philosophy

unclejunior

What kind of people study philosophy and why?
Do people enter this course with serious intentions or is it an excuse to fcuk around?

Leptons

Yes.

XxMCRxBabyxX

Bit disappointed that your last thread ended up being helpful and you needed to restore the balance huh?

DB21

Oh boy, that didn't take long at all.

Leptons

Honestly, I rather doubt that people who exclusively or significantly study philosophy enter the course and/or continue with the course to use it as an "excuse to f*ck around". Those who take the course as part of an Arts degree in first year probably don't take it as seriously as those who know they want to study it, but, again, I doubt the vast majority of them use it as an excuse for anything.

Furthermore, the question is rather pointless anyway. Unless there is a way to measure the quantitative and qualitative difference with regards to the intentions of those who study Philosophy when compared to those who study other courses, then you're never going to get anything but a significantly biased answer.

purebeta

I'm not going to go into how important Philosophy as a discipline is,
sufficed to say it affects every facet of human life.
The why and the how of people's function.

Personally I'm not an academic student of it(I studied a more conventionally 'useless' subject),
but my gf studied it, and I read philosophy almost everyday.

Ostrom

unclejunior wrote: »

What kind of people study philosophy and why?
Do people enter this course with serious intentions or is it an excuse to fcuk around?

Everybody studies philosophy in some capacity, whether implicitly or explicitly. I'll assume your dismissal is based on the usual (and quite worrying) assumption that the only work worth doing is that which ultimately makes money for others through tangible output. Either way, philosophy speaks directly to the very methods and assumptions of every human discipline from medicine to English to geology. With this in mind, you might enjoy Einstein's comments on the value of abstraction;

"I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth. (Einstein to Thornton, 7 December 1944, EA 61-574)"

Full text here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/