Everyone, Let’s Drop Out of School

It’s April! Soon Columbia students will migrate from the Butler Cafe to the Low Library steps, they’ll start walking through Riverside Park instead of not walking at all, and they’ll stop wearing their American Apparel snow vests and V-neck sweaters and start wearing their American Apparel hoody tees and one-pieces.

And soon, for sophomores in the College, Contemporary Civilization will end on a note of triumph—scientific rationalism prevails, minorities find an identity, and democracy marches on. I’m sure all those things are true, but I think it would be unfair to the Columbia tradition of pessimism, and the goals of CC generally, to end so expansively. So here are a few suggested readings for the CC syllabus. These recommendations obviously reflect my own opinions and interests—I make no effort here to be all-inclusive—but I think they cover topics worthy of the class.

Students don’t have all the answers.

We weren’t the first generation to realize that moral laws are not etched in stone, nor were we the first to realize that people are sometimes motivated by selfishness. But these realizations shouldn’t stop us from having worthwhile ethical arguments. In Psychological Egoism, Joel Feinberg admits that people are selfish, if by selfish we mean self-motivated. But so what? People sometimes put their own interests above others, yet family members still care for each other, people still fall in love, and societies keep functioning. Similarly, in his Dewey Lectures, Richard Rorty admits that morals are fabrications, if by fabrications we mean that they exist relative to place and time. But so what? Just because we can’t achieve a moral absolute doesn’t mean we can’t achieve moral progress. How do we achieve progress? That’s the point of an ethical debate.

Science doesn’t have all the answers.

The scientific method has given us a whole lot (do I have to offer examples?). But there are some things science will never be able to give us, not just in practice, but in theory too. Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems shows us that for any reasonably sophisticated logical system—those collections of symbols logicians use to represent ideas like ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘if ... then,’ and so on—there will be statements expressible in the system that are true, and that we know are true, but that we cannot prove. This is not a limitation in human reasoning, it’s a limitation in the capacity of science. Similarly, Alan Turing’s On Computable Numbers showed us that we will never create a computer that can solve any algorithm. This isn’t a flaw in microchip technology, it’s just a limit on what we can and cannot do with algorithms. CC would do well to temper its optimism in science.

Government doesn’t have all the answers.

You have rights and so do I. If we’re going to take this fact seriously, then I can’t infringe on your rights, you can’t infringe on mine, and the government under which we live can’t infringe on either of ours. So, says Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the powers of government are limited, and if our rights include freedom of speech, freedom to own property, and freedom to design our own life plans, then the powers of government are limited quite a bit.

Governments then are accountable to personal rights. They are also accountable to other governments. In his lecture “Partly Laws Common to All Mankind,” Jeremy Waldron argues that governments’ courts must consider not only their own laws, but the laws of other nations in deciding cases. The product is a “law of the peoples” created by no treaty but to which we are all bound to one degree or another. Like Nozick, Waldron has a picture of limited government, but from a very, very different direction.

College doesn’t have all the answers.

Sometimes even professors get it wrong—sometimes very seriously. In The Storm Over the University, John Searle offers a first-rate attack on the most cynical examples of academic nihilism in the ’90s, and in Philosophy and Social Hope, Richard Rorty (whom I mentioned earlier and who was one of the objects of Searle’s attack) defends the university system as a tool for social change.

But who needs college in the first place? Eric Sevaried’s Canoeing with the Cree gives a good argument for dropping out and exploring the world. In 1931, he and a high school classmate went on a $1,000 trip up the Minnesota River to the Hudson Bay. There are no big revelations in the story, no fights, and no sweeping tales about America and Americans. It’s just about 18-year-olds who don’t want to be in school—at least not yet. There’s adventure to be had on the river, out in the country, and in this city, and we have few excuses to hold us back. Besides, everyone—it’s almost spring.

Brendan Ballou is a Columbia College junior majoring in philosophy. Philosophical
Explanations runs alternate Tuesdays.
Opinion@columbiaspectator.com