d3da9f No.915
What do people think about studying philosophy at a tertiary level?
In other words, would you study philosophy at university (Or college, for Americans) or not?
If you would, what would be your choice between majoring in philosophy (Generally easy to get admitted to where I live) or entering a degree specifically oriented towards philosophy entirely (Would require me to move states and is almost impossible to get accepted into)
Do you think there are any job opportunities in philosophy and is becoming an academic difficult?
820973 No.916
If you want to do something, do it.
8b4dd0 No.917
i think its decadent
A well rounded man should be a philosopher, artist, and warrior
541475 No.929
>>915It is inherently unpragmatic. If you put value into society and career, you will have to mold philosophy to fit that. Pursuing philosophy on its on terms will likely lead you away from notions like that. Unfortunately, since you have to "work" in order to live, it is hard to recommend studying philosophy IF you consider university as a place that is supposed to improve your standing in society. There is pragmatic use in philsophy, but most of it is accidental and only rarely is it taken into account when it comes to jobs, simply because there are plenty of people who have a more practical education to show for themselves.
If, however, you take university to be a place where you study thought and improve yourself intellectually, with no specific gain beyond that, then you could do a lot worse than to study philosophy. Just realise that the world does not cater to people of this disposition.
And yes, becoming an academic is difficult. There is a LOT of rivalry, and it tends to be not nearly as civil as you might expect a debate between philosophers to look like. You could always be lucky, though, and/or weasel your way into the favour of a professor. But it's by no means secure.
Incidentally, I study philosophy and am fully aware of it's lack of practical application. The reason I study it is pure interest, though it is, frankly, coupled with a dislike for the way societies work on an existential level. But that is a different topic.
>>917What is an artist, or what does an artist do? Cultivate subjective expression? That seems to me a lot more decadent than philosophy, even though I agree that philosophy has a definite decadende to it.
And what does a warrior do? Secure an individuals life or even impose its will?
7a8978 No.933
>>915I would completely recommend against studying philosophy as a degree in college. Unless you are going to law school later, there are no jobs that take a philosophy degree over a "general studies" degree.
When I was in the philosophy degree, I called it the drug taking major. You think about stuff all day, and write three papers a semester. Most of the kids around you are drunks or are high all the time. I hope you like stoners, because that is what your peers will mostly be.
Academically, philosophy is dead, it has sold out completely. Professors write books arguing semantic points about jargon based issues. That is what graduate level philosophy entails, politic-like networking and writing journals or writing books. The professors life in a sense. Philosophers have no courage anymore, maybe they never had it.
I would read the books on your own, and then watch videos on youtube or other free sources if things are difficult or you don't understand. There are also books that help explain things in plain terms, just be careful that these aren't the end all of explanations of philosophical meaning.
Philosophy has merits, but a philosophy degree couldn't be more worthless.
2a23de No.936
I'm Nordic, studied philosophy as a major in uni for about a year and a half to two years before moving to work in web design and IT.
I knew I wanted to study something in uni, and I didn't pick my major at all based on career opportunities. I just picked a subject that was most interesting to me, and none of the others really catered to my interests. It's not very easy to get in, not here at least (in fact, there were other subjects I wouldn't even had to take an exam for).
Studying philosophy as more than a curiosity teaches you critical and analytical thinking if you are to some extent so aligned beforehand. Taking courses in logic can be immensely beneficial, and many others teach you much about either specific domains or provide more tools for dialog, argumentation and problem solving. All of these have been extremely beneficial to my career (which is now going pretty nicely), but that said I do feel that my studies merely facilitated my learning instead of very actively changed my way of thinking.
As a bullet point in my CV I have always thought it as a positive thing even though I lack formal training in the field I now work in. It helps me stand out, but I do need to be ready to give an explanation as to why I picked it originally and also frequently reiterate how my studies have made me better in what I do.
Philosophy as a major can be great, but only if you yourself make it so. I think that great philosophers in general have always been industrious and diligent and savvy in their characters instead of merely having been mould into good scholars during their education. I find it disappointing when people ask something like "what kind of opportunities do philosophy studies give me" in favour of "what kind of opportunities does understanding philosophy help me to create for myself".
2c6456 No.937
>>915>In other words, would you study philosophy at university (Or college, for Americans) or not?Only if the professor was a sage man whose lectures were teeming with philosophical insight and his class were all full of dedicated philosophers whose conversations inevitably brought on greater and deeper philosophical enlightenment.
As I doubt a class like that exists, probably not.
2d85d7 No.953
>>929an artist is someone who does art.
a warrior is someone who does war.
To a stupid question a stupid answer.
>>933>Philosophy has merits, but a philosophy degree couldn't be more worthless.Which is worst though, philosophy degree or women's study degree?
2d85d7 No.954
Look OP philosophy is loving (philo) wisdom (sophia). You just need to search for wisdom to be a philosopher.
Philosophers are people who like to question what they took for granted before, school are places that make sure you take some basic stuff for granted. Therefore they are incompatible, school is misosophic (I think I just created a word here). Therefore the only reason you would have to go in a philosophy class is social status and you would be far better served in Political Science, Law or a STEM field for that.
7a8978 No.955
>>953I declare women's studies the "winner" by unanimous decision.
There are bigger wastes of time than a philosophy degree, but as I have gotten older, I have come into the thought that college degrees that are not STEM or training for graduate level are worthless. You'd almost always be better off learning a trade.
8b2863 No.1269
As someone who has spent quite a few years in the field I may be somewhat biased, but nonetheless I personally believe that some amount of time in the formal study of philosophy is critical in becoming a well-reasoned and more thoughtful individual (and in this sense I do not use toughtful to mean caring)... That said, it is undoubtedly true that in the goals of employability a more practical subject such as a business subject or alternatively a science might be the way to go. Despite this, for the goals of personal development and understanding, Philosophy remains one of the greatest fields.
