Frank Kogan

How widely used is the term "co-ed" as a noun meaning "a female student"?

I'd have thought that in the U.S., at least, the term was archaic. Almost all schools in America now have male and female students.* I've never heard the term in conversation. However, in Korea, there is a mediocre K-pop group called "Co-Ed School," one of the few idol groups to have both males and females.

I first considered asking this question a week ago, when I'd hunted down an Erik Erikson quotation I'd remembered inexactly from having read it in 1970. It had stayed in my memory for a fundamentally different reason, the phrase "compared to what?," which relates to the psychosocial explorations of mine that I entitle "Relativism: So What?," and I'll give it its own entry one of these days. But I also remembered that it contained the term "co-ed," the word surprising me when I read it, and that's the word I used in the Web search that successfully tracked down the quote. I'd originally seen the passage in the Erikson collection Identity: Youth And Crisis, and in my memory I assumed the essay was from the late 1940s, the term "co-ed" dating it in my mind. Surprisingly, I see that the essay was based on a lecture that he gave in 1960. Although some prestige schools like Yale remained male-only until the late 1960s, I've assumed the term "co-ed" had been long moot by 1960, coeducation being so overwhelmingly common. Again, I don't recall ever hearing the word in conversation, and I grew up about a half mile from a college campus.

So last Wednesday, when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" for advocating that her college include birth control in its health package, he started off, "What does it say about the college co-ed ... who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex?"

( YouTube searches )

Ha! In my head I'd been composing a post in response to meserach's claiming, "any position toward the philosophy of science which fails to give a good accounting of how science achieves 'better' practical results than other ways of thinking about the universe is ultimately bankrupt," where I say that the hard sciences so far have a very limited scope that leaves out vast hunks of the the universe. Turns out, according to Dave, that sitcom The Big Bang Theory beat me to the punch (click link to find out how).

So anyway, my reply to meserach is that t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas are in the universe, and as of yet physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology etc. have had nothing interesting to say about them or anything like them.* So it would seem that the hard sciences' ways of thinking about that part of the universe (the t.A.T.u.-Veronica's part) have no practical results whatsoever, in fact don't exist. It could be legitimate for meserach to claim that, e.g., physics does a better job of talking about electrons than music critics do of talking about t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas, but I don't know what to do with that information: I don't know if there would be any benefit if we could talk about t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas with the precision etc. that physicists talk about electrons, and even if there would be a benefit, I have no clue how to achieve that precision, or even what it would be.

This isn't a criticism of the sciences at all, but it accentuates the question I've been bringing up in my last couple of posts: just what is philosophy of science (or philosophy overall) for? What's it supposed to achieve?

*Well, I'm sure that the physical acoustics people could have something to say, but it probably couldn't be extended to most of the questions or ideas I'd have about t.A.T.u. or the Veronicas. And biological research into the brain may well have something to say about the appeal of music, at some point, but again I don't see where that would have an impact on anything I'd have to say about them, though of course I won't know until it happens.

I asked this of B. Michael over on Tumblr, so I thought I ought to ask it of you all as well:

What do philosophers talk about these days, post-Wittgenstein and post-Kuhn? I've not kept up. (Not that I ever kept up.) Kuhn's notion of "paradigms" gets rid of the need for super-deep universal foundations for the scientific enterprise, and Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" does the same for pretty much everything. So what's left for philosophy? Not that I think philosophy departments should disband, but if I were in one I'd transform it into the Department Of Roving Troubleshooters Who Have More Fun Than Sociologists Seem To Have, or something.

EDIT: Er, perhaps I should elaborate slightly, though that could end up in a tangle, since my elaborations will need elaborations. But, e.g., if you're saying as I do that people's musical tastes tend to cluster by their social class, you then (if you're me) have to explore what you mean by social class (and keep exploring). Now, one could ask a philosopher instead, "Dear philosopher, What do I mean, or what should I mean, by 'social class'?" But it seems to me that what the philosopher says is of no more import than what anyone else says, that if s/he has something to say it isn't because s/he's a philosopher but because s/he's just another person trying to figure out in certain instances what we mean or should mean by "social class" in those and related instances. And as with "social class," so with "meaning" and "language" and so forth.

Over on Blue Lines Revisited, Tom throws a couple brief criticisms at most music convos about subjectivity, objectivity, and relativism, and I add some pessimistic comments of my own, including this one:

My complaint about the subjectivity/objectivity/relativism conversations, beyond most people's not knowing how to do them, is that what motivates the conversations gets sidestepped in the actual conversations themselves. The conversations arise from an uneasiness with the conventions for discussing and judging music, those conventions forcing us to make judgments but putting those judgments up for question and debate. And what the subjectivity/objectivity/relativism conversation generally avoids or botches is the question of authority: What authorizes what we say about music, and [a question that's more subterranean] who authorizes it? The subjectivity/objectivity/relativism terminology is awful because it gives us two dumb choices neither of which matches actual social practice: "subjectivity" tells us that we can say whatever we want, "objectivity" tells us that it's the facts that authorize what we say. Neither choice is correct, neither corresponds to what we actually do, which is to constantly make judgments about the music, judgments that, as I said, are up for question and debate. And the subjectivity/objectivity/relativism convo is generally a dishonest way to influence the debate by trying to persuade someone not to question judgments - either 'cause the judgments are "subjective" so our only choice is to agree to disagree or because they're "objective" hence based on facts about which we're not allowed to disagree, supposedly - so almost everything that actually goes into the judgments (including but hardly limited to where the music is being listened to, why, and who with) is avoided in the subjectivity/objectivity/relativism discussion... except when I'm part of the discussion, in which case you'll find me recommending that we eliminate the words "subjective" and "objective" from the language altogether and insisting that no one gets to use the word "relativism" without explaining what the hell he or she means by it.

byebyepride and tarigwaemir and Anonymous have comments on my Heidegger thread that still merit responses from me, but I'm going to put off responding for the time being. In my Heidegger post I was asking a question of Nietzsche and Heidegger that I've been asking of myself as well, and I've decided that the question will be clearer if I simply ask it of myself, and leave Nietzsche and Heidegger out of it for the time being.

