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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2029342 [Reply] [Original]

Why does a philosopher (or a pure mathematician) get paid in the academia?

My question is legit! I do want to understand the logic behind, example, paying a research assistant money to do nothing but read books and write essays.

>> No.2029349

I will respond to your question with another.

Why does a movie star, professional athlete (be it esports or traditional sports), writer, poet, musician, painter, sculptor, architect, fast food employee, or toll booth attendee get paid?

Answer? Because it takes effort, and also they normally teach classes as well as bring the school renown, also known as a student population.

Football players get played to run around and play a sport for a few years, actors get paid to play pretend, musicians (most with no training at all) get to play around with instruments for a living. Mathematicians and philosophers write papers.

>> No.2029352

Also, 10/10, you made me respond with multiple paragraphs.

>> No.2029357

>>2029352
>>2029349
Thanks!

>> No.2029378

>>2029349
I agree, basically, with this:
The core, and most explicitly cited, reasoning behind philosophy professors and pure mathematicians getting paid for their work are: the philosopher/pure mathematician is contributing new knowledge to their field; the philosopher/pure
mathematician is propagating the collected knowledge, through pedegagy, of that field. Both of these tasks are not things that can be completed without extensive knowledge, and ipso facto an inborn intelligence and an extended study and engagement of, the fields in question.

The primary fringe, and more often implicit, reason is that the professor's accomplishments in these areas propagate the university itself by attracting new students through prestige and general positive-review.

Now, I don't think this is exactly what you're concerned with. Your modifier "just" seems to imply that "reading books and writing essays" has no, let's call it, social utility relative to other disciplines undertaken by the university. I think that pretty clearly unveils you as a very old, and very effective, /lit/ troll.

>> No.2029380

>>2029349
So, let me just say what I understand in case I got something wrong: people enjoy doing philosophy (or mathematics, or whatever), so there is a market of people who can teach/write philosophy and people who want to learn/read it and hence universities in their current form have evolved such as those desires are met with money being involved the same way actors get paid for making films as there are people who want to watch them. As I recall, philosophers/mathematicians in the old times used to have another paying job beside their "hobby", but they used to do it in a somewhat academic way out of pure enjoyment!

>> No.2029386

>>2029378
I was not trolling, I just did not put much effort into writing my question.

The thing is that a fellow RA (we both do pure math) was joking the other day and saying, "can you believe that those retards are paying us to just read books and do research which have no direct applications?" That made me start thinking how we are actually paid to do our "job".

>> No.2029395

>>2029386
Well, from my admittedly less-than-authoritative perspective on pure mathematics, pure mathematics studies sometimes curiously end up having unexpected practical applications. The only example I can call up from memory is all of the previously esoteric logic and mathematics work that ended up being employed in computer programming.

There is also something to be said for what you suggested earlier (>>2029380) albeit couched in terms with less dismissive implications; some people find great passion (and obsession) in kinds of knowledge. The knowledge becomes an end-in-itself.

There is something comforting about knowing there is an extensive, well-reasoned response to any question I can ask. That there's somebody who's spent time with it. I think that's the appeal main appeal of philosophy.

I think a kind of just-in-case or for-the-future jusitification is probably the main motivating force behind both of these disciplines.

>> No.2029405

>>2029395
Not >the main appeal

instead: >a strong appeal

>> No.2029414

>>2029349
Problem is that philosophers are paid at universities which are in most cases supported by the government or at least partially publicly funded. So part of my tax money goes to philosophers.

Yet I got a choice to pay for film stars, sport events etc.

Is that just?
>inb4 have to ask a philosopher for that.

>> No.2029415

>>2029414
agreed pure mathematician's work might have some influence on applied maths and/or physics.

>> No.2029946

As Marx said, it is all about the economy, comrade!

>> No.2029965

>>2029946
Uh, Marx never said that.

If you want to know about academic wage determinations, I'd suggest you look up some historical materialist theories of technological change and hegemony; and, add more than just a touch of public servant trade unionism and professional wage determination.

Or you could read Erhenreich and Erhenreich on the Professional Managerial Class which is a decent study of the development of the US university system and the "new class" Marxist analysis of the same circa 1978.

>> No.2029976

>Why does a philosopher (or a pure mathematician) get paid in the academia?

Because evry applied science is based on theoretical science.

>> No.2029992

a philosopher makes 40-70k. Real shit money for investment. Mathematicians more, 50-120k. Wall street occasionally has a passion for them though, and they can make buttloads of cash that way.

The entrance rate to tenureship has tons of drop outs. Becoming an academic for most disciplines is like trying to become a 50k a year rockstar. It develops in the person a strange obsequiousness and cloying dependency on praise. Even the one's who make it become neurotic and every insecure in their own value; at some level they realize a great deal of their life is bullshit.

I'd recomend against it.