Can anyone name one other academic field (that, as a consensus, is taken seriously) where “99%” of it is “bogus and ridiculous nonsense”?
I have noticed the slightest tendency among some members of this board to exaggerate the imperfections of mainstream economics.
No, but, discounting the exaggeration, mainstream linguistics is pretty messed up.
Political Science, Sociology, much of Psychology, etc…
Can the two of you, Ryan and DD5, point out examples for your claims?
All academia is seriously flawed.
Get over it.
Academics don’t get money back on their ideas the way businessmen do. This is just as much true whether the academic is Lew Rockwell or Paul Krugman.
The parts of mainstream linguistics concerned with “physical” things, such as the physiology of speech, the acoustics of speech sounds, voice recognition, and so on, are fine, but the parts of it concerned with “mental” things, such as syntax, semantics, and so on, are almost useless. They suffer from the same methodological problems that the Austrian School economists say that the mainstream economists suffer from. They try to use the methods of natural science to figure out things such as syntax, semantics, and so on, and it just doesn’t work very well. What they end up coming up with is just a mess of ad hoc, disjointed, and disintegrated descriptions of natural languages.
On the myriad problems of linguistics, I’m finding a layman named Amorey Gethin echoes my views almost to a “T”. I’ve been enjoying this very obscure book immensely, though it’s taking me forever since I’m reading it in Japanese to force myself to practice. It also doubles as the only guide to clear thinking I can recommend in good conscience.
Ain’t no one taking Cultural Studies seriously!
I definitely think contemporary linguistics is impressively empirical and has produced consistently worthwhile findings.
Not true. Just admit it: the Cultural Studies example deflates your attempted point in the OP.
What about political philosophy?
I wouldn’t claim economics is taken seriously though. Laymen are quick to point out that “economics isn’t a science” and “people aren’t rational”.
I’m proud to say the vast majority of my petro engineering department’s funding is private! The only nonsense government funds is carbon sequestration… which is all based on carbon dioxide flooding, a strong privately funded research area.
Where and about what?
Both mainstream political science and sociology are as distant from scientific and logic habit of mind as astrology is or any other mystical and religious fields of study.
How can you understand the nature of political systems and any other social institutions and organizations without grasping even the most basic fundamentals in economics? Impossible!
I wouldn’t claim economics is taken seriously though. Laymen are quick to point out that “economics isn’t a science” and “people aren’t rational”.
Well, laymen are idiots when it comes to economics. Most laymen think economics is “all about money” and that the job of the professional economist is to predict stock prices.
How can you understand the nature of political systems and any other social institutions and organizations without grasping even the most basic fundamentals in economics? Impossible!
Good thing that political science has had a pretty steady trade deficit with economics in recent years then. Game theory is pretty much a staple of political science theorizing nowadays.
Just admit it: the Cultural Studies example deflates your attempted point in the OP.
Oh come on, even sociologists regard cultural studies as a joke.
Cultural Studies is a huge part of the academic scene. It is true that its prestige has dwindled (especially since the Sokal affair). But there was a time when cultural studies, as a field, was the darling of the academic world. That proves that, at any given time, a field, the thinking of which is generally accepted in academia, can be entirely wrong-footed.
Cultural Studies is a huge part of the academic scene. It is true that its prestige has dwindled (especially since the Sokal affair). But there was a time when cultural studies, as a field, was the darling of the academic world. That proves that, at any given time, a field, the thinking of which is generally accepted in academia, can be entirely wrong-footed.
Generally accepted by who? Econ departments? Somehow I can’t imagine Heckman or Lucas haven’t much patience for cultural studies.
The parts of mainstream linguistics concerned with “physical” things, such as the physiology of speech, the acoustics of speech sounds, voice recognition, and so on, are fine, but the parts of it concerned with “mental” things, such as syntax, semantics, and so on, are almost useless. They suffer from the same methodological problems that the Austrian School economists say that the mainstream economists suffer from. They try to use the methods of natural science to figure out things such as syntax, semantics, and so on, and it just doesn’t work very well. What they end up coming up with is just a mess of ad hoc, disjointed, and disintegrated descriptions of natural languages.
You seem to be confused; I will answer as a mainstream linguist myself. Modern linguistics merely says that language is mental and rational, which isn’t useless and also isn’t controversial. Therefore it must be separated from the structuralist/behaviorist assumption that language can be separated from psychology or that it is merely reflection of stimuli. Whereas before, linguists passed the mental off as unimportant games for the psychologists to deal with. From here, a set of deductive principles are taken from implicit knowledge about language (that must possess in order to jump the hurdle of the ‘poverty of stimulus’ of being able to speak but not having grammar lessons). You can find these by looking at corpus data and positing theories about the structures of language (there are a number of sets of binary principles and parameters that make up all the languages; and we get at this by looking at syntax in ordinary sentences). This is also the case not just in semantics and syntax, but there are similar theories in phonology. Far from being another natural science (sociolinguistics, which is more heavy-data driven is out of fad), it is trying to find logico-deductive principles in the same way as the Austrian school is. It is outside mere empiricism for the same reason, too.
There is also the case that this work has implications for psychology, brain science, and evolutionary biology. But these fields feed data into linguistics, usually, as much as linguistics feeds them ideas.