TRUTH ABOUT TRUTH

"There’s an anecdote (quite possibly apocryphal) according to which the Oxford philosopher Elisabeth Anscombe was once asked whether she thought that Oxford Philosophy corrupts the youth. Anscombe is said to have replied that it would if they paid it any mind, but since they don’t, it doesn’t. I’m not myself convinced that the moral implications of the philosophical views that then prevailed at Oxford are really all that corrosive, but I do agree that few students take much to heart what they’re told in Phil 101; in my experience, they have trouble keeping it in their heads long enough to get through the semester. Teach them, as it might be, Hume’s argument that induction cannot be justified, and the question you’re likely to get most often is: Will that appear on the midterm exams? It is possible to doubt that the laity in general, or undergraduates in particular, actually care much what philosophers think about the Good, the True or the Beautiful".