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Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

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Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#61

Post by usgroup »

andkon wrote: post #53
saintzozo wrote: post #8

I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and mental discipline to learn anything, and I'm now dominating the tech scene despite having little in the way of formal coursework. I was lucky to choose one of the few disciplines that can be fruitfully studied at Brown. As any student of a rigorous discipline,…

Is this satire? This is pretty much the perfect expression of all the most insufferable moments and people I knew during my own analytic philosophy education. It's even wrapped up in the fondest delusion of philosophy undergrads: that you, through the sheer strength of your intellect, rose above your surroundings. Your shit ain't that great, man. If anyone goes through four years of philosophy and is talking about th…

Lol, yup I was "that guy". But then being that guy kept me interested and made the whole pursuit worth a damn. 8 hours of philosophy a day ain't easy.

The narcissism and public masturbation aside, I can't think of a subject that does more to unify a mind or help a person tether themselves into the world in which they live.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#62

Post by usgroup »

pmoriarty wrote: post #41
saintzozo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm well trained in mathematics. It's certainly healthy. However, I often find that outside of their professional work, mathematicians are more willing to part with rigueur than the philosophers across the hall. Notice how most mathematicians aren't particularly interested in foundations of mathematics, for example.

I'm not sure if that's really true about mathematicians lacking rigour. I do recall a logic professor of mine jokingly say that mathematicians were afraid of logicians, and (more seriously) that the former thought the latter were unnecessarily precise. (I hope I'm remembering this right and not misrepresenting what he said) I'm not sure about the superiority in rigour in the rest of philosophy (even if we narrow the…

I wouldn't say there is maths envy in analytical Phil.

Stuff like modal logic , ontology and descriptive logics , a large variety of para-logical systems and epistemically logical systems, etc are all philosophy proper.

Lots of professors have a background in maths, even continentals (e.g Husserl).

I think mathematical rigour is the holy grail but the objects of the philosophical world are often not easy to coerce into such a form hence the piecemeal visage.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#63

Post by usgroup »

pmoriarty wrote: post #41
saintzozo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm well trained in mathematics. It's certainly healthy. However, I often find that outside of their professional work, mathematicians are more willing to part with rigueur than the philosophers across the hall. Notice how most mathematicians aren't particularly interested in foundations of mathematics, for example.

I'm not sure if that's really true about mathematicians lacking rigour. I do recall a logic professor of mine jokingly say that mathematicians were afraid of logicians, and (more seriously) that the former thought the latter were unnecessarily precise. (I hope I'm remembering this right and not misrepresenting what he said) I'm not sure about the superiority in rigour in the rest of philosophy (even if we narrow the…

I wouldn't say there is maths envy in analytical Phil.

Stuff like modal logic , ontology and descriptive logics , a large variety of para-logical systems and epistemically logical systems, etc are all philosophy proper.

Lots of professors have a background in maths, even continentals (e.g Husserl).

I think mathematical rigour is the holy grail but the objects of the philosophical world are often not easy to coerce into such a form hence the piecemeal visage.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#64

Post by usgroup »

hkmurakami wrote: post #13
saintzozo wrote: post #8

I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and mental discipline to learn anything, and I'm now dominating the tech scene despite having little in the way of formal coursework. I was lucky to choose one of the few disciplines that can be fruitfully studied at Brown. As any student of a rigorous discipline,…

Question -- you say that you are a person who is able to learn in solitude. Would you have been able to pursue your dive into Philosophy without the environment that Brown offered you? I ask this for a few reasons. 1) I have a fairly strong interest in the discipline, but have found rigorous self guided study to be a challenge, beyond cursory readings of the classics and a smattering of modern theorists like Singer.…

I've done both self study and school in that order. Exposure is the problem in self study. You need some way of giving yourself a balanced representation of ideas. You may do well to pick a syllabus from s strong Uni and follow it right through .

