Just a few years ago, Australian Catholic University (ACU) established a new Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. They recruited a number of researchers and made something of a splash, leading to a noticeable leap in ACU’s rankings in philosophy — all the way to second among Catholic universities in the English-speaking world, behind only Notre Dame.
Now, without warning, ACU has announced plans to completely disestablish the institute, along with eliminating 35 other academic positions in other fields. This leaves the faculty, some of which left permanent jobs elsewhere to join the new institute, completely stranded.
I sent the letter below to the Vice-Chancellor of ACU and other interested parties. I hope the ongoing international outcry leads the administration to change its mind.
Without disagreeing with your concerns for those at DIP, the damage to ACU and the demise of DIP are assured, and efforts should be directed at finding soft landing spots for those affected. Even if ACU reversed course today, what short of a $1B endowment for DIP and the complete replacement of the ACU administration (miracles happen, right?), would keep current scholars in place and allow recruitment of others in the future? Trust has been destroyed and DIP is dead; RIP.
Hello Sean,
This comment is totally unrelated to the subject of this post but instead pertains to your discussion of predestination and free will in the Freedom to Choose chapter of The Big Picture. After reflecting on what you wrote, it’s seems to me that there’s more to the story..
Our physical theories are mathematical models of reality and not reality itself. (“The map is not the territory.”) They are deterministic in the sense that in principle if you had perfect knowledge of the initial conditions of the universe, you could calculate its evolution, which also implies the concept of block time. However, that “if” is as realistic as being able to observe a mathematical point or line. What we can actually do is approximately calculate the evolution of limited pieces of the universe for limited periods of time. While the accuracy of some of those calculations is very good, they aren’t, and can’t be, exact because of limitations on our measurements and our computational capability.
As a consequence, the conclusion that the universe on the scale we actually observe with our senses is completely determined is actually a conjecture, especially as it pertains to living organisms, which are much more complex, and further removed from the microscopic world, than inanimate matter. It would be very interesting to see if there’s a way to empirically test this conjecture, as opposed to assuming that our theories of particle physics can be extrapolated to this extent and that there are no emergent mechanisms that we simply haven’t uncovered yet.
Regards,
Bob Dickinson
I just happened across this, and I don’t know what I’m talking about , but I appreciate the sentiment you expressed. Your close, “. . . it goes without saying . . . ” made me think how nowadays too many things do indeed need to be said and I applaud your saying them. Mainly, wanted to say a scholar with your influence could lend a hand in today’s kind of ongoing (and I think losing) battle against runaway emergent technology.
First I was going to say, we need a sort of technological and philosophical Ralph Nader, evoking a ridiculous image, followed by, you know, that old joke, a philosopher, a scientist and a Tesla walk into a bar . . .
Have a good week.
Apparently they did not take heed of the dissenting voices:
https://dailynous.com/2023/10/12/acu-finalizes-plan-to-close-dianoia-institute-of-philosophy/