Dear Gunnar
HAhaa, I like your sunburn metaphor very much!
Yes, there will be problems if one thinks that simply being independent one is free to general original ideas, or convention. One could say that financial independence affords good and bad ideas, original or convential ideas indifferently. But I've been thinking about Hayek, and I wonder if he's working out the basic sine qua non conditions of original ideation. In other words, the argument is not (very crudely put):
A1: if q: one is financially independent, then p: there will be original ideas
Rather, it appears to me (and I don't mean to say this is my own settle position either)
A2: If p: there are original ideas, then q: there must have been independence.
Looking at this A2, we see that it does not say A1. if A1 is derived from A2, that would be a derivation that commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
Rather what is valid is: since, p implies q, then not q implies not p (modus tollens)
Hence, if there is no independence (not q), then there will be no original ideas (not p).
SO hayek admits that indepedence does not always lead to good, but if you are to give good / (actually not necessarily good, but at least original) ideas a chance, then you must have indepedence.
I think for this reason Hayek says that sometimes we should pay some mavericks to come up with crazy ideas.
I''m not against the University! I am a university man! But I am thinking, how can we design university institutions so that mad ideaas get some protection, perhaps this is what Hayek says to us.
The tenure system must protect, to borrow James MArch, catechists of heresy - perhaps?
Still, whatever I think Mavericks should try not to be rude to administrators, or else it makes it hard to look after these...
Jude
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar Swanson [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 11:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Hayek; was: Universities and Research
On Aug 6, 2013, at 9:18 PM, CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS) <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I wondered if there is something worth looking at in F A Hayek here, in his notion of the gentleman scholar, or man of indepednent means, with ownership of property and hence indepedence, and not under coercive duress: here there is room for originality and ideas that dare to contradict paymasters, and convention.
One doesn't need to be a full-on economic determinist to get a bad sunburn through the holes in that particular Hayek assumption (which is not to say that universities don't manage to impose their own assumed interests on scholarship.)
National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg
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