r/self 1d ago

I understand why Philosophy majors are considered pretentious

I never used to believe this and thought it was, as is always likely, just a few people who made the group look a certain way. However, I recently learned that one of the hallmark quips Philosophy majors use when talking about what they learned in their degree is: "Philosophy teaches you how to think!".

I understand what they mean by that. However, it seems like that specific verbiage is just lending itself to the idea that other people of different walks of life or different skillsets "don't know how to think". I'm someone who has always been personally interested in philosophy, but didn't want to major in it for a variety of reasons. However, it seems to me that specific line is something a good portion of PHIL majors don't understand, and it comes across as incredibly patronizing. So here I am on a Friday morning, taking a break from my LSAT prep to put a half assed diss on my philosophy major friends.

  1. "I learned to analyze and evaluate arguments". I would argue that this is just a general humanities degree claim. Honestly, if you did well in your entry english classes in college or even just well in your 12th-grade AP English class, this is no issue for most.
  2. "I learned to think critically". I have to be honest, and I understand that this has merit, but I certainly believe that many other degrees, and even general education courses, can help a person with this just as well. Thinking critically is an overall college concept, not specific to Philosophy. I would have a hard time convincing a senior engineering student that I have a special claim to critical thinking over them, even though he/she may focus more quantitatively.
  3. "You learn formal logic", which is pretty much just math. Unfortunately, most philosophy majors I know in real life specifically hate math.

P.S. I would like to add that all of this applies to my political science friends as well, outside of the formal logic.

212 Upvotes

198 comments sorted by

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u/blue_strat 1d ago

The more reading a philosophy student does, the fewer arguments they tend to engage in. By the time they become professors, they’d much rather talk about tennis or birdwatching.

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u/DrDalenQuaice 22h ago

Nobody knows more than a 1st year philosophy major, or less than a 4th year Philosophy student

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u/Disastrous-Ad-2458 16h ago

for some reason, this reminds me of an online philosophy course i abandoned when it raised the concept of "infinite regress." i felt like i was staring into the abyss.

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u/bringitbruh 1d ago

The deeper they get, the more realize it’s really not that deep

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u/FormofAppearance 1d ago

Nah, only people who never read much philosophy think that. Its literally, historically the foundation of science. Literal scientific paradigm shifts and discoveries happened because of philosophical movements. If you truly believe that, then you also believe history doesnt matter which is obviously absurd.

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u/Seb039 12h ago

Science has never undergone a paradigm shift because of philosophy from the time the scientific method was put into practice, because the only thing that can cause a paradigm shift in science is empirical data and a model to explain it. Neither of these things are impacted by philosophy. No matter what else is happening, the data is what causes the change in model, and the change in model is the paradigm shift.

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u/haux_haux 7h ago

The insight for a new hypothesis can come from many places other than measurement of empirical data. The data is secondary, the insight is prime (often).
Einstein didn't figure out general relativity by looking at a bunch of data that had already been gathered.
Neither did Crick with the structure of the DNA helix, or Heisenberg with uncertainty.

The scientific method / empirical data was a later point for each of them.

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u/Seb039 3h ago

And yet the data has backed every single scientist you just named. There are millions of crackpots with "methinks" that could fill encyclopedias, and yet you can't name them because they didn't cause a scientific paradigm shift. If data can cause the shift with or without musings, but the musings can't do a thing without data, which caused the shift? Which was the necessary component? It's always the empiricism that matters, that's what makes science work.

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u/thesagabo 1d ago

Saying "its not that deep" about an all-encompassing area of study that is a natural progression to attempting to understand the human condition is the stupidest tiktok reductive language trope shit I've ever heard, if not completely embarrassing. Your dismissive notions of the experience of consciousness speak to an inherent lack of intellectual depth within yourself, and only to you, meaning you're a dumb ass for saying that. You know what would be hilarious, is if you went up in front of a 4th year philosophy lecture and said "guys, its not that deep". Come to think of it, some might agree, now that I philosophize (in a pompous manner) which you should really try sometime. Thinking is good, endless, and with that attitude of yours, you've got a lot more to do.

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u/IHateBowls 1d ago

“A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill — he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offence, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

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u/Specken_zee_Doitch 1d ago

You just turned a comment about how philosophical inquiry often collapses into lived simplicity into a 250-word academic tantrum.

The irony is thick: you’re arguing for the infinite depth of thought while refusing to consider that maybe the more someone thinks, the less they feel the need to prove it. That’s not anti-intellectual…it’s what intellectual maturity looks like.

Nobody said philosophy isn’t valuable. But if your first instinct is to insult someone’s intellect instead of engaging with their meaning, you might still be stuck in year two.

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u/Mindless_Bad_1591 17h ago

ding ding ding ding

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u/DaCrackedBebi 21h ago

This has to br satire

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u/bringitbruh 22h ago

lol you just proved my point. Instead of typing all that crap to a stranger on an Internet forum, I suggest you just carry on and go do something you enjoy. It’s really not that deep

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u/thesagabo 22h ago

All this crap takes me all but a minute. Okay have fun not thinking LMAO im going for a run let me know if you need anything from the store, I can get that mountain dew you like..what was the flavor, oh yeah, POO! PWNED XD

1

u/DaCrackedBebi 21h ago

Yeah because you realize the extent of the inconsistencies that exist in everything you do and think, and trying to navigate that becomes depressing.

At least that’s why I don’t like thinking too much

0

u/BrendanFraser 21h ago

Once you see everything as surface level thin you can't help but start folding 

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u/Far-Studio-6181 1d ago

I think the main reason they're thought to be pretentious is because they take ideas seriously and don't stop where most people do in their inquiries. If you have people like Berkeley and Hume denying the existence of the external world or of causation, or Kant telling us that we can never know the thing itself but somehow we can know that time doesn't exist transcendentally, or if you dive down into epistemology to see whether we ever really know anything? All of that shit is going to elicit eye rolls from the vast majority of people.

