{"id":380932,"date":"2019-05-09T15:30:39","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T19:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=380932"},"modified":"2019-05-13T15:40:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T19:40:14","slug":"where-can-philosophical-thinking-help-everywhere-380932","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/where-can-philosophical-thinking-help-everywhere-380932\/","title":{"rendered":"Where can philosophical thinking help? Everywhere."},"content":{"rendered":"

Philosopher Zeynep Soysal believes in building bridges, both between fields of inquiry and between philosophy and the wider world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are basic clarifications that philosophers make, and they can be helpful in solving problems. They can have a big effect on how people view thinking and rationality,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Soysal, who joined Rochester\u2019s faculty this year as an assistant professor of philosophy, works at the place where mathematics and the philosophy of language converge: she investigates how meaning is constructed in mathematical language. A specialist in both the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of language, she uses tools from each to help illuminate questions in the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cMathematics has always been a very important test case for philosophical views, right from the beginning of philosophy,\u201d she says. Mathematical knowledge is distinctive and complex, and philosophers aren\u2019t in agreement about how it functions. Empiricists\u2014David Hume and John Locke are two of the most famous\u2014hold that people derive knowledge from sense experience. But math is a problem for empiricists, because mathematical and logical truths aren\u2019t the product of experience. By contrast, rationalist thinkers\u2014such as Ren\u00e9 Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz\u2014contend that sense experience isn\u2019t at the root of all<\/em> understanding, and that mathematics provides a model of thinking with which sensory experience must be reconciled.<\/p>\n

Mathematics isn\u2019t just about numbers, in other words. It\u2019s a hotbed of philosophical questions.<\/p>\n

A double major in mathematics and philosophy at Cornell, Soysal went on to earn her PhD in philosophy at Harvard in 2017. She works in the tradition of the logical empiricists. Such thinkers argue that mathematical knowledge operates as linguistic knowledge does: the truth of mathematical statements is a result of the way mathematical terms are defined.<\/p>\n

Randall Curren, the chair of the philosophy department<\/a>, says that philosophy is unique for the way it addresses the nature of knowledge, meaning, and being in a wide range of disciplines\u2014and for the tools of analysis it offers for answering questions of broad public interest. \u201cMaking the most of its potential requires sustained engagement across the disciplinary divides, and this is a hallmark of Zeynep\u2019s research and teaching,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Soysal says she\u2019s discovered an environment at Rochester that encourages such interdisciplinarity. She was surprised to be invited, in her first semester on campus, to give a lecture to the math department. She has already forged ties with linguists on campus, too. \u201cThere\u2019s an openness to philosophy in the University that\u2019s very rare,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201c… taking a philosophy class or a formal logic class might not enable students to make those connections in real life.\u201d<\/div>\n

Philosophical thinking can help in almost any endeavor, she says. She\u2019s been teaching \u201cReason and Argument\u201d this spring, a course intended to teach students how to engage in rational argument. Introduced by Richard Feldman, a professor of philosophy and currently the University\u2019s interim president, the course is \u201cconcerned with how you teach people the habits of mind, and also the expectations of others, that help you get at the truth,\u201d says Soysal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThinking clearly and systematically, in the way we\u2019re trained for in philosophy, is incredibly powerful. But taking a philosophy class or a formal logic class might not enable students to make those connections in real life.\u201d And so, she looks for ways to help people discover the connections\u2014when she\u2019s teaching, as a certified mediator, and as a member of the governing board of Boston-based educational nonprofit ThinkerAnalytix. In partnership with Harvard\u2019s philosophy department and pre-college classroom teachers, the group is working to help teach school-age students about argument analysis and reasoning.<\/p>\n

Immediately before joining the Rochester faculty, Zeynep was a fellow in Harvard\u2019s philosophy department and a postdoctoral associate at Boston University. There, she was part of a project titled \u201cPhilosophy of Emerging Computational Technologies:\u00a0Humans, Values, and Society in Transition.\u201d<\/a> Researchers in philosophy and communications at Boston University led the group, and a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar grant supported its work.<\/p>\n

The experience gave Soysal the chance to take a philosophical look at journalism. She began by thinking about the very different ways that mathematicians and journalists approach expertise and meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cMathematics is very special, in the sense that there is an accepted set of axioms that everybody works from. You write the axioms down and everybody basically agrees with them. It\u2019s a unique feature of the mathematical community. There are people who contribute to determining meanings, and there are people who have to defer to the experts in the mathematical community.\u201d<\/p>\n

But authority isn\u2019t granted so neatly in the rowdy world of journalism, especially in the digital age. What, Soysal wondered, is journalistic expertise\u2014and what does that reveal about the basic social function of journalism?<\/p>\n

She calls journalism a \u201cphilosophically rich topic,\u201d though it is one to which philosophers have paid scant attention. She\u2019s helping to change that, with her chapter, \u201cTruth in Journalism,\u201d in the forthcoming Journalism and Truth in an Age of Social Media<\/em>. Edited by James E. Katz and Kate Mays, the book will be published by Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn journalism, you need to present truths in a way that will be accessible to people and usable for them,\u201d Soysal says. \u201cBut journalists\u2019 responsibilities can pull them in different directions, and as a result, truth can be compromised. There\u2019s so much distrust of the news these days, but when truth is compromised, it\u2019s not necessarily happening because journalists are bad at their jobs. For instance, simplification or using narratives can help a journalist convey information more clearly. It might skew the truth a little, but I argue that it\u2019s inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soysal argues that transparency\u2014letting news readers and listeners know what the journalists\u2019 evidence is for a particular story, how strong it is, and why they\u2019re presenting the information as they are\u2014is crucial. \u201cBasic clarification like this can help people become better consumers of news, and better producers of it, too,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

For journalism, as for so many things, philosophy can offer useful insight, Soysal holds.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhilosophical thinking can help you do whatever you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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