My lowered respect for philosophy

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I used to have a high respect for philosophy, but now my respect for it has lowered slightly.

1. Perhaps you may know the truths of the universe, but they aren't going to benefit you financially, socially, and on the whole, other people generally don't care if your extremely smart in philosophy.

2. Many philosophical arguments are just manipulations and exploits of language, rather than of serious substance. Words break when you push them too hard, and many things you cannot prove with words alone. Also, philosophers have hid behind ambiguity to protect themselves from being refuted.

So ... pwned by a philosophy major, eh?

Though I be no philosophos, some of that is to my address, but let others weigh in an they will.

True. The only benefit here is that studying philosophy often allows one to be a better thinker. BUT, philosophy generally doesn't arrive at a lot of truths.


Agreed. And that's kind of why philosophy often ends up being so useless. Now, a good thinker with philosophical background will be able to learn when and where this occurs, if only due to an intuition about the matter, however, philosophy is not the crowning gem many philosophers think it is. It isn't as if philosophy is the sum total of knowledge, where all non-philosophers wait breathlessly to find the next conclusion, but rather they have knowledge already, philosophers are just trying to make the excuses for why this knowledge is supposed to be accepted.

In the French school system, Philosophy is a required subject. France is a nation of deep, ponderous thinkers.

Almost no-one takes a philosophy class in the USA. We are not a nation of deep, ponderous thinkers.

Philosophy allows people to think about and discuss the big questions of life, to try to find meaning and purpose, and to try to find the way of thinking and living that best suits them.
Philosophy will probably not make you popular or rich, though the study of it may cause you to cease desiring such things. Especially if you study Taoist philosophy.

Some philosophical schools might hold that one should reject the cares of other people, including people who care whether you're extremely smart in philosophy.

However, this approach might make it difficult to attract new adherents, which may lead to the collapse of the philosophical system.



Which is why philosophy is a good preparation for studying law.

I dunno if #1 and #2 are true for most or some philosophies, but I agree that there are philosophies that are nothing more than semantics and mental masturbation which only look good in the comfort of a controlled and protected environment. I generally don't care for the abstract and theoretical stuff since I'm more into applicable philosophy.

The first may be true... but I am unsure about those big questions as meaningful anyway. The second.... really isn't. I don't think philosophy aids in existential fulfillment. The third is hard to say..... as I would imagine most people will do that anyway.


It MAY, but it MAY cause you to desire God, or it MAY cause you to desire such things more. I doubt that philosophy will have a standard impact. Studying the philosophy of a particular religion might, but even then, a lot of that is selected upon pre-existing dispositions.

Philosophy is a very broad term. What do you have in mind?

1. Metaphysics
2. Epistemology
3. Logic and Semiotics
4. Analytic Philosophy
5. Logic
6 Mathematical foundations
7. Other....

ruveyn

That's the problem. There is no core subject matter to master in philosophy. Philosophy is just a compilation of numerous topics people have written about over the years.

Math is a subject of its own. And its very objective.

I guess ethics, metaphysics would be my main sources of criticism.

Foundations of Math and Logic are a branch of Philosophy. The major important areas of philosophy these days are epistemology (which includes the philosophy of science) and analytic philosophy which concerns itself mainly with language, semiotics and semantics. Very few people do metaphysics seriously these days. Metaphysics is considered as ka ka in most philosophy departments.

ruveyn

This is an interesting quote by M. Friedman on philosophy:

"the philosophers of the modern tradition from Descartes are not best understood as attempting to stand outside the new science so as to show, from some mysterious point outside of sciences itself that our scientific knowledge somehow mirrors an independently existing reality. Rather, they start from the fact of modern scientific knowledge as a fixed point, as it were. Their problem is not so much to justify this knowledge from some 'higher' standpoint so as to articulate the new philosophical conceptions that are forced upon us by the new science. In Kant's words, mathematics and the science of nature stand in no need of philosophical inquiry for themselves, but for the sake of another science: metaphysics."

If you decide you don't care about knowledge or truth beyond the necessities, fine. But for anyone interested in acquiring knowledge, philosophical ideas are important.

I concur, and would add that the accademisation of 'philosophy' has made it the sport of an elitist and often overly pompous group of contemplative technocrats, I would posit that philosophy which cannot be comprehended by your average person has become somewhat useless?

peace j [join the campaign for plain speech ]

Anything beyond the grasp of the Proles and the lesser folk must be evil. Right?

ruveyn