This is not another Substack Post on AGI and The Humanities

The thing we teach is not in decline. It is in demand — more sharply, more universally, than at any point in my career. We have spent a generation worrying that the world had stopped needing people who can read closely, think clearly, and write well, and we built our defensive crouch around that fear. But look at what is actually happening. We have just built machines that produce fluent, confident, plausible text by the ocean — and in doing so we have made the ability to tell good reasoning from bad, true claims from merely well-phrased ones, the single most valuable cognitive skill a person can have. The world did not stop needing what we teach. The world just discovered, almost overnight, that it needs it everywhere, all the time, from everyone. The bottleneck on this entire technological revolution is human judgment — and human judgment, the careful kind, trained against hard texts and harder questions, is precisely the thing the humanities have always made. @ N. Ángel Pinillos Ph.D “The Honest Case for the Humanities.” HT Daniel Greco

Last Friday, my co-blogger at Crookedtimber, Harry Brighouse (Madison), gave a paper in our colloquium in Amsterdam. The main point of the paper was that universities could, and should, teach some skills that are constitutive in citizenship and this might mitigate or ameliorate some of the political crises of the moment. And before you think that Brighouse has had a late-in-life conversion to Cicero, Brighouse does not advocate rhetoric and the art of persuasion as the key skill to be taught. Rather, and what made the argument really interesting, was that Brighouse identified the capacity to listen and respond to reasons and arguments as salient in the art of citizenship that can be taught in the Academy. (I would use ‘considerations’ rather than ‘arguments’ in this context, but I recognize ‘considerations’ don’t roll of the tongue.) What gave Brighouse’s argument punch was that he identified lots of ways universities, not the least us, the humanities, currently fail to teach these particular listening skills.

Brighouse has not circulated the paper, so I won’t be able to do justice to his argument. So, I won’t engage more with his main argument here. And that’s probably for the better. I am not especially sympathetic to the idea that universities should be in the ‘developing skills for citizenship’ mission. Not, I hasten to add, because it does not fit my general understanding of the nature universities. For, on my (somewhat worked out) evolving view, all modern universities ought to be committed to the teaching, preservation, and advancement of knowledge (although they may treat the commitment to each of these components as a matter of emphasis). But each university community can as a corporate entity also pick specific distinct goals as apt for it. And so teaching listening skills that contribute to citizenship could conceivably be part of that.

Rather, my objection to the idea is rooted in the fact that many prominent universities have claimed that preparing students for active or democratic citizenship as a marketing or branding ploy. Their systemic failure to think through what duties/obligations and requirements that puts on them got unmasked when confronted by student-activism and donor/political pressure. As I have repeatedly argued during the last few years (recall here; and here), this hollowness reveals and contributes to the pervasive cynicism surrounding the modern university.

Keep that in mind. Above is a pull quote from a new substack post by N. Ángel Pinillos Ph.D. that was written in response to an interview with Jennifer Frey (by Douthat). Now, I was pleasantly surprised that I agreed with the general argument by N. Ángel Pinillos Ph.D. (that’s not always the case, and I am usually in agreement with Frey on educational matters). His argument converges nicely (recall here) with my own argument that the widespread adoption of A(G)I will increase the value of genuine expertise. And in fact many of Pinillos’ arguments and evidence would also support Brighouse’s general argument. (I think that’s good.) Go read his very sensible post.

Along the way, Pinillos (Arizona) quite rightly notes that many of the truest arguments in defense of the humanities only work on the already converted. And he nicely shows that the more existential arguments centered on human need and freedom (that I have endorsed after reading Frey in the past recall here; and here) end up not working very well in an already corrupt democracy because they unintentionally sound condescending in the way that got Socrates in trouble in Athens—they imply that many adults are not free or autonomous.¹ That’s not an especially helpful argument if you want to public to subsidize you.

So much for set up.

Brighouse framed his own analysis with two general remarks about the university. First, the kinds of activities the modern research university engages in are a bit ad hoc, and the contingent result of all kinds of political and economic decisions. While universities are really very old and enduring institutions, that universities are the sites/instruments and prime beneficiaries of government sponsored research, especially, is a relatively novel phenomenon. And as we are experiencing that may not endure. (This is the kind of thing I also usually say, so let’s leave it aside.)