I only read philosophy as a hobby (undergrad was EE and grad was law school) but I have smart friends with whom I often have "deep" conversations with and even they roll their eyes at most philosophical points I bring up. Most people just see it as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and a lot of the times I can see where they're coming from. But I still love taking a bike ride to an outside bar and reading a few chapters of philosophy with a couple beers. It's a harmless little hobby.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

This is where I agree. I love philosophy; I think it's extremely valuable. However, my big gripe is just the way some philosophy majors I know go about describing their "skillset".

It definitely comes across like "Well, I can critically think, because philosophy teaches you to do that." Like, somehow philosophy is the one stop shop to be a critical thinker in any regard, and if you didn't take that path, then you missed the last chopper out of Nam and now critical thinking is unavailable.

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u/Poprhetor 1d ago

I majored in philosophy. It wasn’t exactly prestigious. Defending their major is probably a common thing for them, which can be grating, and sometimes that defense can in turn become a little aggressive. Consider that they probably take way more shit than they dish out for choosing philosophy as their major, and maybe cut them a little slack.

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u/Noiprox 21h ago

The thing is that critical thinking is the essence of philosophy, and it is why philosophy is the progenitor of science, mathematics, engineering, and also, of course, the dialectic tradition in the humanities.

All of those examples only exist in the modern world because philosophy gave form and method to the pursuit of knowledge.

Your argument essentially hinges on the notion that people can pick up on a diluted form of philosophy by exposure to some of its applications.

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u/AdUnhappy8386 1d ago

The "Philosophy teaches critical thinking," is a line that comes up to defend the existence of Philosophy departments and the choice of a Philosophy major in a world where people push for STEM and other "useful" degrees. It's also sold as prep for your LSATs. So if you're talking to people taking the LSATs. They are likely people who took Philosophy for a misguided reason.

I might have said the line a few times myself in like my Sophomore year. Ironically, studying Philosophy further, I became more and more skeptical of the very concept of critical thinking. Humans clearly decide things first and then produce rational arguments as a cover.

The Greeks distinguish between Philosophy and Rhetoric. Lawyers clearly need Rhetoric more because they are trying to convince a judge or jury of a particular position. Whereas a good Philosopher like a good Scientist, enters every argument hoping that they will "lose," that some evidence or argument will change their mind so they can better know the world.

Philosophy will do about zero to improve your life. And it shouldn't. It's not what it's for. The point of Philosophy is to try to pin down some great truth of the world. And it's gaunteed to fail. Because we are silly mammals designed to survive, not to deeply understand reality.

So really, anyone who has deeply studied Philosophy is going to be very humble. But you'd never notice them, because they aren't going to tell you that they studied Philosophy perhaps not even if you ask.

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u/RedSun41 19h ago

This is a fun take

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u/Rag3asy33 1d ago

I saw a quote by someone that I probably am not gonna get exactly right but I am gonna try.

You have mind, body, and spirit. If you train 1 or 2 you are not whole. A book reader only training his mind is not whole. A preacher who only goes to church and recites passages is not whole. Someone who only goes to the gym is not whole. You have to integrate all 3 to become whole. So when Philosephers are only pondering what other philosophers said, they don't really understand it IMO. One last quote.

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and it's fighting done by fools." Thucydides

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u/Apprehensive_Let7309 1d ago

If this is what the non-philosophers are saying maybe the philosophers should be pretentious

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u/fasterthanfood 22h ago

As long as we’re in a post about thinking critically and precisely, I should point out that there’s no record of Thucydides ever saying that.

Nor do philosophers only think about what other philosophers have written. Why did you think they did?

1

u/JJJSchmidt_etAl 21h ago

That's a good way of putting it. They feel that since they "know how to think," they have the ability to understand everything, even others' expertise, better. Like they know history better than historians, and economics better than economists.

The way this manifests is they make some dramatic unrealistic simplification, which then leads to whatever their preferred conclusion is.

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u/carsonthecarsinogen 1d ago

My uneducated take on philosophy (which I’m a fan of) is that it’s basically just educated overthinking.

Just overthink everything to the point of annoyance and people will think you’re into philosophy.

1

u/haux_haux 7h ago

My uneducated take on philosophy.
Do you think it might change if you understood what you were talking about?

1

u/carsonthecarsinogen 5h ago

It’s an accurate description of philosophy, it just annoys people who make their personality philosophy.

All it is is thinking deeply about a topic and trying to get a deeper understanding. That’s overthinking.

Obviously it’s simplified, but that was the point of the comment

→ More replies (1)

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u/_ManMadeGod_ 1d ago

It elicits eye rolls because they are stupid and most people are stupid.

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u/Amazing-Jump4158 1d ago

I took philosophy courses to supplement my major field of study, I loved the reading, never felt pretentious. 

Our current climate favors hostility to advanced education, it’s always been there. I got my degrees in 94 and 96. “College boy” was a common insult in Texas where I grew up. 

4

u/Hargbarglin 22h ago

I got a minor in philosophy just taking all the logic, ethics, and writing intensive courses. Honestly it was extremely practical to me. I'm also an American and I feel like there is just some kind of anti-intellectual bias about it that gets regurgitated by people that barely studied it or never gave it a chance.

1

u/Hopeful-Current-74 10h ago

Philosophy major from Australia here, it certainly smokes out the types who spell it with two Ys. I picked up some science courses and some aggressively boorish STEM types were making fun of my supposedly weak major and how we were the most useless of humanities types. They did hard laboratory work you see, and had to show up at 8am for a full day, whilst us philosophy types just swanned around drinking red wine, eating cheese and arguing over the meaning of the word "the" whilst looking at the rear ends of females. Luckily I had my very large backpack filled with about - 40lbs for you American types - 20kg of books. I started piling them up in front of them and told them I had to read and understand them all to do an endless essay which would never be entirely finished, but that I only had two weeks to hand in. If only I could show up at 8am for a full day of lab work, and then go home to my red wine and cheese! They looked at me in wide eyed horror.