541475 No.1283
>>953>an artist is someone who does art.Oh come on. A philosopher does philosophy. Great.
I asked because you called philosophy on it's own decadent and you don't say why. I assume that 'art' and 'war' are decadent also, but all three together are what makesa well-rounded individual? But for all I know, you think 'art' and 'war' are not decadent, hence my question what you think they contain that philosophy does not.
e099e4 No.1285
I'm studying computer science right now but have always had a soft spot for focusing on ideas of knowledge or existence or purpose or whatever else is stereotypically called "philosophical thought", though really I just like to take a good hard look at things and understand how and why they work. With the way the American college system is set up, it's completely impractical to major in philosophy. Unless you're getting scholarships, not loans, out the ass, going to college is going to cost you money. Philosophy majors, unfortunately, tend to fall in the area of self-perpetuating fields in Academia. That is, people who graduate with a degree in philosophy are either going to get a shitty job unfitting of someone who graduated from college, or will go back to become philosophy teachers themselves at some college.
Which isn't to say I think philosophy is useless, because I think it's ridiculously important. The things it excels at more than other fields are critical thinking, reasoning, and proper expressing of ideas. At least, those are the ideas at the core of it. What actually plays out in colleges is quite different, I'm sure, because if a university can take your money AND give you a half-rate education without you realizing it, it will.
Philosophy is an extremely useful area of study to be cognizant and knowledgeable about, because it helps remove the blinders around students, so to speak. The majority of liberal arts/humanities majors only bring the blinders down further, but the entire point of philosophy is to explore as many possibilities as...well, as possible. I'd say that it's to everyone's benefit to take multiple philosophy classes, ones that touch on core concepts, and apply those concepts to other areas. That way you're not wasting your time and money at a university just to leave four years later with a piece of paper that'll do you hardly any good to repair the financial damage done by college.
98d71f No.1306
I must be the only person to ever study philosophy to actually realize myself. None of this "It makes you a better thinker; logic; opening of mind to ideas" stuff. Philosophy has opened my mind to one thing: to closing my mind. Once I found my spot, I couldn't care about the merry-go-round of 70% of philosophy debates since they are 1) counter to my metaphysics, 2) counter to my epistemology. Philosophy made me realize what a waste of time the "golden middle" ideal of liberal thinking was, so that's a a plus, but what I really learned with it was how to make myself as a person under my own control an volition.
f95355 No.1307
>>1306>1) counter to my metaphysics, 2) counter to my epistemologyAre you sure you're talking about philosophy and not theology/gender studies? If you aren't ready to change your position when someone destroys your position (like Hintikka did to Quine on semantics, Popper and Sellars did to logical positivists, Mackie did to moral realists etc) you are a philistine and a pleb.
98d71f No.1322
>>If you aren't ready to change your position when someone destroys your position
Nobody has ever destroyed my position, in fact it's ridiculously rare that any position is actually refuted. The only refutations that legitimately are refutations are reductio ad absrudum arguments, which are supremely rare. You cannot refute one metaphysical doctrine with another, same goes for epistemology.
"Facts" and "science" are themselves not refutations in any legitimate debate, since what they are depends, kek, on your own metaphysical presuppositions to interpret not just the data, but what you accept as constituting data in the first place.
c3a999 No.1339
>>1322The transmutation of fact to fiction cannot be the basis for the substantiation of a refutation - that one can deny the possibility of denial recognizes the impossibility of reconciliation - 'meaning 'fact was never more the mist in the metaphysician's mind than what fact strove to be.
The refutation occurs at a fundamental level between the consistency of the thing and the idea; if it couldn't, refuting someone's post on the internet would be the least of your worries.
98d71f No.1342
>>1339>The refutation occurs at a fundamental level between the consistency of the thing and the ideaHi, you're still stuck in pre-Kantian epistemology. Yes, the correspondence theory of truth is well and good for common parlance, but that shit is philosophically full of holes. The only refutation that is fundamentally possible is showing how the opponent's system is incoherent by their own logic. Nothing else will ever conclusively change someone's mind.
c3a999 No.1343
>>1342>The only refutation that is fundamentally possible is showing how the opponent's system is incoherent by their own logic. Tell me, white boy: how do you plan to demonstrate incoherency when all apprehensions to understanding rely on said logic manifest in concept conceived.
"Muh post-Hegelian dialectic"
e11f78 No.1346
>>915>What do people think about studying philosophy at a tertiary level?It's useless, I did while getting a 79% average for all three years. Class was filled with pseudo-intellectuals, all the professors except one was narcissistic assholes. I did it as a elective and would recommend you do the same instead of making it your main focus.
>Do you think there are any job opportunities in philosophy and is becoming an academic difficult?Outside of academics as in applied philosophy in the corporate world? No your options would be academics or writing.
Is it harder? Yes, faculties work on nepotism in smaller fields like philosophy, philosophy is taking a back seat for more applied fields, in other words getting smaller still if you are not going to be top of your class, while pleasing the people above you with what they want to hear you are not going to get in to higher degree levels needed for academics, then doing your own thing after you received your Ph(Big)D.
>TL;DR Tertiary philosophical study is a regurgitation of what your professors want to hear, slight deviation is rewarded but stray to far and receive a backlash. It's a hug box for the current status quo Except if you truly are brilliant, that kind of brilliance does not need advice from the internet though 98d71f No.1347
>>1343Glad you see I'm coming from Hegel's critique. If you offer some links or references, I'll read the arguments you find convincing against this position and judge for myself.