way they do there.

Furthermore, very few people who come out of that system have the slightest clue about epistemology. — alcontali

Heck, I am one of the great many unwashed who has no clue what the word "epistemology" means. I have got by nevertheless as a computer programmer, forum respondent, and diabetic type II in the world.

What does the word "epistemology" actually mean, @alcontali? I'm not pretending to be stupid. I am really ignorant.

Reliable statistics could be built that show that most people think Albert Einstein himself did not know what "epistemology" meant.

What does the word "epistemology" actually mean, alcontali? — god must be atheist

Let me check if I can agree with the wikipedia page on the matter:

Epistemology (/ɪˌpɪstɪˈmɒlədʒi/ (About this soundlisten); from Greek ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē, meaning 'knowledge', and -logy) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.

Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much debate in epistemology centers on four areas: (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification,[1][2] (2) various problems of skepticism, (3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and (4) the criteria for knowledge and justification. Epistemology addresses such questions as: "What makes justified beliefs justified?",[3] "What does it mean to say that we know something?",[4] and fundamentally "How do we know that we know?"[5]

Yes, I think that I am more or less ok with the definition proposed, but I also think that it can be simplified.

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, with knowledge meaning: justified belief. Hence, epistemology is the wholesale inventory of standard and accepted knowledge-justification methods.

Question:
Imagine that we have a claim Q. When can we say that Q is knowledge?

Answer:
Q is only knowledge, if there exists a statement P, as such that: P => Q, i.e. : Q "necessarily follows" from P.

The term "necessarily follows" depends on the accepted knowledge-justification method for the epistemic domain of Q. For formal (=written) knowledge, the three main, dominant knowledge-justification methods are:

Empirical (=real-world):

• historical method (unique events)
• scientific method (repeatable event patterns)

Platonic (=abstract-world):

• axiomatic method

Therefore, knowledge justification starts by pointing out the epistemic domain to which the question belongs. Next, we verify if the justifying argument conforms with the rules and regulations of the knowledge-justification method associated with the epistemic domain.

In this view, a knowledge claim can be verified mechanically, i.e. "objectively". In that sense, modern epistemology harks back to the 1936 Church-Turing thesis:

A claim is formal knowledge, only if there exists a purely machine-mechanical procedure to verify its justification.

Amazing. I really appreciate your good will, and the effort you put into answering my honest question. The sad (and said) truth remains, @alcontali, that it seems that this expression, "epistemology" is too rich, roo ambitious for what I can take in and digest as knowledge. I can't grasp its essence, because its essence, as per the Vikipaedia excerpt, is numerous. I can't conceptualize this word, because it does not cover one concept, but a whole slew of concepts.

I don't. I can't.

I can't grasp its essence, because its essence, as per the Vikipaedia excerpt, is numerous. — god must be atheist

In its modern understanding, epistemology amounts to computability:

Computability is the ability to solve a problem in an effective manner. It is a key topic of the field of computability theory within mathematical logic and the theory of computation within computer science. The computability of a problem is closely linked to the existence of an algorithm to solve the problem.

Modern epistemology simply says that there must always exist a computable procedure to verify the justification of formal knowledge. Otherwise, it is not formal knowledge.

Note that there does not need to exist a computable procedure to discover the justification of formal knowledge. From Gödel's incompleteness theorems, we know that such requirement would be impossible to satisfy.

Cymro dw'i. My Wife always tells me English isn't my native language, which is sort of right, because I was brought up in a bit of a mixture. I always forget that we must in no circumstances ever make jokes about the poor, persecuted Master Race! :)

Forget all the technical garble.

It's just the study of what we can know. Simply put: it's the area of philosophy that tries to distinguish justified true belief from mere opinion.

Hope that helps. :)

Amazing. I really appreciate your good will, and the effort you put into answering my honest question. The sad (and said) truth remains, alcontali, that it seems that this expression, "epistemology" is too rich, roo ambitious for what I can take in and digest as knowledge. I can't grasp its essence, because its essence, as per the Vikipaedia excerpt, is numerous. I can't conceptualize this word, because it does not cover one concept, but a whole slew of concepts. — god must be atheist

When you're doing philosophy, you can focus on various subjects, various types of phenomena, etc. For example, there's philosophy of (or about) science, philosophy of (or about) art, philosophy of (or about) morality, etc. Some of those focuses have unique names, like aesthetics (philosophy of art) and ethics (philosophy of morality). Philosophy of science doesn't have a unique name, by the way. It's simply known as philosophy of science.

Well, epistemology is simply philosophy of knowledge. The focus is on questions like "What is knowledge," "What are the criteria for saying that we know something," etc.

In its modern understanding, epistemology amounts to computability: — alcontali

That sounds fishy to me. We're flesh and blood with history, not Turing machines. I know philosophers have fantasized about perfect languages which would allow for god machines with which we could crank out truth after truth after truth....But that strikes me not only as impossible but also undesirable.

But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests, consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. — Dostoevsky