For some people, logic is intuitive. Others have to be taught, and can form logical processes only by memorizing formulas. Like solving story-problems in arithmetic.
Same for morality and a lot of other issues raised in philosophy study.
I believe this is a false dichotomy, and I’d like to offer a third option as speculation:
People often begin their study of Philosophy in college. This is often a time period when one is first beginning to grapple with Life as a real pain in the ass. Moreover, the beginning Philosophy courses tend to be history courses with a veneer of Philosophy, and dull as hell. Put together some long dead white dude with a beard telling you how you may not really exist and a stack of bills that suddenly you have to pay because Mom and Dad won’t anymore, and I can see why that particular bit of Philosophy is not only going to feel not helpful, but downright hostile. I may not exist, but my landlord is pretty sure I do, and he wants the rent.
College should be a lot more cognitively challenging than high school. It’s where lots of us “smart kids” find out that smart isn’t enough, and we never learned how to study, and suddenly for the first time we’re experiencing cognitive and emotional difficulties that we never have before. And this dead dude is telling me that something can be not A and not not A and what the fuck does that even mean and how will it help me pass my finals and pay my bills?!
This may or may not be Machinaforce’s problem, but it’s one I see all over reddit in the “philosophy sucks” threads.
I get it. I really do. Been there, done that, have a whole closet of tshirts. But once I was no longer living quite a low on Maslow’s hierarchy, Philosophy began to be interesting again. Which is part of why I think we should start teaching it earlier, when we aren’t being spit on by life’s responsibilities quite so much.
Yes that is a reasonable alternative hypothesis: philosophy just happened to be there to blame when (s)he experience a college-aged cognitive and emotional crisis from which he/she has never really recovered.
Heh… That’s how I felt about a hell of a lot of my old General Education requirements!
(Best moment: I was required to take a writing/composition test. I took the test…then showed the docent a copy of a magazine with one of my stories in it. He asked why the heck I was taking the test.)
I would agree with all of these except the first, Dialogues of Plato, exactly as described, was one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. This is perhaps second to Existentialism 401 - a study of Heidegger’s Being and TIme.
Pragmatically the answer for the layman is no, philosophy is not worth studying, if you value living a life full of (less than superficial) meaning the answer is definitely yes.
Okay, I’ll dig that. I might have had a particularly bad teacher. (I’ve had a few of those!)
If one is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy with an eye to bagging the one tenure-track job left in America , , , then not a great idea.
I do enjoy some classical philosophy, namely Plato’s Cave and the Stoics (I don’t wanna be one, but find it fascinating stuff).
I do think Kenneth Burke is really relevant to many fields of study. I’m sure Judith Butler’s work on the philosophy of philosophy is important, but I’ve never gotten past the first three pages of any of her books. Google her name + “Bad Writing Prize” (be warned, your brain may 'splode).
I can see a lot of value in philosophy in how I respond to it. I feel it validates thoughts that we or others might have. It often presents a new way of looking at things to people who may never have even given it much thought. It makes me look harder for answers. I find a good amount of it very stimulating, the bulk of it I admit does nothing for me.
You are completely incorrect. Prior to philosophy I was happy because I didn’t always question everything around me. But knowing now that everything can be questioned, that right and wrong are really just a matter of opinion instead of self evident, that our reality might not exist, or that there is no objective meaning, these are things I never had to deal with. Questions that have now answer and yet you have people walking about as though they do. It was the first time I studied a subject that actually made my life worse for knowing it (or not knowning according to philosophy). It made me wonder why people waste their time on it if they can’t prove it true. Morality itself is one thing destroyed by philopshyz
That statement is “not even wrong”. I didn’t take a class of philosophy in school I read it myself. College was actually pretty smooth up until I get deep into philosophy. So no, you are incorrect.
Your last statement is incorrect. I find that most philosophical people I meet are quite depressed and find their lives robbed of meaning from pursuing philosophy. They actually had less meaning in their lives after it. After all, it doesn’t give meaning it takes it away. Some of them almost committed suicide before they managed to turn away from it. Wish I could do the same.
If it’s all imaginary then it has no consequences. If other people don’t exist then you could slaughter many and it would not matter because they aren’t real, you can treat them however without fear. It would throw or everything you know about your surroundings.
