How did Australian universities go from free education to $50,000 arts degrees in 50 years?

@metalclassicist.bsky.social is screaming crying, throwing up

I don't know the Stroud paper off-hand, and it's too late at night here for me to quickly check what you may mean by referring to it, so I won't comment on that. If you think it casts a different light on matters, feel free to tell me why.

So, going up a level isn't like Achilles adding another conjunct to the antecedent of an MP inference: you need a whole new semantics to accommodate what is really a change in topic. Perhaps you'd want to do that, but it isn't a regress, it's a chain of individually crafted bespoke denials.

The object language is about the things the inferences are about (lines and triangles), the meta-language is about inferences. If you wanted a meta-meta-language, you would need a new, specific domain for it to be about, and claims in it will be correspondingly different.

Secondly, you won't get infinite levels of meta-languages either, because each level has a different domain. When Achilles adds a new premise, each is the same kind of thing as the other, just the antecedent gets longer. But the meta-language talks about different things than the object language.

Firstly, there is nothing paradoxical about saying 'if I don't think MP is applicable, I won't endorse MP inferences'; that's just a statement in the meta-language. It's even attested: e.g. MP isn't valid in Priest's dialethist Logic of Paradox. No infinite levels, no paradox.

This isn't the venue to thrash out philosophical logic, and I know some experts don't think Carroll's paradox is that easily defanged, so I'll just say the minimum in response and leave it there. If that doesn't convince you, that's fine!

That's the main point Carroll is trying to make; logicians have learnt the lesson. It's now standard to have multiple levels to your logic (see also the distinction between statements in an object language and statements in a meta-language), and most experts think this addresses the problem.

The usual reading of Carroll's paradox isn't that we need something extra-logical, it's that there are different levels at which logic works, e.g. the distinction between what is validated (inference forms like modus ponens) and what is entailed (specific inferences like Euclid's 1st proposition).

It's also one of the points in Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles". The tortoise asks what will happen if someone doesn't accept a given inference (modus ponens), Achilles says that logic will take them by the throat and force them; the point being that logic does no such thing.

I'm waiting for the minerals lobby to argue that this means we need to mine more coal for energy self-sufficiency.

Eternal recurrence of the chaise

Imane Khelif: Forever muse I still remember how I felt when I saw Imane Khelif win the gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, my hometown, becoming Algeria’s first female

Imane Khelif has a new interview out, and it makes me glad to hear that boxing gyms across Algeria are now full of girls because of her example, because what the global right put her through could have easily scared off other girls to dare to dream if not for the country unreservedly having her back

When I was teaching a course at University College Dublin we covered in a bit of detail the Hiberno-English phrase 'your man', i.e "I had the plumber around and your man says the pipes need replacing."

To be fair, the visuals was that film's strong suit.

I do think there is something like the joy of putting things in the right place that unites e.g. Tetris and bebop, and certain kinds of purely abstract art, and you can get that in certain analytic arguments as well, e.g. Lycan on why our arguments vs Cartesian dualism are bad even if it's wrong.

@patrickklepek.bsky.social a less charming Hopscotch dropped. Somehow I don't see you dressing in a costume for this one like you did the frog suit.

The amount of my colleagues who have adult ADHD diagnosis made me finally take the steps to get my own diagnosis. Unsurprisingly, our career is one that attracts high-functioning ADHD cases (high functioning specifically in the clinical sense, sadly). I can recommend doing the same

If anycunt says it, will everycunt accept it? This is a guest post by Gary Thoms and E. Jamieson. Gary Thoms is from Glasgow, and is an Assistant Professor at New York University. E Jamieson is a Scot from outside the central belt, and is a po…

I can't help but think about one of my favourite linguistics observations ever, expanding on an Edinburgh man calling into morning TV asking about good side dishes for Christmas dinner since everyc*** is banging on about parsnips' stronglang.wordpress.com/2018/12/18/i...

* born out

For that course there were lots of confounding factors: summer school, online only, open to off-campus and non-traditional students. Those factors probably had more to do with my experience than the delivery of tutorials. They explain the ChatGPT cheating better. But these factors often go together!

I have taught like this (as a summer school module at Macquarie). I found it to be ok, or rather not the worst thing about the course. It increases engagement for some students because it's all of their contact time. But in general less contact time means worse outcomes, and that was bourne out.

I'm increasingly tempted by the Bicameral Mind thesis but in reverse, that only the ancients had introspection.

My condolences, but seeing how utterly devastated England were after throwing it away and losing with the last kick off the game must be decent compensation.

I wouldn't know, but the vulnerability doesn't depend just on the Houthis.

To the Red Sea wouldn't be good enough, because the mouth of the Red Sea (Bab-el-Mandeb) is similarly vulnerable. That's the stretch of sea the Houthis have targeted.

That was my reaction as well.

Could you maybe put it off the 'flood' setting?!

New Zealand has those laws, and judging by the poster's profile, they may be there.