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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)

#121

Post by slfnflctd »

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…

I noticed you failed to mention utilitarianism, which asserts that there is no better guiding principle for ethical choices than the greatest potential well being (or happiness) of all affected sentient individuals. [This is the one Sam Harris gets accused of 'ripping off' without mentioning it by philosophy types who dislike him.] I've heard and read a whole lotta bluster from people who have nitpicky issues with it, but I find it pretty satisfying.

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

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

#122

Post by lostboys67 »

objectiveariel wrote: post #75

I love this bit: "I prefer to spend my college years searching, exploring, and wondering, as opposed to training to become an "asset" in the file cabinet of a "human resource" department. Rock on fellow baristas, rock on." Translation: "I'll come out of university with no transferrable skills whatsoever. Dreadfully unintellectual dead-end jobs are where I'll be able to keep pursuing my love of knowledge". Dude. The a…

So you use the philosophy to justify using the economics part of you degree to make 2+2 = 5 for your employer.

In the UK the Oxbridge PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) is a well know route into politics.

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

#123

Post by themartorana »

lagadu wrote: post #104
objectiveariel wrote: post #75

I love this bit: "I prefer to spend my college years searching, exploring, and wondering, as opposed to training to become an "asset" in the file cabinet of a "human resource" department. Rock on fellow baristas, rock on." Translation: "I'll come out of university with no transferrable skills whatsoever. Dreadfully unintellectual dead-end jobs are where I'll be able to keep pursuing my love of knowledge". Dude. The a…

> I'm proud of it, but I'd never boast about how poorly it prepared me for the job market. This is what I don't get: why is there an assumption that what you study at university has to be in any way related to the job market? You study something because you have an interest in developing it further, being able to get a job doing it is just a secondary perk.

Well, if you can afford that extra mortgage-sized payment while making minimum wage. We're not talking about studying online or at a community college or self-teaching, we're talking about a 4 year degree at a university.

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

#124

Post by Houshalter »

johan_larson wrote: post #72

I studied some philosophy in college, and found the experience pretty disappointing. The field addresses some really fascinating problems, but I'm not too impressed with their answers. A typical assignment in philosophy consists of thinking about a really hard problem with no good solutions, picking one, and arguing for it. And since there are so few fixed points, almost anything is arguable. Really, it's a debater's…

I like philosophy but, the "debater's paradise" really gets to the problems with it. Arguments can never be settled, just dragged on. I like this quote about the history of science, before the scientific method.

>...The scholastics saying that matter was this, or that, and justifying themselves by long treatises about how based on A, B, C, the word of the Bible, Aristotle, self-evident first principles, and the Great Chain of Being all clearly proved their point. Then other scholastics would write different long treatises on how D, E, and F, Plato, St. Augustine, and the proper ordering of angels all indicated that clearly matter was something different. Both groups were pretty sure that the other had make a subtle error of reasoning somewhere, and both groups were perfectly happy to spend centuries debating exactly which one of them it was.... People are terrible. If you let people debate things, they will do it forever, come up with horrible ideas, get them entrenched, play politics with them, and finally reach the point where they’re coming up with theories why people who disagree with them are probably secretly in the pay of the Devil... Imagine having to conduct the global warming debate, except that you couldn’t appeal to scientific consensus and statistics because scientific consensus and statistics hadn’t been invented yet. In a world without science, everything would be like that.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-ou...

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

#125

Post by argonaut »

dpweb wrote: post #114
objectiveariel wrote: post #75

I love this bit: "I prefer to spend my college years searching, exploring, and wondering, as opposed to training to become an "asset" in the file cabinet of a "human resource" department. Rock on fellow baristas, rock on." Translation: "I'll come out of university with no transferrable skills whatsoever. Dreadfully unintellectual dead-end jobs are where I'll be able to keep pursuing my love of knowledge". Dude. The a…

It says more about our society that the person who chooses to study philosophy. Making more money is valuable and not making much is looked down upon. But, how happy are we? What philosophy can do is expand your mind beyond what society has told you. Consider these questions in looking at your existence, What can I know? What must I do? What is man? What is God? They're not to be scoffed at, waved away with a dismiss…

You are conflating "philosophizing" with "the modern academic study of philosophy." To most people, the second has nothing to do with the first.