But we aren’t taking about geometry we are talking about philosophy. Democracy is a flawed system and so is communism, just look at the recent election to see the success of democracy. Also I’m pretty sure there were quite a few people in the past who were against a rule by the people.
I can’t refute something like that yes, but that doesn’t make it false though right? Why did philosophy say you have to prove the existence of something and not that it doesn’t exist?
But it’s completely fruitless to think like this since there are an infinity of claims that cannot be disproved.
This is not unique to philosophy. I can’t disprove the claim “my next-door neighbour is plotting to kill me” yet absent any reason to suppose that claim is true I don’t wear a bulletproof vest to take out the trash. Or wear a garlic neckerchief in case my neighbour is a vampire. Or wear red shoes in case casting scouts for a sonic the hedgehog movie are waiting just outside of my sight.
Even someone with no interest in philosophy has to put aside any claim for which there is no evidence yet in their daily life.
And, at this time, solipsism is worse than any of the claims above. As I tried to explain upthread, it has negative explanatory power.
Not only can it not be used to make any predictions about the future, but the existing useful models we have of reality, that do make correct predictions (e.g. you will yell in pain if I kick you, because you are a living, conscious entity like me), suddenly “just happened” to have made correct predictions for no particular reason.
Ignorance is bliss. You can only have superficial meaning without Philosophy. 2400 years later the unexamined life is still not worth living.
This is why I rarely post to your threads. If you don’t like philosophy, walk away.
An examined life is only worth living if you gain self-awareness and wisdom through the process. If you are using the same philosophy tools to stress out and chase your tail, then perhaps they aren’t for you.
Ah, see I can accept your observations of your experience as likely truths: you experienced yourself having become … well befuddled (reading and repeating without thinking and having that even feeling like “overthinking”, and feeling like there is no point to learning how to improve cognitive skills, etc.) … from when you studied philosophy on … but the speculative hypotheses for the causes of those experiences? Nah. If anything you have less reliable to say about that than others do … being as cognitively and emotionally impaired now as you describe yourself to be.
What we know is that you report events that correlated with each other. You thought you could think just fine. You went to college. During your college time you studied (on your own, apparently) some philosophy. During that time you experienced a cognitive and emotional crisis that you have never recovered from. Yes, you as the subject experiencing this regrettable and sad ongoing cognitive and emotional crisis, blame the philosophy you were self-studying at the time. The hypothesis perhaps can be stated as “The study of philosophy causes people to have lasting cognitive and emotional decompensation and dysfunction.” But that hypothesis is clearly falsified by many others here and elsewhere who have studied philosophy with no harmful and some positive effects. Your report of depressed students who have studied philosophy is so discordant with what the rest of us self-observe that it is dismissed as either selection bias or the delusions of someone who is, by self-report, cognitively and emotionally broken.
OTOH the other hypotheses suggested are not so fr falsified, including; “philosophy just happened to be there to blame when (s)he experience a college-aged cognitive and emotional crisis from which he/she has never really recovered.” Having self-studied it during that time is consistent with that possibility. Again the others suggest are also still in the running: you were always broken and did not realize it until you began to slef-study philosophy and the challenge was too much for you and broke your brain specifically.
My condolences to you for your current state and my best wishes for a recovery.
Trigger Warning:
The following post contains critical thinking and rational analysis. Readers who have experienced exposure to such thinking and analysis as traumatic should read aware of that fact. In case such persons decide to read this post and experience revictimization MPSIMS is available as a safe space. Thank you.
Stylistic note: in order to avoid the awkwardness of attempting to write in a gender-neutral manner, and to make the post less cumbersome Machinaforce will be referenced as one gender (coin flip this time comes up “female”) and referred to as “M”.
Let’s approach what we know and do not know rationally and consider several propositions and their implications.
M presents herself as described above: a person who while in college studied philosophy on her own and from then on has been intellectually and emotionally impaired; she believes harmed by the experience of that study.
Now IF we observed M to be presenting coherent rational arguments in this thread then M would be actually not cognitively stunted by way of the exposure to philosophy and we would have to consider two possible alternatives:
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M was knowingly presenting a false story in order to provoke discussions and gain attention. That, if the case, would be trolling, which impermissible in this forum to explicitly consider as a possibility.
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She merely perceives herself to have been cognitively disabled by the experience, sort of similar to hysterical paralysis.
