I'm kind of curious about what people might know about this, if anyone knows any philosophy professors or is one. I can completely understand that a philosophy professor might get ideas from things that passing student bring up, that may not have a strong interest in philosophy. However if a philosophy professor has a student that has a really strong developed belief set and intends to write essays or even a book on it, is it considered unethical for a professor to use his ideas? I ask this question because my latest philosophy professor, unlike my other professors, is not wise or mature in any sense of the word. He has just as much psychology background as philosophy and I think he is stuck due to his lack of initiative and/or REAL interest in either subject (He complained about not being able to be published). He is constantly using immature tactics to appear knowledgable and/or authoritative in the classroom in response to objections by the students. For example he often pretends to know what a student is talking about and create a straw man version of their argument and then insult the student for bringing up such a silly objection. (I usually understand what the other students are saying in these cases, if its not me he is doing it to) In any case I started out trying to answer the exam questions based on my own knowledge of the subject rather than just spitting back out whatever poor interpretations of the material he gave us. Of course I received a bad grade, apparently (after talking to him) because he did not even read what I had written since it was not the interpretations he gave us (and most likely the sense that I did not like him very much). After explaining it to him his eyes seemed to light up but then he told me he had to go. I would not put it past this person to use other's ideas in his thesis. So does anyone know anything about this? Potential reprucussions I might have as options if a professor was to do this? (assuming he somehow finished his paper before I, which is likely considering the length of my work) Of course right now this is just a hypothetical situation, but I would like to be prepared if this situation should arise.
Professors are entitled to use the ideas of their students (and call these ideas subsequently theirs and use them in their books). Under the academic code this is permitted because the professor "caused" the arrisal of these ideas in his students. It also often happens. Some of my co-students discovered that large pieces of their work were used in a professor's book and wanted him to pay them for using their ideas and acknowledge the origin of the ideas. The Faculty board which they turned to to complain turned them down stating that the professor was fully at his rights to do that. Happend in The Netherlands, but I think this is similair in USA and Canada. PS. The right to use student's ideas applies only to the ideas produced during the studies-periode. After graduating the ideas are formally the posession of the person who graduated (ideas which he produced after the graduation are his own).
I have three friends who are in university for Philosophy (or philopsychology types of classes). My best friend was having trouble because she disagrees with the professor. She is in sophmore philosophy so the professor still expects the students to reiterate his opinions. He is also a young prof (I guess 33 is young...) who is so arrogant that he can't be wrong in his eyes. The study group for his class started discussing the problems they were having in his class. They decided to do a silent protest by getting everyone in the class to write letters to the professor. They sent them all in a large package (I'll get the links to the pictures of the package and the scans of the better letters when she comes on MSN) to the professor. He never mentioned what had happened in class, but he started accepting opinions of others and the class average went up about 20%. I think that a teacher of prof should be made aware of the problems that the students have with them. They won't know otherwise.
My profs this year (McGill University) were all phenomenal about this stuff in philosophy. For Moral Phil my prof was very easy going and my t.a. understood that I knew more tha nthe basic intro course stuff so gladly accepted my work on things we didnt take up in class. My deductive logic prof actually helped me to bypass the requirements for a higher logic class (which is a real bitch to do, at McGill they don't like you skipping ahead). And my pre-Socrats teacher actually prefered us to disagree with him, and told us he's changed opinion on interpretations of philosophers based on students. God bless McGill!
You sound like you actually agree with it... I don't know about that in the USA we generally tend to be more just about those type of things but I can at least see how the student in question would need to have written something in order to do make a case. In any case due to this professor being just overall mentally weak I doubt he would be able to fill in all the blanks or do anything meaningful with the ideas I presented in class. In any case I personally believe that people don't really have ownership over ideas, but that if soemeone produces something of value they should be compensated to the degree it benefits other people (ie they should be able to sell things they create with ideas) It might be a different story if the professor in question agreed and didn't claim to be responsible for creating the ideas in question. Then maybe you could just say well if they write something on it before you do then you should have just done it faster if you wanted to get credit for it. But its something totally different for some sheep minded professor to steal a students entire belief set after arguing with them and treating them as though they were stupid every step of the way, only to claim complete responsibility for those ideas and implement them poorly later on. But the truth is the way the world works now is based on all kinds of logical fallicies... For instance in my university, you cannot appeal grades based on the way the teacher makes tests or things of that nature. The rules say something about the teachers being masters of their trade etc... It doesn't take a genious to figure out this is rediculous... If this were true then teachers would never disagree with each other about what is the best way to do things and besides its obvious the teachers aren't omniscient. The teachers are not psychologists (most anyways) or epistemologists and do not know how people learn or the mechanics behind how they do on tests. They are just as capable as anyone to try and figure these things out, but that doesn't mean that they have (and in most cases all they have done is applied their poor and biased reasoning skills to their experience and not cared who they screw over) It basically all boils down to facism. The teachers get paid peanuts and want to be able to boss people around and be treated well instead. If universities were all privatized most likely this problem wouldn't exist... Anyways to look at this specific case, epistemology and philosophy in general can be carried out by anyone off the street not just a professor. It is wholly possible for someone to enter into a professors class with 10 times the amount of knowledge and understanding on the subject as the professor. In my case, there was not a single thing brought up in the class that I had not already thought of myself. The only reason I took the class was because I was already writing a book and I wanted to know what efforts had been done in this direction so far. But truthfully thats the way it is with a lot of subjects. The designations we give such as doctor etc are for the most part meaningless. It seems as though its really meant to overcome emotional animalistic tendancies of people rather than actually designate someone as knowledgable in a field. It's like saying "Hey I did this for 8 years so its ok that I know more than you about this". People's knowledge on a subject should be evaluated directly, ie if the things that person says makes sense then his opinion is valuable... not by judging broader categories that in reality are often not as correlated to knowledge as the people in those categories would like to think (or the people using them in the case of racism). There are plenty of doctors for instance that go to medical school for 8 years and take classes on everything then once they start working they don't remember a damn thing and just plug symptoms into a pda and prescribe whatever drug pops up...