The question is, "What is the importance of the idea of transcendence?" By "transcendence" here I don't simply mean "rising above circumstances" (e.g., "he transcended his militaristic upbringing to become one of the great humanitarians of the age") but rather the demand that - to mix metaphors - one's grounds, causes, or reasons must be absolutely transcendent. That is, one's grounds, causes, or reasons must be so independent of what they ground, cause, or justify that if the latter were to cease existing, the grounds, causes, and reasons would nonetheless remain unchanged. So, by this standard, if my theories are to be grounded in fact, the facts must in no way be dependent on the theories. Get rid of the theories and all that accompany them - including their premises, assumptions, vocabulary - and the facts remain identical to what they were before. (If the standards for transcendence aren't stated so explicitly, nonetheless the feeling is that all the strength or solidity or authority or capacity to shape comes from the grounds-causes-reasons, and none from what is being grounded or caused or justified.)

( What I mean by importance )

In my pragmatism writeup last month I deliberately buried the following paragraph for reasons that the paragraph itself makes plain.

I haven't yet mentioned philosophy, since I think that philosophy is a dead end, and pragmatism is better off liberated from philosophy. Of course the word "pragmatism" is associated with certain philosophers (Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, maybe Wittgenstein, some aspects of Quine). In any event, my pragmatism when applied to philosophy isn't a way of doing philosophy but just a critique of philosophy, one that attacks philosophy's sense of its own relevance. One form of attack is the sentence, paraphrased from my book, "As a philosopher I can say 'Nothing exists in isolation' and a minute later say 'I grew up in an isolated village' without contradicting myself, since the standards for isolation are different in the two sentences." And as with isolation, so it is with "autonomy," "independence," "essence," "necessity," "reality," and so forth. Which is to say that philosophy concerns itself with extremes that are rarely in effect but fools itself into thinking that in discussing these extremes it's dealing with the village - i.e., the world - as well. Note that this critique doesn't merely knock down philosophy: it also knocks down deconstructive and pragmatic attacks upon philosophy.

And I refer back to my Rorty post from last year (which I quite like and recommend you read in its entirety), a particularly relevant portion of it being:

( What's going on when villagers make philosophy-like noises with their mouths? )

International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2008:

"Do not be confounded by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth," he said.

He also declared faith's central position in the moral universe, attacking the idea that there are no absolute truths.

"Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made 'experience' all-important," he said. "Yet experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good or true, can lead not to genuine freedom but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect."

The thing is, the "ism" that Benedict is decrying, "indiscriminately giving value to practically everything," doesn't exist. No one does that, and no one holds the position. Even people who say they hold it don't hold it.

( This is a position that no one can hold who thinks about it for 20 seconds )

Here are six ideas that I associate with "relativism." I agree with (1) through (4), disagree with (5) and (6), but I think that (5) and (6) are where all the action is. If no one associated (5) and (6) with (1) through (4), there'd be no hullabaloo. (A better way of putting this might be that people link (5) and (6) to (1) through (4) so that they can have their hullabaloo.) I'm just sketching the ideas, might give each its own post later or elaborate here in the comments.

(1) ( Independent is a relative term, like soft and loud or cold and hot, rather than being either/or, like an on-off switch )

(2) ( For any phenomenon to be meaningful there has to be a difference between its happening and its not happening )

(3) ( Separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing )

(4) ( If people make radically different assumptions they'll use crucial words differently and they'll come up with different facts, hence they can't simply look at the facts to see who is right )

(5) ( If you are ensconced within one culture you can't understand another one )

(6) ( Nothing is better than anything else )

My hypothesis is that, even among thoughtful people, "relativism" is a stand-in issue (and I'm including within "relativism" the attempts to find social implications for pragmatism or deconstruction). But I'm not wedded to that hypothesis, and I'd expect that ludickid, dubdobdee, byebyepride, piratemoggy, and martinskidmore would want to dispute it.

My guess is that someone who derides "relativism" would consider me a relativist if he knew my philosophical views. But my intuition here is to call the conversation - relativism, pro or con - a stand-in issue. That is, my relativistic views have no bearing one way or another on whether or not in a specific instance I feel that I need to learn more about someone's context, or whether I think an accepted truth needs to be reexamined or a truth that's under attack needs defending.

In my book I say, "As a relativist I can say, 'Nothing exists in isolation,' and two minutes later say, 'I grew up in an isolated village,' without contradicting myself, since the standards for isolation are different in the two sentences." My point was that the philosophical position addresses nothing of concern to the village, i.e., addresses no human concern.

But actual villagers - actual humans - do say "nothing exists in isolation" and other relativistic equivalents, even if I think the isolation the sentence addresses has nothing to do with the isolation that concerns them. They think otherwise.

( What are you trying to justify, and whom are you trying to justify it TO? )