Mark Goldblatt's recent column in takes a charge at the sorry state of academe, something that Steven Den Beste did recently and which I commented on, asking the simple question, if it's so bad, why do we continue to fund it.
Goldblatt does better, I think. Instead of taking on the entire principle that philosophical idealism is bunk, he suggests that it is only in its pessimistic variants, or, as he puts it, in epistomological pessimism that things go horribly wrong. Philosophical constructs that permit you to test the truth and falsehood of their premises and allow for measured progress over time to discover reality is worth funding even though it may puzzle the more immediately practical empiricists.
Posted by TMLutas at January 15, 2004 12:44 PM