Humanities and Social Sciences Colloquium

One of the most important mechanism design policies in college admissions is to let students choose a college major sequentially (college-then-major choice) or jointly (college-major choice). In the context of the Chinese meta-major reforms that transition from college-major choice to college-then-major choice, we provide the first experimental evidence on the information frictions and heterogeneous preferences that students have in their response to the meta-major option. In a randomized experiment with a nationwide sample of 11,424 high school graduates, we find that providing information on the benefits of a meta-major significantly increased students’ willingness to choose the meta-major; however, information about specific majors and assignment mechanisms did not affect students’ major choice preferences. We also find that information provision mostly affected the preferences of students who were from disadvantaged backgrounds, lacked accurate information, did not have clear major preferences, or were risk loving.

According to hope theorists, instrumentalism—the view that hope is valuable because it contributes to the increased likelihood of hopeful agents realising their hoped-for goals—does not exhaust hope's value. This paper argues for a novel account of hope’s value in Kant. In doing so, it first sketches his argument in the “On a Common Saying” essay. Then, it discusses how hope in humanity’s moral progress has moral-instrumental value: such hope can help agents combat a morally pernicious tendency to isolate themselves from society. It concludes by suggesting that Kant's account explains why activists involved in intergenerational initiatives today have reason to be hopeful.

The German-born Oxford-based Sanskrit and religion scholar Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900) was an academic superstar in his lifetime, acquainted with an impressive number of distinguished scholarly, literary, and political figures, in Europe, America, and India, as well as Japan. A giant in the Victorian intellectual scene, Max Müller’s ideas proved to be extremely influential, though often problematic, and sometimes intrinsically dangerous. Over the last thirty years there has been a critical rediscovery of Max Müller’s thought, particularly in his role as the (half-disowned) founding father of the academic study of religion. This talk reconsiders the genealogy of some of Max Müller’s most characteristic ideas on the intersection between language, thought, and religions, by revealing his overlooked intellectual debt to an ancient Sanskrit text dealing with etymology, philosophy of language and mythology – Yāska’s Nirukta (c. 6th/3rd century BCE). Yāska’s influence on Max Müller’s thought will be explored in the context of reviewing a debate between Max Müller and another Yāska-influenced prominent nineteenth-century interpreter of ancient India – the religious reformer and early representative of muscular neo-Hinduism Dayānanda Sarasvatī (1824–83).