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The revenge of the philosophy majors

nytimes.com

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Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#251

Post by suddenlybananas »

wcfrobert wrote: post #195
keiferski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aha, continental philosophy is definitely worth learning as well. I don’t share the disdain many analytic people have for continentals. However I don’t think it’ll make you better at writing clearly, unfortunately…

I like the _idea_ of reading continental philosophy, and then I opened up Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Here is a random sentence from a random page verbatim: "Spirit contains this actuality here because the extremes whose unity it is just as immediately each have the determination to be for itself its own actuality. Their unity is subverted into aloof aspects, each of which is for the other an actual object exclu…

If you open a random page of most scientific journals in a field you're not familiar with, you probably wouldn't understand anything either.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#252

Post by arw0n »

evantbyrne wrote: post #199
Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

Philosophy of science went hard and was hands down the most valuable course in my education. It's very strange that they don't force everyone to take at least some philosophy in university. Can you imagine living in a world where the average person not only thought about what they believed, but were also equipped to ask themselves hard questions about the nature of belief itself?

I had an Ethics professor in uni who would ask his intro classes to raise their hands if they thought they were a morally upright person. On average, much fewer philosophy majors would raise their hands, and they would continue to decrease throughout their studies.

Of course, the thought process of "I'm trying my best, but sometimes failing", could push someone in both directions of the answer, but striving to be better only works when honestly acknowledging failures. In my experience, the majority of people tend to construct their moral views conveniently along the lines of their preferred actions, but principles built on convenience usually don't hold up to scrutiny.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#254

Post by smcg »

skirmish wrote: post #231
evantbyrne wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy of science went hard and was hands down the most valuable course in my education. It's very strange that they don't force everyone to take at least some philosophy in university. Can you imagine living in a world where the average person not only thought about what they believed, but were also equipped to ask themselves hard questions about the nature of belief itself?

Marxist-Leninist Philosophy was a required course for all undergrads in my time studying in USSR. Strangely enough, the professors made it into an overview course on history of philosophy, which was quite enjoyable, with just some mention of Marxism-Leninism in the last lecture.

That's very sad. There is much to learn on the subject.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#255

Post by smcg »

asdff wrote: post #158
Wissenschafter wrote: post #114

I have an undergrad in Philosophy. Our required math classes were formal logic, which we shared with the comp sci. majors. Those classes basically taught me how to program. I am now a senior engineer at a F500 and I just have a BA in Phil. It is a highly underrated degree, and going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary, and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed f…

>University was never meant to be a training-ground for jobs, it was meant to be a place to seek truth and knowledge. Depends. US had the land grant system going back to the end of the civil war. It was very much oriented towards practical and marketable skills such as agriculture and engineering that were deemed to be in short supply. Still is in these land grant (now also sea grant and space grant) schools. Enginee…

Land grant system actually started during the civil war.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#256

Post by smcg »

Everyone is debating the merits of philosophy and education without stating the elephant in the room: these AI companies hired these philosophy majors to launder their reputation and obfuscate the horrible anti-social products they are making.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#257

Post by amanaplanacanal »

metalspot wrote: post #202
rendx wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think they're on opposite ends: philosophy teaches you autonomous experiential thinking, religion asks you to follow some third party authority.

this is a modernist misconception. ancient religions are philosophical frameworks and the texts are internally coherent arguments for those frameworks. They are just expressed in language that modern audiences without formal training don't understand.

Which texts are internally coherent? The religion I grew up with certainly wasn't.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#258

Post by galkk »

I am not trolling or anything, just have genuine question.

What is the expected deliverable of philosophy degree and of its holders in 21st century? What do they produce. I can understand stem - the ones who have it presumably can do math, engineering, construction, even pure math I can to some extent understand. I can understand, to some extent, even memetic English language, women studies, dance etc.

But what is philosophy degree? I don’t think that it’s just history of philosophy.

Like when I was in college I read history of western philosophy. And for majority of philosophers there the thought was that yes, maybe at a time it was reasonable opinion, but looking back from 21st century it was often pretentious nonsense. So what are modern philosophers doing, especially run of the mill philosophy majors? Again, I’m not trying to be rude or anything, I just don’t even know how to formulate that question :)

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#259

Post by Hugsbox »

calf wrote: post #186
EoinB wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something to ponder... I have a PhD in mathematics and have worked in tech for more than 30 years as a programmer. I went to a Renaissance era university in Scotland which is required by law to require of me a broad education rather than something very specialised. Because I entered the science faculty, as an undergraduate, I had to balance that with something from the humanities and I chose Philosophy, naïvely think…

I was born a philosopher, people were telling me to study philosophy when I was in high school. But instead my formal education choices took a more circuitous route that included the fine arts, physics, electrical engineering, computer engineering, and eventually theoretical computer science. However even I can see that philosophy as a field is flawed and generic advice to tell students to go philosophy is incredibly…

Man I love this brand of unintentional comedy

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#260

Post by snowpid »

smcg wrote: post #254
skirmish wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marxist-Leninist Philosophy was a required course for all undergrads in my time studying in USSR. Strangely enough, the professors made it into an overview course on history of philosophy, which was quite enjoyable, with just some mention of Marxism-Leninism in the last lecture.

That's very sad. There is much to learn on the subject.

no its not and the great example is the Sowjetunion.
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