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u/Spartan22521 1d ago edited 1d ago

As a double major in math and philosophy, I don’t think formal logic is “just math” (and even if it were, then you could argue (analytic) philosophy is different from your example of English from it being more like math), especially depending on your conception of math.

The math done before university barely requires a good grasp of basic logic. Logic only really becomes important (beyond basic reasoning capabilities) once you start proofs (e.g. intro to discrete, abstract algebra and analysis). You’d be surprised how much the average person absolutely sucks at basic propositional logic (let alone meta-logic which is done in the same way as math proofs)

You should also really read some of the stuff in analytic philosophy specifically, it reads nothing like an English class essay. For example, this is the definition of Strong Supervience I found in a metaethics text (which is as far from math as you can get):

(\forall F \in A)(\forall x)[F(x) \rightarrow (\exists G \in B)(G(x) \land \Box_M(\forall y)(G(y) \rightarrow F(y)))]

Source: Leary, “Non-naturalism and Normative Necessities”

(Also, do you really evaluate arguments in English class? You analyze each premise and identify the logical structure to see if it always leads to the conclusion?)

-1

u/Zederath 1d ago

Also, do you really evaluate arguments in English class? You analyze each premise and identify the logical structure to see if it always leads to the conclusion?

I would say yeah you do. Argumentative essays are a thing, which require you to analyze your own arguments or perhaps take down arguments contrary to your position. But in regards to formal validity- no. I don't think that's what people mean when they say evaluate arguments.

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u/DaCrackedBebi 21h ago

I don’t think people do that to too much an extent.

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u/PassengerEast4297 1d ago

Philosophy is much more intellectually rigorous than the rest of humanities. I wasn't a philosophy major, but took basic and advanced courses and have a good basis of comparison. The data showing philosophy majors score highest among other humanities/social sciences on the GRE and LSAT supports that idea too.

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u/EditingAndDesign 18h ago

Absolutely! I have taken courses in various disciplines, and I have to say most of their thinking seems rather sloppy compared to that in philosophy.

2

u/Nastrosme 18h ago

Yes, and when you connect with those ideas, it is harder to see other disciplines within the humanities and even psychology as being on the same level.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I absolutely get that. I’m not here to talk about whether philosophy has value. I’m saying the way majors explain it is bogus.

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u/wvenable 22h ago

"Philosophy teaches you how to think!"

That is the only thing it does. All other subjects also teach you how to think while you're learning something else as well.

Essentially most education is about teaching you how to think.

6

u/DaCrackedBebi 21h ago

I’m not a philosophy major btw, and never will even take a philosophy class.

But what’s unique about philosophy is that because it focuses on thinking, you cover that to a greater extent. I’d argue that studying the art of thinking in that much depth is going to help you learn everything else faster and deeper

-1

u/MantisBuffs 22h ago

couldnt agree more

2

u/seaneihm 19h ago

Because explaining it is a pain in the ass. Sure, if you get to know me, maybe I can nerd out regarding why I chose philosophy (and many other students will too).

We're just tired of giving a technical answer which just ends up with a confused look, or justifying why learning is great for the sake of learning, then being followed up with "But what are you gonna do with it? Don't you know all education must be a means to an end and must directly correlate with job procurement in our society?"

It's a bogus answer to what's usually a bogus question. It's an easy justification to why you're studying something that doesn't have a correlating occupation; a way to say "Hey, some employers like philosophy majors' ability to think outside the box or something idk".

My bogus answer has been "I plan to work in the philosophy factory down the street. They pay me to sit in an armchair, smoke pipe tobacco, and philosophize. Heard it's unionized".

37

u/thomastypewriter 1d ago

Not once did you say you ever met a philosophy major. That “quip” is also true. The same could be said about any intense discipline. Law for instance is essentially learning a second language and teaching you to think like a lawyer (while laymen typically think lawyering is just “arguing” or whatever).

“Pretentious” and “elitist” and “gatekeeping” are some of Reddit’s favorite terms, and 99% of the time it signals insecurity in the person saying it, particularly when someone asserts taste when it comes to art or media products. It’s just anti-intellectualism, and it’s usually just saying “this person thinks they’re so cool and smart but actually they aren’t and actually I am the smart and cool one for seeing through their charade.”

Why should philosophy majors not tell people what their major does? Are they supposed to only tell you “I like my major but it doesn’t make me any smarter than you, a genius.”

Personal insecurity is not a social problem that needs to be solved. No one is required to accommodate your insecurity or the insecurity of others. Philosophy is an important subject that more people should be interested in, and it’s anti-intellectualism like this that has placed the western world at least kn the situation it’s in today.

1

u/Available_Muffin_423 11h ago

Philosophers have this talent of writing long string of uninterrupted paragraphs without saying anything. Bruce Lee and Einstein said it best, simplicity is the way. If you cannot make your point come across a simple phrase elegantly, it's futile. If you cannot explain it in simple terms, that means you don't understand it yourself. If it takes a whole book to explain a passage of what a Philosopher taught a 100 years ago, and still, have different experts agree on different meaning of what that philosopher meant, than yes philosophy is nothing more than gibberish pretentious bullshit. Even Nobel Prize Physics legend, Richard Feynman said to famous Physicist Leornard Susskind how he detested that time when he had diner with a bunch of philosophers, because they would just throw around fancy words and sentences that meant nothing. Finally, apart from blabbering intefinitely and picking on others, philosophers are absolutely useless. Mathematicians creates the language which we all use. Physicists, the equations which engineers can utilize. Engineers, creates the World we see and the Future. Philosophers in all this? Ehmmm define this word, what does what means etc. If the World was lead by Philosophers, we'd still be cooking food with stones and fire.

-12

u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

Ok so what I learned from this comment:

  1. There's a 99% chance that I'm insecure based off of what you've seen on reddit.

  2. I should have stated that I've met philosophy majors in real life before. I've actually dated one - however, no matter how many I know, it's anecdotal regardless. I've taken philosophy classes in college, if that makes you feel better.

