The philosophy faculty in Dundee is going to be closed and many are speaking up, for example saying that in the age of AI this is exactly the wrong move.
This article highlights Anthropic’s well known “member of technical staff” Amanda Askell, an alumni of the philosophy faculty in Dundee, Scotland, and her skill to…
[think] aesthetics, formal argumentation and science together. A mind trained only in computation cannot supply this – and nor, for that matter, can one trained only in optimisation theory.
I support the cause to not close a philosophy faculty and closing the possibility to study (continental) philosophy, but: I am sceptical of the imagined role that hired philosophers/people from humanities are imagined to play in-house at tech companies, including Anthropic. A philosopher who’s credentials are utilised to put weight on a marketing strategy (AI as potentially conscious, AI as a moral patient) might not apply their skills that made them to be labeled philosopher. A philosopher who says: “Eventually, Claude is going to be a much better philosopher than I am, and probably be much better at every aspect of my job than I am.“, seems to be using the “expert” or “thinker”-aura of philosophy to make predictions on the future by repeating a company’s ambition. They are not putting forward an argument after carefully weighing previous thoughts and common convictions. Or if they do, these thought processes are not published, and not accessible for further engagement.
One is tempted to keep the two things separte: The ‘right for existence’ of a philosophy faculty, and the ’employability’ factor of philosophy graduates, i.e. the ability for philosopher graduates to earn a living and find their space in society. On the other hand, it does make sense to remind ourselves of the reasons why public funding should be utilized for maintaining a philosophy department and its degree.
First and foremost, Dundee should be proud of philosophers in their capacity of practicing philosophy – and we would have to talk about what that means in the work place. And yes, Dundee university can show ’employability’ with an alumni that landed a highly paid and high impact job in Anthropic.
Am I too strict by implying that Dundee is proud of Amanda Askell for the wrong reasons? With regards to my own career, one can say that after I got degress in philosophy and computer science, I got a job in an IT department in a bank and later at a Consultancy Company for Cybersecurity. Am I practicing philosophy there?
The reason I got hired as a graduate was probably my master thesis in computer science, where the main quality was perseverance to actually execute the topic of the thesis (data leak detection in smartphones), see through complex software code, and articulate the process and results in the thesis. I was primarily applying computer science and engineering principles primarily.
Over the course of my career in a large company, the skills I developed in my philosophy classes helped me in so many ways:
- Advocating for dedicated time in a quarterly planning to exercise curiosity rather than playing it safe.
- Listen instead of imposing a decision immediately
- Weigh positive and negatives effects when introducing new technology
- Steering a conflict in a productive direction by focusing on a description that incorporates commonly established facts or pointing out misconceptions
- Navigating and understanding cultural differences
- Problem solving when others already give up
For sure, we need all kinds of people who apply thinking, who can bear ambiguity, who can connect and contrast concepts, who have an independent mind and can speak their mind, seeing through the marketing strategy of the employer. Easier said than done.
In 1961, Dundee-born philosopher George Davie published The Democratic Intellect, a study of what made Scottish universities distinctive.
His argument was not primarily about structures, curricula or funding models. It was about what a mind is for. In his view, to have a mind is to draw connections. And he saw philosophy as key to maximising that ability to see the mathematician’s proof and the painter’s canvas as kin, not strangers. That is what made the discipline democratic – not a narrow professional caste but a common inheritance, available to anyone.”
In a way, I am returning to a topic I posted about here in this blog in 2011. 15 years later, it appears that the need for third party funding increased even more. We should revisit the argument that this reduces the autonomy of research and education, as the “Unibrennt” protesters emphasised. Is one’s ability to carefully examine a phenomenon undermined when the examination is embedded in an economical context? I want to say, that it should be indifferent to it. And in the ideal case, this is possible. On the other hand, economic contexts create the dynamics of harnessing skills for economic benefit. Realizing this ambivalence is crucial. It is easy to forget that the mind’s ability to “draw connections”, as mentioned above, is indepted also to the public.