Your grandparents, uncles, and aunts have better answers to those questions. Maybe a two semester survey of the history of philosophy and reading the great works to hear some different perspectives. Neither of these involve a full course of study in philosophy.

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

#126

Post by saint_fiasco »

objectiveariel wrote: post #75

I love this bit: "I prefer to spend my college years searching, exploring, and wondering, as opposed to training to become an "asset" in the file cabinet of a "human resource" department. Rock on fellow baristas, rock on." Translation: "I'll come out of university with no transferrable skills whatsoever. Dreadfully unintellectual dead-end jobs are where I'll be able to keep pursuing my love of knowledge". Dude. The a…

What does the author think a barista is? Are they not an "asset" to their employers too?

They are exploited as much as any other "human resource" and they don't even make a lot of money to compensate.

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

#127

Post by maus42 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #17
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,…

I'm not a big fan of analytic philosophy, quite the opposite. Continental philosophy is much more my speed (though there are plenty of parts of even that that I have big problems with). I consider analytic philosophy to be a blight upon philosophy in general. It started off dominating universities in mainly English speaking countries, but has moved on to gain control over many others. It's even started to co-opt phil…

You have lots of metaphors and how analytical thinking is "narrow", but I didn't found your argument why continental philosophy would be better to study than analytical tradition.

I'm suddenly reminded of an acquaintance whole called me "narrow-minded" when I said chakras and horoscopes are maybe fun, but have not much to do with the observable scientific reality, so you should not be serious about them.

I mean, I reviewed the wikipedia dictionary definition [1] of major trends in continental philosophy to see to refresh my mind what it was about, again, and I'm not terribly impressed. If analytical is "narrow" viewpoint, then fine, in my opinion it's very needed right kind of narrow a rigorous and honest study of philosophy needs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy

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

#128

Post by agumonkey »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #126
objectiveariel wrote: post #75

I love this bit: "I prefer to spend my college years searching, exploring, and wondering, as opposed to training to become an "asset" in the file cabinet of a "human resource" department. Rock on fellow baristas, rock on." Translation: "I'll come out of university with no transferrable skills whatsoever. Dreadfully unintellectual dead-end jobs are where I'll be able to keep pursuing my love of knowledge". Dude. The a…

What does the author think a barista is? Are they not an "asset" to their employers too? They are exploited as much as any other "human resource" and they don't even make a lot of money to compensate.

I'd say it's a matter of perspective. Nobody ever told you barista was special, and requires years of school, etc etc. So you don't feel disappointed when you end up as a "tool". Whereas being a graduate that ends up treated like a cashier at a mall does create some deep internal dissonnance.

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

#129

Post by agumonkey »

osullivj wrote: post #89

"Philosophy is the discipline whose adherents kick up a load of dust, then complain they can't see". Murray Gell-Mann. Mind you, I do have a degree in Philosophy from a faculty very firmly in the analytic school. Logic, metaphysics and ontology have been helpful in thinking about software problems. For instance, you can think of Russell's On Denoting ("the king of France is bald") as being about null pointers, or dan…

Kripke was a philosopher first ? I never thought to look at his biography before this and always expected him to be a CS guy.

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

#130

Post by kefka »

IsaacL wrote: post #88
johan_larson wrote: post #72

I studied some philosophy in college, and found the experience pretty disappointing. The field addresses some really fascinating problems, but I'm not too impressed with their answers. A typical assignment in philosophy consists of thinking about a really hard problem with no good solutions, picking one, and arguing for it. And since there are so few fixed points, almost anything is arguable. Really, it's a debater's…

I started a course in philosophy during my first year of university. I studied CS (in the UK, where you don't typically go far outside your major) but I'd always been curious about the humanities and thought it worthwhile to learn about all fields of knowledge. I'd also read about philosophy for laymen books as a teenager. In the first lecture, I remember being surprised at how rational and logical the lecturer was.…

Objectivism: the OO of philosophy.

Or, LaVeyan Satanism without the occult element.

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