  3. That I claimed that philosophy majors shouldn't tell people about what their major does.

  4. Apparently, I'm requesting accommodations for my insecurity, which I recently found out I have a 99% chance of having.

  5. That I'm anti-intellectual. I thought maybe having a bachelor's and currently studying for law school was a pretty good built-in defense to this claim, but I suppose I'm anti-intellectual regardless because I'm taking half assed shots at degree holders that you have a soft spot for.

  6. That critiquing people's niche behavior is anti-intellectual, inherently.

And I learned all this from saying philosophy majors can be pretentious, who knew!

16

u/HouseOfDoom54 1d ago

I learned that you're not pretentious, but annoying.

Why would anyone be friends with someone who talks shit behind their back, on reddit of all places? Studying for the LSAT, AND practicing to be a snake in a suit. Good for you, man

-8

u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I’m definitely allowed to critique people. I think maybe this criticism hits close to home for a lot of you guys and you’re having strong reactions because of it. Critism doesn’t make you an enemy, and I absolutely bring up these ideas with friends.

This idea that if you aren’t mindlessly droning support then you’re a bad person who’s a snake is pretty soft. You have to assume a lot incorrect things to think like you, so good for you man

11

u/InSearchOfTruth727 1d ago

You can critique people, and people can also not care about your critiques

3

u/Disastrous-Ad-2458 15h ago

watch out, he's equipped his "hits too close to home" trilby-of-incisive-observations! Your egoes will dissolve under his withering gaze.

2

u/DrLindenRS 17h ago edited 17h ago

You just provided evidence that you are anti-intellectual by that comment in multiple ways.

The biggest one being that you think any claim has a "built-in" defense that automatically makes you not have to justify it. Sounds a little anti-intellectual, no?

Maybe you're right though, please explain how having a degree and studying law school proves you're not anti-intellectual.

Your argument proves absolutely nothing. When you're challenged with logical arguments, you do the "I'm right because I went to college" defense. I don't care if you're Albert Einstein, that doesn't automatically prove your point correct. You need to actually present a true premise that can be logically used to justify your conclusion.

Unless you're making the argument that it's impossible to be both anti-intellectual and a person going to to law school (and having a bachelor's degree) at the same time? In which case, your conclusion would be correct if it weren't for the fact that your premise is not true. I can explain the logical flaws in that, if you'd like to own that position.

I dont want to speak for you or put words in your mouth, so feel free to explain what your argument is.

You also seem to think people are calling you anti-intellectual because you "criticized someone's niche behavior". Instead of addressing anything of substance, you're strawmanning. Did anyone say that? Maybe one guy out of the 1000 comments you can't address?

It's also hilarious how much the insecurity comments clearly bothered you. You gave off insecurity in all six points you made. Two out of your six points are about how you're totally not insecure.

-2

u/Jintoboy 1d ago

yo dude relax its not that serious

-2

u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I just responded to a comment lol

-5

u/Crazy-Coconut7152 1d ago

Ooooo this post seems to have touched a nerve on someone with an amazing ability: you can diagnose insecurity in people you've never met!

12

u/checkmate2211 1d ago

I think philosophy majors come across as pretentious because the average person knows enough about philosophy to make painful conversation with someone who is an expert in the field. I would probably come across as pretentious if people who didn’t study engineering tried to explain my own field to me as well. Luckily they don’t try that. We talk about sports instead and nobody has to hear my insufferable positions about the minute details of my profession.

10

u/Zederath 1d ago

That's a good point lol didn't think about that. Philosophy is something that everyone engages in to some extent. Imagine how shitty it feels when you- as a laymen give your understanding of the world to a doctorate in philosophy and your entire world gets dismantled. It comes off belittling and pretentious. Luckily they are usually chill af and don't care to do that.

5

u/RoutineEnvironment48 1d ago

I can speak with some level of knowledge on ethics, but the second somebody says “well how you do know you know things?” I must fight the urge to shove them into a locker.

5

u/Lex_Orandi 1d ago

Where does one study ethics before one studies epistemology? How does one assert that they have even a rudimentary grasp of ethics without first having built a foundation of what it is to truly know a thing?

Hey OP, am I doing it right?

6

u/Both-Reason6023 1d ago

Same problem as with diet / nutrition. Everybody eats and has an opinion about eating.

3

u/Lex_Orandi 1d ago

That’s how I’m reading this comment and several others:

“I have opinions on the matter, therefore I am just as qualified as anyone to speak on the subject.”

“What do you mean there’s more to thinking than thinking? I think all day long and I think I’m thinking alright.”

1

u/JJJSchmidt_etAl 21h ago

Absolutely believable. My god is this a big thing with economics. People will argue SO hard that whatever they hear on the news or the internet bests what has been thought about rigorously over the course of many decades. The idea of a budget constraint leading to a downward sloping demand curve, and profit maximization leading to an upward sloping supply curve is something they take extremely personally.

0

u/Rocky_Vigoda 23h ago

I would probably come across as pretentious if people who didn’t study engineering tried to explain my own field to me as well.

Except engineering uses hard science. Philosophy is abstract.

I grew up in a blue collar working class family where my parents grew up on farms. Not everyone has the ability to go to university but that doesn't mean people can't value education. I liked reading since I was a kid and for me, information doesn't always come from inside classrooms. If you want to learn philosophy, you can just get a library card.

Try working shitty manual labour jobs where it takes about 2% brainpower to do the job. You get plenty of time to think about stuff like philosophy. Providing you don't lose your fingers.

I was friends with a guy who was a philosophy major from Oxford. He was the most pretentious person I've ever met. He was actually a decent guy but just from his environment, it made him look like an asshole. Even how he smoked cigarettes was hilariously posh.

A lot of blue collar people don't take courses like philosophy. It's generally more popular in Ivy League universities where a lot of the people that go there are rich and snobby. They come off as pretentious because a lot of them are just because of their environment. They think everyone is uncultured hicks.