Second, one of the main social functions of universities is that they are one of the key vectors of privilege in our society. At the apex of the global university system are a relatively small number of universities that distribute privilege most. In our world this largely means ending up in the right social networks from which status, jobs, and wealth follow. They are an integral part of the elite reproduction and production and the elite entry process. This is, of course, one of the reasons why a small number universities get disproportionate (politicized) media attention, why parents are so anxious about ensuring their children’s access to them (including bribery scandals), and so on. It also makes it highly peculiar that democracies spend so many resources in subsidizing universities, while being relatively carefree that the beneficiaries of such largesse are mostly the already privileged. The apex universities also get emulated by lesser ones all over the world.

Now, it is fairly obvious that the research-intensive universities are embedded in sites of privilege production is not news to many folk in the humanities themselves. As I tirelessly remark, the scholarly process in professional philosophy journals and graduate education are not at all fine-tuned toward producing and disseminating knowledge—it is in the prestige-production business. (Recall my jeremiads against the incredibly low acceptance rates in journals, etc.) It’s also why you will never convince me that the distribution of positions in professional philosophy is primarily an intellectual meritocracy—yes it has elements of that, but it is also shaped by class and (ahh) privilege (not to mention luck). I am no Veblen or Bourdieu, but they were onto something.

The tactfully leaving aside of the privilege production function of universities when we think about the ‘crisis of the humanities’ leads to rather odd discussions. For, at the apex institutions the role of the humanities never was or is to generate a set of vocational-specific competencies that could provide people with entry level jobs. (Note: I am not saying there is no truth in the idea that liberal arts graduates have useful skills in the job market.) Rather, the point is that they open doors for you.

What’s interesting and peculiar about our moment in time, then, is that the very people that by and large have benefitted massively from the prestige production process of apex universities are greatly uneasy about their role in our society. (Not to be sure because the have-nots are by and large not well served by apex institutions.) I put it like that because, as usual in any political coalition, the unease reflect different aims. A sub-set of people are just annoyed that they do not control the apex universities or that their political friends do not have more jobs in their humanities (this includes the more cynical ‘viewpoint diversity’ types). And if they can’t get those jobs they may as well burn down the institution.

But the more fascinating point is that those who have benefitted most from universities in the privilege production factor (aka the network they have entered into) also have ended up with the most contempt for them and the Humanities in particular. My evidence for this is indirect. But on the whole, Silicon Valley and Wall Street refuse to speak up for the apex universities and main strait business have not defended their state flagships; that process has been visible long before the encampments. Rather, it’s what gave certain political operators the confidence to attack the universities so frontally.

In addition, Silicon Valley markets AI deliberately to undermine the values that were once embedded in the Humanities; they have explicitly facilitated cheating, and they constantly assert and imply that AI will be able to replace PhDs and artists (etc.). (And again this is not intended to serve society’s have-nots.) The contempt for the Humanities is a feature of modern branding of AI.

Notice that in my argument it is no surprise that apex universities are not beloved in wider society. In their capacity of privilege production they serve the few. If one of the main functions of these institutions in our society is to sort our social elites, then they will be judged, in part, by the quality of elites they produce. Whatever else is true, liberal democracies are run by elites that have had trouble maintaining the confidence of electorates for a few decades now. This is no surprise because the transactional ethos that predominate in our polities has been embraced in our universities who have lost all spiritual authority in society and amongst themselves.

If you think this last point is exaggerated, I note that at one point, in criticizing Frey, Pinillos uses ‘taste’ in a derogatory way (“It comes off as an announcement of taste dressed up as metaphysics.”) Now, privilege production need not coincide with the cultivation of taste. But one of the more edifying features of the role of the humanities within the privilege production process of our civilization was that they also cultivated taste (and erudition) alongside the good judgment that Pinillos actively defends. And that’s a good thing too, because social elites without taste are insufferably boring and stultifying—they actively make our shared spaces uglier, and thereby diminish our political and communal lives. Their crassness and ugliness is, in fact, one of the main problems with Trump’s building projects. (I don’t think taste is as important as mercy and humanity in elites, but that’s for another time.)

Now, if you have followed me this far, you won’t be surprised by the position I land on: if the humanities at apex universities get destroyed, it’s possible that these still remain in the business of privilege production without the humanities. But if the universities continue to show in their unwillingness to defend the humanities or anything associated with the intrinsic value of what seems like ornamental knowledge that they view themselves as bystanders in this process incapable of anything but ‘neutral’ voice, they also signal to their enemies that they are ripe for wider status destruction; and, until they recover their spiritual authority, they would merit it.

1. That’s not how Pinillos puts it. He actually writes, “"If formal humane learning is necessary for genuine freedom from desire, then most of the human beings who have ever lived were unfree. That is a conclusion most humanists, including Frey, do not actually want to defend.”