Given that someone who is not cognitively harmed should be able to be aware of that state, the latter is improbable, and the former is impermissible to consider.
Fortunately we do not need to consider either possibility as the posts made here are consistent with the state M claims. But note: treating M’s posts as if they are made by someone not so impaired would, logically, be by way of action making an accusation of trolling so should be done with great caution. So for further discussion we must provisionally accept as true the claim that M experienced a cognitive and emotional crisis during college around the time that she self-studied philosophy to some degree and has never recovered.
Given that we can proceed.
Proposition one: the study of philosophy may harm one’s brain and induce both dysphoria and cognitive impairments. Certainly we have solid evidence that such is not true in the general case as there have been generations of college students who have taken on such studies to various degrees and had no such impairments result. (M’s absurd observations of so many depressed as a result clearly consistent with the veracity of her claimed impairments.) But possibly in some vulnerable individuals such study done without guidance is potentially of harm and M’s self-described sad circumstance is the result of that? If so then the best way to avoid that is to have more have such exposure with the safety of professional support during the initial exposures, in classroom settings and relatively early on.
Proposition two: M’s brain was broken before ever being exposed to the attempted self-study of philosophy (inclusive of critical thinking, analysis, and self-awareness) but she did not know enough to be aware of her state. Exposure to it actually repaired some of her brain’s cognitive dysfunctions and as a result she became aware, for the first time, of how much she did not know, the knowledge of which has been emotionally overwhelming for her. This is the most hopeful case as the cure for that is more study so that she can join the many others who are able to accept that there is so much that we all do not know, and much that we think we know that we are wrong about, and who are consequently forever engaged in attempts to reduce their individual and our collective ignorance, by way of rational analysis and critical intellectual thought.
Proposition three: True true unrelated. She experienced her cognitive and emotional decompensation and happened to be self-studying philosophy at the time, so it was convenient to blame.
Proposition four: Reverse causation. She began to experience her cognitive and emotional crisis for some reason and that triggered a desire to search for solutions and looked to self-study of philosophy as part of that attempt to deal with the crisis in progress. It did not however prevent the progression of her crisis.
Teeming Millions - which proposition seems least improbable and/or are there others to consider?
I think this the mostly likely, based on my own experiences, those of friends, and the huge self help industry.
I once did a surprisingly useful self-help seminar kind of thingy. (The Landmark Forum, and yes, we’ve talked before on this board about the pros and cons of it.)
The upshot of the entire Forum was this: “Life is meaningless. And it’s meaningless that it’s meaningless. Therefore, you can give your life any meaning that you want.”
Most of us come to the first part of that, whether or not we study formal Philosophy, and get stuck for a bit. Life is meaningless. When you die, your friends will show up (or not) to your funeral and maybe cry for a bit, and then they’ll go get lunch. Life goes on. Without you. Because your life was, in fact, meaningless.
The hard part comes in that we don’t like the idea that life is meaningless. We think that a meaningless life is a bad thing. We give meaning to meaninglessness. We agonize, and resist, and struggle, and rant and rail against the meaninglessness of life, determined that it should not be that way. It hurts.
Getting everyone (well, mostly everyone) to the second and third sentences was what an entire three day weekend in uncomfortable chairs and nearly $500 got you.
What fascinates me is that in 7,000 years of human history, nothing better has ever been fashioned.
Further, the effort to come up with something better is doing philosophy. If you refuse to do philosophy, then you’ve excluded yourself from the work of improving the human political condition.
Are you familiar with the scientific definition of “nonsense?” (It comes from the philosophy of science, so it’s possible you may not have come across it.) We simply disregard claims which can not be tested for truth. You made the error of implying that claims which can not be tested are true. Now you’re making the error of implying that claims which can not be tested are false. There really is a third option, which, in technical language, goes “Meh.”
To begin with, lovely logical analysis! Wholly admirable!
I just wanted to respond to this one minor point: when I was young, I read Robert Heinlein’s “They,” a prose examination of the solipsistic hypothesis – and it really messed me up. It shocked me into doubts regarding reality, and threw me into a cognitive and emotional crisis which, to be honest, I have never really recovered from.
So…yeah…some kinds of thought-input really can hurt a tender young mind.
On the other hand, by the time one gets to college, they damn well ought to be tougher than that.