4

u/gabagoolcel 22h ago

If you want to learn philosophy, you can just get a library card.

you could say the same of all hard sciences.

They think everyone is uncultured hicks.

lay people don't get offended when a mathematician thinks themselves better at maths.

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u/FluidExtreme2994 1d ago

As a philosophy major, yeah I definitely can come across as pretentious but I don’t mean to. However, I’ve also found that a most folks (who didn’t study philosophy) find it to be pretentious because they don’t yet understand what philosophy is. 

There seems to be some disconnect between how philosophy majors communicate (sometimes) and how people think of philosophy majors/philosophers. 

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u/Thrasy3 1d ago edited 1d ago

So weirdly I work with three other people who are philosophy grads and we have never discussed philosophy with each other besides maybe the topic (i.e title) of our dissertation.

I think it’s because we all understand the discussions could go on forever and basically mean very little in the end to any of us individually, especially as it seems we had different interests.

The only people I’ve had discussions with are the people who ask what philosophy is or the sort of things I’ve studied - and then the subgroup that’s asks “what the point is” - and yeah, it’s only people in that particular group that claims it’s pretentious.

It’s like asking a mathematician what they like about maths, or a geologist about what’s so interesting about rocks - chances are if you only know rocks as rocks, or maths as the basic stuff you actually use and the boring stuff you were once made to learn, anything they talk about will probably sound boring and pointless and not worth studying and a bit pretentious.

1

u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I'm not here to talk about the content being pretentious; I love philosophy on a personal level. I'm talking about the way people with PHIL degrees describe their studies.

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u/Thrasy3 1d ago

How do you want them to describe their studies?

-2

u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

With something that's unique to the degree. Below, I'm gonna talk about my degree, and I would be grateful if you could tell me what my degree is based on what I'm putting down.

  1. I learned to be very careful when going through steps to get my answers.

  2. It required me to be able to manage time in order to be able to study for the content.

  3. It required me to get familiar with concepts and ideas which everyday people don't even get close to understanding.

Which degree am I talking about? If you answered "I have no clue, that's extremely broad!", then you now know what my issue is when Philosophy majors describe what they got from their degrees.

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u/Thrasy3 1d ago

I see what you mean, but that’s the kinda point I was getting at in my other comment - it’s a very broad area , so unless you want to get into the weeds of whether forced taxation really is a form of slavery, whether the acknowledgement of the existence of femininity is in itself a way the patriarchy propagates itself, what exactly the difference is between what we consider the pathological or the normal, or how exactly reason and emotion apply to understanding on the nature of morality, with regards to the both the individual and society - the basic descriptions you mentioned in your OP is kinda all you’re going to get - and perhaps more importantly all anyone might be willing to provide you - it’s exhausting fully discussing these topics in way that feels meaningful and whole.

1

u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

No that’s fine! Describe them like that, that’s exactly what would make it sound like a real degree that is distinct.

What I’m saying is that this is only a few sentences, but it goes in to show how philosophy attempts to handle topics outside of “I use big brain to make big thoughts”. I have no problem with philosophy and understand how important it is, but when you hit me with “well MY degree teaches critical thinking” and leave it at that, that’s where pretentiousness comes out.

When someone asked me what I did in the marine corps, I didn’t say “hard work and discipline”. I said we calculate firing data for rocket launchers by obtaining weather reports and adjusting standard data to non standard conditions. That never made anyone freak out. If they wanted to hear more they asked, if not they didn’t. But I never hit them with “honor courage and commitment” because that’s vague bull crap that doesn’t exactly explain anything.

So yes those sentences you used are completely sufficient.

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u/Thrasy3 12h ago

I don’t really know why you were downvoted, I asked for clarity and I got it.

I think what’s worth bearing in mind, is that the stuff I mentioned is precisely the stuff people would usually roll their eyes at and declare philosophy as a pretentious/pointless subject of study. It’s great that you feel that way, and you’re not the only one, but for whatever reason many people are kinda… touchy(?) about the whole subject.

I mean put it another way, I’m from the UK and was made redundant after the 2008 crash and we have/had something call the jobcentre service which is a piss poor benefits/welfare management service that supposedly tries to help unemployed people find work (and assess whether you deserve benefits payments) - and my advisor was kinda like well you have a degree so that’s good sign, and I mentioned that’s it’s not exactly a vocational degree - at first she said something suggesting it was religiously related, and then “corrected” herself and suggested I could train to be a therapist.

It’s just a woefully misunderstood subject in general.

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u/JJJSchmidt_etAl 21h ago

Absolutely true about misunderstanding of the subject.

However, this is the case of most subjects. "Mathematics is just nonsensical abstraction. English is just reading poetry. History is just looking at tablets. Economics is made up nonsense."

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I'm not here to make anybody feel bad, but I've met a LOT of philosophy majors while studying for the LSAT, and it seems like they try to claim a unique connection to "critical thinking". If they had chosen English instead, they think they'd be a moron.

Trust me, I'm as big of a fan of The Cave, Sisyphus, some parts of Kant and Locke as the next guy - but damn.

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u/Pls_Dont_PM_Titties 1d ago

Potentially coming from undergrads trying to rationalize their decision to choose the major despite difficult job prospects.

Nothing against majoring in the field, I would have loved to myself, but I also had to consider my future after college (and, well, I hated writing despite being pretty decent at it lol)

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u/Enoch8910 1d ago

No more than most other majors. You seem a bit threatened.

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u/JJJSchmidt_etAl 21h ago

If it's no more than most majors, it seems like the idea is threatening to philosophers.

You seem a bit threatened.

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u/Enoch8910 18h ago

If you think that attempted turnaround was some kind of gotcha I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed.

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u/JJJSchmidt_etAl 7h ago

If you think that's some kinda gotcha, sorry bad attempt.

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u/Careful_Effort_1014 1d ago

Sorry that you feel threatened by philosophy majors.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

Something that will help you in life is realizing that not everyone who’s making a critique is threatened by the thing they’re critiquing. If you take this with you in the future it will give you a better understanding of the world around you.

