[matthewwiese]

I'm sorry an incompetent professor left such a bad taste in your mouth, and on the field as a whole.

What's strange to me, is that my interpretation of the results of such an experiment wouldn't even lead to your professor's conclusion. The takeaway being the fallibility of sensory perception, where I might then prompt the class for a discussion of their intuitive refutations of empiricism before diving into the literature.

Unfortunately, being a philosophy major myself, I know all too well that a crap teacher can totally ruin a philosophy topic (let alone a topic of any subject). From my 4 years in philosophy classes of varying levels of difficulty, the common denominator between a fruitful time spent in class has been the willingness of the professor to engage with their students. Whether it's logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, &c, the principal property of a quality professor is his/her dialectical ability.

Hell, that's how philosophy & theology was taught in the first universities! The professor would profess and then the students would engage their master in the subject at hand.

[openfuture]

TIL:

profess

/prəˈfɛs/

verb

1. claim that one has (a quality or feeling), especially when this is not the case.

"he had professed his love for her only to walk away" synonyms: declare, announce, proclaim, assert, state, affirm, avow, maintain, protest, aver, vow;

2. affirm one's faith in or allegiance to (a religion or set of beliefs).

"a people professing Christianity" synonyms: state/affirm one's faith in, affirm one's allegiance to, make a public declaration of, declare publicly, avow, confess, acknowledge publicly "in 325 the Emperor himself professed Christianity"

[ridgeguy]

Brief etymology of "professor":

From Latin "profiteri", to the form "profess-" meaning "declared publicly", and to "professor", then to Late Middle English as "professor".

So a professor's practice is probably closer to definition 2: "make a public declaration of" whatever one's skill or knowledge of a particular art might be.

[baddox]

Genuine question. What about the professor's statements were inaccurate or incompetent? Is the sample size really too small? Is the claimed conclusion about free will invalid? Or is the criticism just the dismissive tone toward the student?

[matthewwiese]

The incompetence originates from the disregard of the parent commenter's question/concern. It's the result of not engaging in good faith with your student, not necessarily the conclusions drawn. As I mentioned in my original comment, the value in taking a philosophy class (especially as a student in a different field) is the chance to engage with both the professor and your peers; it serves as a veritable petri dish for developing one's ability to succinctly articulate and debate topics. If you're expected to sit in a philosophy class and just absorb the material without any contrary thought, something is seriously awry. It goes against the very nature of why humans pursued philosophy in the first place.

Furthermore, it seems strange for a professor of philosophy to so easily dismiss criticism out of hand. Of all subjects, a philosophy professor has a pedagogical imperative to entertain contradictory positions and explain why or why not one ought to follow a line of reasoning. In addition, the question about the merit of a small sample size could itself serve as a valuable aside in teaching fundamental notions in the philosophy of science.

Note: This is from the perspective of Western analytic philosophy, but the spirit of debate and discussion is no less integral to the continental tradition.

[kccqzy]

This reminds of a professor of mine who jokingly says that he is no longer teaching, but preaching.

[nothal]

I mean N = 12 is incredibly small to make such a sweeping statement about all of humanity but further it implicitly accepts that 1. free will is demonstrable via the experiment, 2. the reaction wasn’t preempted by free thought leading to the decision, and otherwise, 3. you’re a bad philosophy teacher if you’re trying to prove philosophy with statistics, imo.