The other thing of course is someone to call bullshit on you... Phil is a great subject with which to convince yourself that you are a genius . Especially when the people you talk to about it (friends et al) are in awe of your expositions since it's hardly common parlance . Keeping the narcissist in check is difficult for some.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

andkon wrote: post #53
saintzozo wrote: post #8

I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and mental discipline to learn anything, and I'm now dominating the tech scene despite having little in the way of formal coursework. I was lucky to choose one of the few disciplines that can be fruitfully studied at Brown. As any student of a rigorous discipline,…

Is this satire? This is pretty much the perfect expression of all the most insufferable moments and people I knew during my own analytic philosophy education. It's even wrapped up in the fondest delusion of philosophy undergrads: that you, through the sheer strength of your intellect, rose above your surroundings. Your shit ain't that great, man. If anyone goes through four years of philosophy and is talking about th…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#66

Post by usgroup »

Mendenhall wrote: post #42

Dime store philosophy. Some just want to be seen as philosophers and regurgitate what others told them about anothers work. I always had a passion for philosophy, I read massive amounts before even going to college. I would read the ancient greek books that had english on one page greek on the other then use a concordance to basically teach myself ancient greek while making sure I had the context correct and not miss…

I'd say philosophers study philosophers... Not sure when that wasn't true? Aristotle being the most famous academic philosopher ...

The thing that annoyed me was the number of philosophers that don't study anything else but proceed to talk about it.

Stuff that hinges on politics or psychology for example where philosophers just assume that something is human or social nature . Or when we assume that justice is somehow primary in ethics . Etc

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#67

Post by Chinjut »

andkon wrote: post #53
saintzozo wrote: post #8

I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and mental discipline to learn anything, and I'm now dominating the tech scene despite having little in the way of formal coursework. I was lucky to choose one of the few disciplines that can be fruitfully studied at Brown. As any student of a rigorous discipline,…

Is this satire? This is pretty much the perfect expression of all the most insufferable moments and people I knew during my own analytic philosophy education. It's even wrapped up in the fondest delusion of philosophy undergrads: that you, through the sheer strength of your intellect, rose above your surroundings. Your shit ain't that great, man. If anyone goes through four years of philosophy and is talking about th…

Huh. Their website (http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/) does seem at least somewhat satirical, and yet, if they are trolling, they are quite committed to it. They do seem to post a lot on reddit about Brown: https://www.reddit.com/user/saintzozo. Although those posts seem like a lot of trolling as well. Ah, I dunno. It's difficult for me to figure out exactly the dynamics of trolling vs. other forms of satire vs. sincerity that are in play here.

ETA: Ah, and here's the referred-to original post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrownU/comments/50xjy7/another_alar...

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#68

Post by GoToRO »

It's the difference between common people education, and really reach people education: common people need to learn things that will help them make a living, like programming; reach people already have the money so they get the best education, the one that really opens your mind, like philosophy, history, arts etc., plus some to help them keep power. It's just how things are.

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#69

Post by Desustorm »

GoToRO wrote: post #68

It's the difference between common people education, and really reach people education: common people need to learn things that will help them make a living, like programming; reach people already have the money so they get the best education, the one that really opens your mind, like philosophy, history, arts etc., plus some to help them keep power. It's just how things are.

Reach == rich?

Re: Why I Majored in Philosophy Despite Everyone Telling Me Not To (2013)

#70

Post by vacri »

pmoriarty wrote: post #55
sebringj wrote: post #36

After taking some in college, philosophy to me was more like a stepping stone in critical thinking to embracing the light of science. I've noticed on so many youtube forums for example, people postulate things without external verification in nature, "if this then that" where tautologies and vin diagrams and the like are held as absolute truths. It never was sold on that as there are more dimensions to reality than o…

Science can certainly be an interesting pastime, can provide lots of interesting and intellectually stimulating results, is arguably responsible for the technical advances we see around us, and you're likely to make more money and get more respect as a scientist than as a professional philosopher, but how much we're learning about the wold through science is very much open to debate. For one, the scientific study of…

Science and philosophy are not separate, competing entities.
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