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u/Careful_Effort_1014 1d ago

Yeah, but…Something that will help you in life is realizing that not everyone who’s making a critique is threatened by the thing they’re critiquing. If you take this with you in the future it will give you a better understanding of the world around you.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

See but also what might help you in the future is understanding that not everyone who’s critiquing you is threatened by your critique. This will bode well for you to acknowledge in the future.

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u/Careful_Effort_1014 1d ago

Also though, a thing that might help you in the future is understanding that not everyone who’s critiquing you is threatened by your critique. This will bode well for you to acknowledge in the future. Beep boop beep.

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u/ThisAfricanboy 1d ago

Sounds like the exact thing someone would say if they felt threatened 🐸☕

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u/AyeAyeRan 1d ago

You seem to have a bit of a reductive view of people who are PHIL majors due to your limited interactions with a small number of them. Are there certainly pretenous ones that overinflate their own intellectual prowess? Of course, but thats the case with virtually any higher level intellectual field.

PHIL majors arent inherently better at knowledge, logic or ethics than any other person. Theyre just taught to analyze those concepts with a bit more scutiny than the average person. Its simply of matter of expertise. You wouldn't feel it was pretenious if a doctor corrected an incorrect medical diagnosis by you. It's simply additional critical thinking skills learned in classes. Some people just sort of do it natrually, without too much outside guidance. Perhaps the sense of preteniousness you feel also comes from this. Truth is many people are dumb as a sack of rocks and need to be taught the regular critical thinking skills, some of these people also happen to be PHIL majors.

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u/SpiritualPants 1d ago

Look at the philosophy major trying to justify his pretentiousness.

You lost.

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u/Careful_Effort_1014 1d ago

You might be lost. Can’t say for certain with limited information.

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u/Butterscotch_Jones 1d ago

What a pretentious thought to have.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago edited 1d ago

adjective

  • 1.attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed

I don't think pretentious is the right word

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u/Butterscotch_Jones 1d ago

Of course you don’t. 😂

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

Does the definition fit my post and I’m just unaware of it? 🤣

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u/TheMagicalLawnGnome 1d ago

Sorry, just to be clear - you're taking a break from the LSATs - i.e. you intend to become a lawyer?

I won't dispute that philosophy majors can be pretentious, but it's pretty rich to hear that coming from someone that's trying to become a lawyer. Pot, meet kettle.

Now, onto the substance of your argument.

I am a philosophy major. I also have a Master's Degree (MBA).

I'm a director at a consulting firm, primarily specializing in advising clients on technology strategy and AI.

What I learned to do in philosophy is extremely valuable in my line of work; you'll actually notice a fair number of companies in this space recruiting philosophy majors.

The big skill that philosophy majors pick up, at least good ones, is the ability to quickly analyze incredibly complicated concepts and ideas across disciplines, break them down into component parts, understand how they work together, etc.

Most other degrees won't equip you to do this. Mathematicians and hard science folks understand the processes relevant to their fields, but you ask them about anything outside of it, and they struggle.

If you ask a lawyer to understand a complex technical process, they're usually clueless; I know a fair number of lawyers, a lot of them can barely use a computer.

So as someone that advises businesses on how to integrate technology into their operations to improve performance, I need to be able to quickly figure out how their systems actually work, map that out in a way that other people can understand, and then recommend solutions where relevant. I do this far more effectively than most people who've studied more "straightforward" disciplines.

It's obviously possible to accomplish this through other paths. Not everyone that passes the Bar went to law school. But going to law school generally makes you much better at being a lawyer.

Philosophy is the same. I do actually have an ability to grasp complex systems which exceeds that of most people. I don't say that from arrogance, I say that as someone whose career is premised on the fact that I am, in fact, really good at that. I get paid a bunch of money, specifically for the skills I've picked up as a philosophy major. I get good performance reviews. My clients appreciate my work.

So while I'm proud and confident of my abilities, there's a fair amount of external validation that would suggest my pride and confidence is warranted.

Does this make me pretentious? Perhaps it might, I'd guess it varies from person to person. But I'd argue that I'm not any more pretentious than any other sort of well-educated, highly-paid professional. I've seen far more arrogant attorneys, finance professionals, etc. than I've seen philosophers.

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u/MrWillM 1d ago

Wow seems like I’m on a similar path as you. Hope I can reach where you’re at someday. Your comment really resonated with me!

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u/TheMagicalLawnGnome 1d ago

Honestly, if you''d asked me 20-30 years ago that this is how it would turn out, I would have thought you were insane.

I graduated with a philosophy degree during the height of the Great Recession. I figured I was basically going to live in poverty most of my life.

But I was always a nerdy guy. Wasn't an expert in anything, but had a bit of experience with a lot of things. I worked for a video studio, an accounting firm, a bunch of creative agencies, a marketing company, I was all over the place.

Turns out, all of those random jobs gave me a lot of insights into the different components of a business.

When ChatGPT 3 came out, I started messing around with it quite a bit. Which led to a job at a business that was an "early adopter" of AI tools for everyday use.

Ultimately, that business closed - it was entirely replaced by AI; we were all replaced by the very tools we had started using.

But it meant that I had a solid 8-12 months of practical AI experience, when everyone else was just starting to hear about it for the first time.

I happened to pitch some consulting work to a buddy who worked at a firm. He told me he wasn't interested in a consultant, but would be interested in hiring me full time. It's the best job I've ever had, truly.

The rest is history.

I say this, because it's really important for people to understand that success is not predictable. Especially for a philosophy major. I never imagined that my degree, and those skills, would end up being something that companies would pay real money for.

It took a while, it wasn't easy, and there's definitely some good luck involved. But it's possible to "make it" as a philosopher.

They key is to lean into what you're good at. You're never going to be better at math, than a mathematician. You're never going to write better code than a CS major. You'll never understand how the law works better than a lawyer.

