Is philosophy really worth studying?

In My Humble Opinion
101

One thing is clear already: there is a direct, inverse correlation between how much actual knowledge and education in philosophy a commentator has, and how dismissive or derisive the are of it.

The people who have made the most egregiously ignorant statements in opposition, have had the least actual training in it.

It is very much like studying History (my area of primary education), in that when all you get is a cartoonish general taste of it, and then you are tested by a teacher, it’s common to develop a child-like resentment of it, and think it is useless make-work.

It is only after you have a fairly thorough understanding of it, that you can start to recognize that it is directly affecting every aspect of your life all the time, and that when you DO understand it, you come to be much more in control of your end of things.

I have no doubt, that the naysayers here wont even begin to change their opinion, no matter how correct and detailed the rest of us are, because it is one of those many subject areas of human life, that you flat out CAN’T comprehend, unless you get enough of the “pieces of the puzzle” to be able to begin to see how everything else fits together.

 I understand.  Because I have been through having to deal with subjects that I also thought were total crap, and that I derided in exactly the same ways ("no one asked me how to take a square root before I could get a job delivering appliances!"  or "I've never had to diagram a sentence even ONCE since leaving high school!") .  But I have also eventually learned much more about the subjects, especially including HOW THEY MATTER to everything else, and have been much better off because of it.

One of my favorite posts in this thread so far, is the person who patiently pointed out to the person who claimed not to have a personal philosophy, that actually he very much DID have such. It is the essence of real Philosophy, to declare that you have none.

And to take that point the next step, it is in part by STUDYING philosophy as a subject, that you can DISCOVER what your own philosophy actually is, what parts of other peoples’ philosophies (AKA belief systems) you have accidentally grafter crudely into your approach to life, so that you can finally take full control and responsibility for all of your life.

One big application: our elections. Those who have both a thorough grounding in History, and in Philosophy as disciplines, were easily able to see through the manipulations, the lies, and especially the counter-lies that our gaggle of politicians succeeded in foisting on the country.

102

It’s worse than that even, because there is also a correlation between people being very dismissive of philosophy, and people trying to push a (flawed) philosophical proposition.
We’ve seen a flavor of it in this thread.

It’s interesting that this happens, since I don’t think anyone would consciously have the thought: “My proposition doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, therefore I must dismiss the very concept of scrutiny”. But it’s common nonetheless.

103

A couple of reactions to past comments …

The capital P makes me think this goes too far. Philosophy is a path but far from the only path and your deeper may be goofiness to another.

First response is a yup. If my experiences are all that is “real” then my experiences are still most predicted by a model that behaves as if the rest of the world exists, and that utilizes that aspect of the mind that humans seem to be particular good at: having a theory of the minds of other. In that sense solipsism adds no value or even subtracts some and behaving as if others did not exist, treating them on the assumption that they are imaginary, would result in bad outcomes for me.

But. The concept still has value.

It is a recognition that what we actually have is experiences, presumptively of some world, that we assume reflects a reality, but that our experience might be lying about that reality. Sure it is an extreme expression of that point: the lie might be that there is no reality and only my individual experience exists, and that extreme case, as above, adds no value. But recognizing that our experienced reality may be lying to us, questioning the assumption that what we experience actually is, was in fact important. Questioning that assumption allows us to understand that a host of perceptual and cognitive illusions occur and that our minds are in fact making up a large portion of what we experience as reality every day; it allows us to accept that we are wired to perceive the world in certain ways but at different levels of analysis (the very small and the very big) the world does not work the way we can perceive, and thus we need to develop models and other tools to predict it.

Sure … impress us all with the high flalootin’ technical jargon! :slight_smile:

104

You often find people who express their ignorance in terms of pride. “I don’t know anything about cosmology, and I’m a better person for it.” I have relatives who say, “Science is only for eggheads; real people don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

I’m terribly ignorant about a hell of a lot of things – but at least I ain’t proud of it!

This! Even if nothing else, it’s nifty to have a name (or just a label) for your beliefs. I’ve come to learn I’m a “Negative Utilitarian with a Penalty Function,” which is, basically, I want to reduce the amount of pain in the world…but not by the absurd and childish approach of killing all living things. (Well, there wouldn’t be any more pain, right?)

105

Exactly. Philosophy is a set of Tools for Thinking. If you don’t like what is being produced, I would point to operator issues, not the tools.

Note: All lines of inquiry - scientific, philosophical and spiritual - run into (currently or forever) unexplainable phenomena and paradox. Quantum entanglement? Dark Matter? The definition of Consciousness? All twist our brains.

So?

Philosophy has evolved. Before the word Scientist was coined, the role was referred to as Natural Philosophers. Now Science is seen as a separate bucket, and Philsophy is seen as a Framing of the Big Questions.

