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The revenge of the philosophy majors

nytimes.com

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Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#261

Post by DoctorOetker »

NonHyloMorph wrote: post #219
DoctorOetker wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is substance in philosophy, don't get me wrong, but just not that much of it, theres only a handful of real theorems with proofs (like the deduction theorem etc., which is basically some syntactic sugar correctness proof, if I may put it barbarically). A physicist will have studied atomic and molecular physics courses, and some intro to chemistry course, and there will be some overlap with thermodynamics. But n…

What is your argument exactly? You establish, that it is virtuous to not fall for the hybris that claiming knowledge beyond the scope of your domain is. (i.e. the virtuous physisit who does not mistake his encounter with some institutional courses in chemistry for a foundation to transgress against "the chemist" by pretending to grasp chemistry like the latter does) Now what is it exactly that you want to put forward…

"There is substance in philosophy, don't get me wrong, but just not that much of it"

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#262

Post by calf »

jibal wrote: post #204
calf wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you actually studied philosophy you would realize that your comment is riddled with fallacies.

I'm not going to waste my brain cells trying to prove a negative that my comment doesn't have fallacies, but I will say that I meant every word of what I wrote while on my phone commenting casually in an online forum, not for a research paper and perhaps what is more likely is that you don't realize that commonsense context and/or have not fathomed / fill-in-the-blanks as to actual valid reasons as to why I said those things that to you seem to be fallacies.

For example if you knew about STEM-elitism, it is not many mental steps to "philosophy-elitism" of the sort of sentiment "Philosophy >_hard Math". Why exactly does omitting this explication make my opinion a fallacy? It doesn't. It's an online forum with people handwaving their opinions, just as the people above me were already doing.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#263

Post by never_inline »

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…

> going forward with knowledge specialization becoming unnecessary and eventually unfeasible due to the triviality of AI making it not needed for a human being to study a hyper-niche subject

Did your philospophy degree not teach you to think "what could go wrong?".

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#264

Post by calf »

Hugsbox wrote: post #259
calf wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your comment is clever but plainly unkind. If you truly care about philosophy you would say something more constructive. It is in no comparison to my explicit criticisms, whatever you may disagree with about them.

My general opinion is the same: saying "philosophy > math", and variations thereof, is generally an uneducated, absurd, stupid, unwise comment. I won't mince words with that. Nor am I being paid to write a proper article as to why such a view is deeply misled. It's an online forum.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#265

Post by kj4211cash »

galkk wrote: post #258

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 ph…

I think this line of thinking is a bit dangerous. It reminds me when I used to teach in a Civil Engineering department and the other faculty members focused exclusively on how well our coursework prepared our students to become civil engineers. Of course, very few of our students actually did become civil engineers and those that did both required years of additional training and often didn't last long in the profession before transitioning to something else. I used to teach maths and decision making. Had numerous students thank me later on for teaching some of the only material they actually used in their (non-civil-engineering) careers. No one knows what students will do post graduation. One of the best things we can do is to give them tools that are broadly useful.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#267

Post by bluefirebrand »

dwaltrip wrote: post #179
l33tbro wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interested to hear how you think one "bluffs" their way through a philosophy degree. Could you sketch that out?

Philosophy treatises don’t trigger compiler errors. More seriously, the main issue with most philosophical investigations is a question of grounding. When you start stacking abstract concepts on top of each other, things can get dicey very quickly. Moreso if you are smart.

> Philosophy treatises don’t trigger compiler errors

Compiler errors make programming easier, not harder. They are firm, clear rules about how something needs to be in order to work

Philosophy has no such constraints or automated checks, it's harder

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#268

Post by dwaltrip »

l33tbro wrote: post #184
dwaltrip wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy treatises don’t trigger compiler errors. More seriously, the main issue with most philosophical investigations is a question of grounding. When you start stacking abstract concepts on top of each other, things can get dicey very quickly. Moreso if you are smart.

I'm not sure I agree with this. A senior academic is usually very familiar with the canon. You don't think you will be vaporised if there is no underlying logic and saliency to the arguments in the work you present?

If the only checks you have are literally someone thinking very hard, then... well... it's just extremely difficult.

Few things are as difficult to check as a philosophical argument.

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#269

Post by dwaltrip »

applicative wrote: post #189
dwaltrip wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy treatises don’t trigger compiler errors. More seriously, the main issue with most philosophical investigations is a question of grounding. When you start stacking abstract concepts on top of each other, things can get dicey very quickly. Moreso if you are smart.

The objections that one treatise makes to another will typically be of type violation, category mistake, nonsense - which is typical of compilers. I don't need to tell you which discipline invented the ideas of type and type error and was even largely organized around them in early and mid- 20th c, even across wildly different theoretical views.

Warning: Irony :)

Category error: Theory of compiler != compiler

Re: The revenge of the philosophy majors

#270

Post by pirates »

layer8 wrote: post #215
john_strinlai wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i find it hard to remember what non-interesting things i can write and get upvoted ("this is ai", "slop", "awfully designed site", "clickbait title", "typical microslop", "fuck microsoft", etc.) and the non-interesting stuff i am downvoted for ("that was rude").

As far as I’m concerned, using the Shift key would already help.

why does this matter to people so much? i’ve been typing without much regard to capitalization case since AIM 25 years ago. this is an internet forum, it’s really not that important. if you aren’t going to engage with the substance you’re just taking swipes for no good reason.
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