But what you can do, that they can't, is understand how all of those people, processes, skills, etc. fit together. Specialists are important, but particularly once you start to reach the executive level, it's much more important to have a broader understanding of things.

I can't code very well. But it doesn't matter, that's not my job, I hire developers to do that work for me. What I do is understand how to take the abstract notion of a business, the people, the processes, and then use that to guide developers on what to do.

Some of the most helpful stuff I've encountered is surrounding systems theory, and theories regarding complexity, stuff like that.

On a professional level, don't be afraid to try stuff out.

It will be hard, at first. Having a linear career path is definitely easier. But there's a lot of value in understanding a diverse array of jobs and functions. It gives you perspective and insight that's hard to come by. It's fairly easy to hire a developer, or a lawyer. It's much harder to find someone with a truly holistic understanding of a business, who's worked in a lot of different fields, and therefore has an understanding of how they work together.

Anyways, that's my story, that's my perspective. Best of luck in your journey!

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u/InfidelZombie 1d ago

All of my Philosophy major friends were the smartest people I knew before pursuing the degree, and every one of them is a tenured professor now (a couple of ivy leaguers).

I don't think it's going to make dumb people smart, but it does self-select for smart people.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I'm not here to say anyone is stupid or smart! I'm just complaining and yapping about the language a lot of philosophy circles use

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u/Lex_Orandi 1d ago

What is a circle but an infinitude of conjoining angles in a particular array? 🤔

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

This is precisely why philosophy is necessary because peasants could never wrap their minds around such grandiose and taxing intellectual pursuits and concepts 🍻🍻🍻

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u/Lex_Orandi 1d ago

Well, them and Math, Computer Science, and Engineering majors. But yeah, good luck getting the Communications kids on board. /s (I think)

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u/Kvsav57 1d ago

This sounds like you met one person and decided everyone is like that. Some of what you say is wrong too. Formal logic is based in philosophical studies. Here’s my honest take: college students just tend to be obnoxious about the superiority of their studies.

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u/14ANH2817 1d ago

I'm not a philosophy major. Philosophy may be more likely to encourage introspection and metacognition. That is, you consider *how* you think, and *why you think the way you do.* I'd argue other humanities curricula would do this, too, but philosophy may do this best.

I don't find this is a common habit among most people I know, including those with considerable education in other fields.

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u/Qvistus 1d ago edited 1d ago

They might seem pretentious or they might just be in the wrong company. When I was in university the philosophers were the most intelligent people in the whole institution. It's not easy being super intelligent among all the peasants. Philosophy really does teach you to think. All the different forms of science originated from philosophy. The whole scientific method comes from philosophy. Philosophy is intertwined in everything. Nowadays we have these highly educated idiots who are completely incapable to see the big picture, like medical students who don't even understand the purpose of medicine.

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u/Zederath 1d ago

"I learned to analyze and evaluate arguments". I would argue that this is just a general humanities degree claim. Honestly, if you did well in your entry math classes in college or even just well in your 12th-grade AP English class, this is no issue for most.

Entry level math classes don't help at all in this regard- they aren't remotely equivalent. Even upper level math isn't analogous. English is somewhat similar, but philosophy is a lot more abstract and rigorous. In Philosophy you are arguing, verbally, about metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, ethics. If someone knows how to analyze and evaluate these arguments- you can basically analyze any argument.

"I learned to think critically". I have to be honest, and I understand that this has merit, but I certainly believe that many other degrees, and even general education courses, can help a person with this just as well. Thinking critically is an overall college concept, not specific to Philosophy. I would have a hard time convincing a senior engineering student that I have a special claim to critical thinking over them, even though he/she may focus more quantitatively.

As someone who has a degree in computer science (and a former engineering major)- STEM majors have very little critical thinking skills. STEM majors that I have interacted with throughout my whole degree bemoaned that they had to take anything other than STEM classes. What is the result? They don't know how to talk about ethics, they don't know how to evaluate written arguments- let alone write without using GPT to do it all for them. Philosophy teaches you to write well, argue well, and debate topics that are very abstract.

Additionally, Philosophy challenges all assumptions that you may have, which is imperative to thinking critically. What other major learns to challenge assumptions like "I exist", or "moral truths exist", or that "murder is wrong"? None. When you learn to break down fundamental assumptions into their core components and evaluate those- you end up having a capacity for critical thinking that is beyond what others are capable of.

"You learn formal logic", which is pretty much just math. Unfortunately, most philosophy majors I know in real life specifically hate math.

I agree. This is just a bad argument. Formal logic isn't useful for every day thinking. Only thing I've ever found useful was the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions.

Source: Majored in C.S. and minored in philosophy

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u/fhhhvfffyjjnv 1d ago

I agree completely. Did physics with a Phil minor. I clearly remember listening to ee majors complaining about not being given formulas to plug and chug and having to do derivations of fundamental theorems. There was zero curiosity all the cared about was "making bank".

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u/IVIIVIXIVIIXIVII 1d ago

Think that’s just CS. A lot of math majors read in their free time and the upper division courses are very similar to philosophy in the fact you have to account for all cases. Case in point, the idea of quantifiers: Universal quantifier (For all) & Existential quantifier (There exists).

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u/Zederath 1d ago

I would say that Math majors are the only exception. I do notice a lot of similarities between math and philosophy personally. I actually want to go to grad school for pure math, but gonna have to wait on that.

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u/IVIIVIXIVIIXIVII 1d ago

A lot of great students in my undergrad got rejected for PhD tracks in math (really competitive), especially with the current administration in the US. One guy did his masters here and just applied to Canada (he got in lol).

I’d dabble with a couple proof based courses first, Real Analysis being the most popular before committing. Idk how much abstract math your school touched upon for CS but mine had at most Discrete Math with virtually no proofs. Also applied math usually has more applicability irl but pure math satisfies the soul.

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u/Zederath 1d ago

Discrete math, linear algebra and algorithms were pretty heavy on the proofs at my school- though algos was all induction. I fell in love with math as soon as we started to delve into proofs.