What’s fascinating: the two still feed each other. As we learn more about the Reality around us, it informs how we can and should ask the Big Questions. As we think about how to ask the Big Questions, it influences how we dig around scientifically. It’s all good. Right now, as social networks, Big Data, and new approaches to AI are front and center, it seems as though we are considering some of the Big Questions differently than we ever have before, which is leading to new lines of questioning, etc. So it goes - in a good way.

So, back to the OP: just stop. Be humble and accept that if you are getting tangled up in your tools, perhaps it’s because you don’t know how to use them. Trying to pick fights over the usefulness of a toolset is silly and immature, especially if you actively demonstrate you aren’t trying to listen, just to get everyone to agree that the tools suck. They don’t suck - they’re just tools.

106

That said, some day I’m gonna find that Phillips guy and wring his neck… :wink:

107

Are you saying he screwed up?

108

I’d say that science can be defined as “applied reasoning,” which is a subset of epistemology, one of the main branches of philosophy.

109

Totally torques me off, the darn chiseler. (Take this job and shovel it…)

110

It’s more like the examined life isn’t worth living. Unlike those who choose ignorance phioopshers are more likely to be suicidal. They can’t even solve the problem of suicide.

You say you only have superficial meaning without it but that is false. It’s actually quite deep especially when you don’t try to pick everything apart only to find nothing underneath.

111

Without reading all the previous posts,

I say yes, Because when it comes down to it everything we do is around the question of “why?” and that normally is a philosophy. Now I’m not sure I can break that down into something Plato or Nietzsche says but we do things for a purpose.

112

You cannot gain self awareness through philopshy because the self doesn’t exist. Plus introspection is shown to be very flawed. You also don’t gain any wisdom because you cannot know anything.

113

Once again you are incorrect. As I have said, philosophy is what broke my mind. Prior to reading it I was fine.

Also you cannot write off that philosophy can cause destruction for people just because that’s not what happened to you or others here. It doesn’t make the claim false.

114

Wrong on all counts. Philosophy cannot reduce your ignorance because it clearly states that you cannot know anything.

Also thenphilpsohy they teach in college isn’t the kind that causes mental breakdowns or suicide (aka nihilism and solipsism). They avoid such subjects to prevent harm from coming to the students.

115

I can see how you would had condemned Socrates to drink hemlock.

It is clear that you have missed a lot of what Philosophy can teach us, you may need a crash course.

[QUOTE] First, we’ll really try to understand.

You’re not going to agree with all of the ideas that I present to you – and I won’t agree with them either! That’s not the point. The point, in step one, is to really try to get inside of an idea – to understand it as charitably as possible.

Then, in step two, you’ll subject your understanding to some serious critical evaluation – basically, you’ll try to knock down what you think you know about a particular view of the world.

And you’ll do this whether you agree with the view or not.

Why? Because: Only when you challenge your understanding of how some people view the world, can you decide for yourself if theirs is a view worth having. Which leads me to my final point:

Philosophy is not your usual field of study.

I’m not going to be teaching you a body of knowledge where success means you know a bunch of stuff. Success, in this course, will mean that you know how to think. All we have are questions. And all you have is a brain. And the goal of philosophy is for you to use your brain to come up with the answers that make the most sense to you.

You’ll learn how to formulate arguments to support your ideas, so you can explain why you think you’re right. Which, if you’ve ever been on the Internet, you know is something that not a lot of people are good at.

In order to do that, you’re going to need to understand philosophical reasoning – the tools we use to investigate life’s most perplexing questions! And that is where we’re gonna be headed the next time we meet.

[/QUOTE]

116

Oh, and more to the point, as you have noticed most of the people here do not agree with you, so perhaps you need to take this item into consideration:

117

I didn’t need philosophy to tell me that my senses can be fool and the like, that’s what I learned from science.

But what you don’t understand a that things like solipsism are a void that you don’t get out of if you fall into them.

118

[quote=“GIGObuster, post:115, topic:776696”]

I can see how you would had condemned Socrates to drink hemlock.

It is clear that you have missed a lot of what Philosophy can teach us, you may need a crash course.

[/QUOTE]

You may have missed what I said before about it being thinking that goes nowhere like a treadmill.

119

They can’t, but you can. You can reason intelligently, given the facts, until you decide for yourself whether suicide is right or wrong. Philosophy gives you advanced tools for thinking clearly, on this and many other subjects.

Would you build a cabinet without saws, chisels, or sandpaper? Then why would you try to conduct moral reasoning without a knowledge of philosophy?

Cite that “the self doesn’t exist.” And one can attain wisdom without “knowing anything.” Knowing that you don’t know anything is the first of the great steps toward wisdom.

120

You missed post #116