Tyler, I'm applying to McGIll. It's hard to get in for out-of-province students though and it's also about double for tuition. I would be applying for Science if I went there though with some Philosophy on the side.
Keep this in mind. I've heard physicists say that relativity is a simple idea. But, it took an Einstein to figure it out. I've also hear the calculus can be learned by anyone who just does all the math problems that lead to calculus, but it took a Newton and a Leibnez to figure it out. Those who behoove themselves to take others ideas assert them as their own will probably get the idea, but have trouble evolving the idea. So, rest assured, if you got the Einstein ability, they may mock you, but you'll probably be the only one able to progress the idea or other ideas you may have to progress in result of treachery. Isolating yourself from the community can assure that your ideas may develop unknown, but you risk developing crackpot theories. On the other hand, isolation can be exactly what you need so that the community can see the idea unadultared by hacks, who may ruin it before you finish it. Keeping open about your idea stands the hardest test. Someone with talent could take it and accelerate past you. One things you can know with a good idea in keeping it in the open is that everyone has a fair chance at taking the ball and running with it. Why do you need fame, when you have a nice place, enough to eat and everyone is benefit from your generosity? Someday, you may come up with something that only you will be able to produce in a way that the entire community will applaud you for. Nice guys may finish last, but what so bad about a nice ride through it all?
I actually agree with you to some degree collision, I mean I was thinking well if I actually do with my idea what I wanted to then anything he has done will most likely pale in comparison because he seems to narrowminded to evolve my idea. If I never succeed at this then why do I really care if he uses it to get published so he can get his phd? If he does evolve the ideas and does everything I planned then the world would have benefitted just the same. But what if he takes my ideas and misuses them and messes them all up such that I anything I do after will have less impact but he has not done anything good with them. In this specific case it is a likely scenario. Basically I have developed a system similar to what Carnap tried to do but that actually works and explains basically everything in life (including people's behavior) from common experience that is very simple and matches information gathered from every related science. I planned to apply this system to come up with really good arguments regarding ethics and what types of actions and/or systems in every day life are hypocritical and/or self contradicting. However my professor is a psychologist, and he would have interest in the system for different reasons. If he publishes the ideas then the system would be nothing new and my subsequent ideas would be lessened by this combined with the fact that I have no credentials. I could still publish it but it would just be a book on ethics from someone who isn't a phd in the field. I definitely know what you mean regarding the crackpot theory thing. What I usually do is go some where there is an internet forum and argue with people that have no interest in the subject. Other than that I avoid metaphors in my reasoning process and do not reason past what the information I have necessitates or strongly points to. The result is usually arguments that people immediately admit have merit.
Wow! That's terrible! I can’t believe anyone would tolerate such a massively unfair system. In the U.S. the student retains all of their 'intellectual property rights' to whatever they write, even if it's written to fulfill a class assignment. In the U.S. you have a legal copyright to anything as soon as your write it down - the mere fact that someone else told you to write about the subject doesn't matter. Over here the only time a professor can use a student's work in the way you describe is if the student is actually in the employ of the professor, ie getting paid to do research on a subject.
I believe the code in Holland is meant mainly to protect the teachers from nit-picking, if Einstein studied here and introduced his theory while a student no teacher would be able to steal it. But I was a kind of taken aback when I heard it first, it is not fair to the student, I agree with defintely. (Makes me think abou a French law I heard about, which states that the father of the child is the husband of the woman which born the child. (So if I understand it right you may come with whatever prove you can think of (dna, etc) the wet overules it (when you claim/disclaim the fathership). It is to protect the child and even if you can find examples where it doesn't work like that, it still secures a pretty good stable conditions for the child.))
As far as I can tell, it is not quite like that. The Dutch Copyright Act 1912 quite cleary states in article 1: When searching for those "limitations laid down by law", I have found the following passage which may be related to this thread (article 6): A slipperly slope, I agree. However, I think it is safe to say that if a student has a novel idea it surely does not fall under the category of some else's draft, and therefore this article would not apply. In such a scenario the student can rightfully claim intellectual property. More information regarding this topic, including the Copyright Act of 1912, can be found at the website of the Dutch Department of Justice.
@mouse It possibly depends on a university policy. I coudn't find anything about this case on google. What I have well found is a contract (in Dutch) (pre-printed) where it states that the rights on software which student had developed are of the University in question ((The University of Amsterdam) where I also studied). <i>De auteursrechten op software die tijdens het afstudeerproject zijn geproduceerd, zijn eigendom van de Universiteit of van de instelling waarbij de werkzaamheden zijn verricht. In het contract (Appendix A) is een verklaring opgenomen waarmee je deze rechten overdraagt.</i> http://www.google.nl/search?q=cache...g_groot.pdf auteursrechten werkstuk UvA&hl=nl But the case I wrote about didn't go to the court, it was handled "locally", and as I said we were not pleased by its resolution. But the policy could have possibly changed since then. (I hope it did)
Just remeber, we are all genius of our own perceptions and free will there of. Proffesors were once students that were learning from someone who learnt of someonelse. In my point of view, it is the student that has more of a free formed value in philosophy because there mind is in "wanting to learn" mode not the "wanting to prove different". Use your imagination, not others.
