Is Philosophy or Psychology more useful?

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Gee, thanks!

It is kinda true though. There is some good stuff in there but you have to dig through a lot of crap to get to it.

A small class of philosophers, the logicians, do useful work.

ruveyn

I rest my case.

You can figure out how people work but that's not very useful if you cannot get those people to behave civil towards their fellow men.
I think they are equally as useful (or as pretentious) as each other though.

Psychology is more useful as a major. However, really, economics(which is not mentioned) is a better choice than either.

Psychology and philosophy both generally lack economic applications. Psychology has a few fields(jobs) that use the subject area, but many of those do not pay well, or are not accessible at an undergrad level.

The issue is really that in both fields, one can have a functional knowledge without even majoring in them, so why bother majoring?? Major in something useful, and keep the others as a hobby.

Psychology is more useful in the real world philosophy is too abstract to apply to most common problems.

An example would be the number that burn to death with their seatbelts on in airplanes when they could have gotten out and saved themselves.

Psychologists figured out that when people are in an extreme state of fear they try to release the seatbelt in the same way they try to release a car seatbelt, by pushing it because that is what they have done thousands of times in cars. Unfortunately airplane seatbelts were designed to be pulled to be released and scared irrational people were dying while desperately pushing at their seatbelts which wouldn't release.

I get the impression that the people who answer in this thread are of three kinds: those who know only about philosophy, those who know only about psychology, and those who don't know anything about either field.

I still don't get the point of this thread. Why psychology and philosophy? They are completely different fields.

I know a bit about each field, and they are both very interesting subjects, however both have very limited economic prospects. Philosophy because the majority of jobs that use the degree are institutional IE you work at a University. Psychology, because while there are jobs as councilors, therapists and so on they have limited earnings potential in comparison with other degrees that take in many cases less time.

Learning how people work (psychology) is interesting, its useful in a wide variety of fields, however there is plenty of literature that gives you this information presented in a suitable package for whatever field you go into.

Philosophy is a fun subject, you learn how to argue well, but the field is very abstract and deals very much in "how it should be" rather than how it is. However, if you want a view on how philosophy can be applied, I suggest reading A.C Grayling's book "Firestorm: The bombing of Dresden, 1945". I recommend reading up on Grayling as he is an example of what a degree in philosophy can be utilized for.

I would recommend Economics with a minor in psychology, computer science or engineering, with an MBA added on top after a few years of work experience for maximum economic utilization of your time at school. Too few people these days are made aware that College/University is an investment, and by picking the "wrong" education the return becomes highly limited.

Mathematics is the most abstract thing we do. It is absolutely essential for having physical theories which have many practical consequences and applications. Being abstract is a virtue, not a flaw. Abstract thing have the most general applications.

ruveyn

Philosophy is needed to understand everything we go over in college, at least to properly understand everything.

There are also jobs as ethicians, within philosophy. In both cases, however, I doubt there are many openings without at least a Master's degree.

In the end, I don't think people who study in either field are thinking purely from a pragmatic financial point of view, so I don't think it is an effective argument.

I agree, they are studying for varying reasons, however with the cost of a degree these days combined with how many college grads are struggling for jobs, its hard to divorce the topic entirely from a financial point of view. Nobody wants to be $200.000 in debt, and all they have to show for it is the ability to argue if the fries they just asked if the economist wants with his shake really exists.

Psychology is very important to economics which depends on incentives, understanding various consumers behaviors, etc.

every time someone gets a PhD in anything, they are becoming a Doctor of Philosophy, so i do not think that philosophy and psychology are necessarily mutually exclusive. they inform each other and even underpin each other.

more parallel questions might be:
Is the BA (psych) or BSc (psych) program more useful?

or
is applied philosophy or theoretical philosophy more useful?

That is for historical reasons. Just about everyone becomes bachelor of arts, but I am not doing any "arts" at all. (Of course, the meaning of the word "art" has also changed in the meantime, but even in the old art/science dichotomy, many fields would still be sciences.)

Philosophiae means roughly "love of wisdom" so they aren't technically getting a PHD in philosophy the subject. Originally most of what constitutes "science" today was known as "natural philosophy" for instance.

Even better questions may want to specify what they mean by "useful" as useful can mean a lot of things.