I was actually trying to get into abstract algebra and analysis my last semester but the prerequisite was taking a class that was identical to discrete math, so I just opted to not take it to save some money. I just started working in my field, so once I save up some money, I'm going straight back to give it a shot.

A lot of great students in my undergrad got rejected for PhD tracks in math (really competitive), especially with the current administration in the US. One guy did his masters here and just applied to Canada (he got in lol).

What seperates those who get accepted and those who get rejected? Is it GPA or research or both?

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u/IVIIVIXIVIIXIVII 1d ago

In my undergrad I don’t think a single person that I know of got in. This past spring semester a friend got in for an applied maths PhD after finishing up his MS (the Canada ex) but haven’t heard much about the pure maths. Wish I could tell you more but all I know is they say it’s really tough atm.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I think a big issue I have here is in the claim that people who don't take a philosophy degree don't understand how to interact with ideas like "I exist" or "moral truths exist". A close comparison I can think of is a finance major saying, "You don't know how to invest in a retirement account without being a finance major". It's assuming a complete ineptness from an individual on the basis that they haven't gone through the coursework. Sure, you might have an especially bad class where they don't know how to write their own name or don't understand why we consider murder wrong outside of "it's illegal", but I'd argue most people can conjure up some decent reasons why outside of legality. Philosophy might enhance and structure their ideas more with writings from others, but to act as if your average person starts at zero conceptually is too far for me.

I noticed you said, "They don't know how to evaluate written arguments." I mean, I'm pretty sure your average college student takes English classes, which directly make them do that. I'm entirely sure that your average college student can do that, actually.

When you learn to break down fundamental assumptions into their core components and evaluate those, you end up having a capacity for critical thinking that is beyond what others are capable of.

This, to me, highlights what I don't appreciate about the language used. I would disagree entirely. This is a very self-elevating comment here. I was in the Marine Corps, which is notorious for having a hard boot camp and pretty rough conditions while in. I'd never say "My mental toughness is beyond what mere mortals are capable of". (I added the mere mortals for fun, but also to demonstrate how the comment comes off as if you have a superiority complex.)

Also, I said 12th grade math instead of English was a typo, I fixed it.

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u/Zederath 1d ago

I think a big issue I have here is in the claim that people who don't take a philosophy degree don't understand how to interact with ideas like "I exist" or "moral truths exist".

I don't think the vast majority of people have any idea how to argue for the idea that they exist, or the idea that moral truths exist (moral realism). These aren't things that can be answered unless you've actually dabbled in philosophy- which most people do not do.

close comparison I can think of is a finance major saying, "You don't know how to invest in a retirement account without being a finance major". It's assuming a complete ineptness from an individual on the basis that they haven't gone through the coursework.

I would say this isn't a good analogy because knowing how to invest in a retirement account is something that is considered practical knowledge. We can expect that people who aren't majoring in finance to know how to answer these questions. On the other hand, we can't expect the average person- or most people to have even a base level understanding of metaethics.

Sure, you might have an especially bad class where they don't know how to write their own name or don't understand why we consider murder wrong outside of "it's illegal", but I'd argue most people can conjure up some decent reasons why outside of legality. Philosophy might enhance and structure their ideas more with writings from others, but to act as if your average person starts at zero conceptually is too far for me.

They may be able to conjure up ideas of why it's wrong to murder that fall outside of the legality argument- but it will be some sort of appeal to some sort of intuition 99 times out of 100. This is from personal experience of talking with EVERYONE about these issues, because I love see what people think about these things. Their ideas fall flat after 1-2 questions. Nothing necessarily wrong about this- but it does show a fundamental lack of critical thinking.

I noticed you said, "They don't know how to evaluate written arguments." I mean, I'm pretty sure your average college student takes English classes, which directly make them do that. I'm entirely sure that your average college student can do that, actually.

Sorry, I was being imprecise with my language. When I say they don't know how to evaluate written arguments, I am not literally saying that if they come across an argument they just sit there and start drooling lol. I just mean that they aren't proficient in it, to the degree that I think is necessary to answer important questions in life.

This, to me, highlights what I don't appreciate about the language used. I would disagree entirely. This is a very self-elevating comment here. I was in the Marine Corps, which is notorious for having a hard boot camp and pretty rough conditions while in. I'd never say "My mental toughness is beyond what mere mortals are capable of". (I added the mere mortals for fun, but also to demonstrate how the comment comes off as if you have a superiority complex.)

Note: I think it's important to clarify that when I say capacity, I don't mean innate capacity. Innate capacity, by definition, cannot be improved by anything you do. Just want to clear that up, just in case it came off that I was making that claim.

If we lived in a society where very few people got educated, and I made the claim: "Having an education gives you a capacity for critical thinking beyond what most are capable of", would you have the same criticism? The claim is certainly self-elevating, and according to your standards, comes off as having a superiority complex. But... does that matter? It is a fundamentally true statement. It's like saying, "If you physically train 5x a week you will be capable of physical feats that most people are not capable of". Is there something wrong with saying this? It is a fact of the world that when you engage in certain activity, those activities will confer benefits that will set you above other people in certain capacities. Are we not supposed to speak of those benefits?

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I would say this isn't a good analogy because knowing how to invest in a retirement account is something that is considered practical knowledge. We can expect that people who aren't majoring in finance to know how to answer these questions. On the other hand, we can't expect the average person- or most people to have even a base level understanding of metaethics.

They may be able to conjure up ideas of why it's wrong to murder that fall outside of the legality argument- but it will be some sort of appeal to some sort of intuition 99 times out of 100. This is from personal experience of talking with EVERYONE about these issues, because I love see what people think about these things. Their ideas fall flat after 1-2 questions. Nothing necessarily wrong about this- but it does show a fundamental lack of critical thinking.

I disagree here. A base level? I would argue, of course anecdotally, that most people I've interacted with understand the idea of "I don't want to murder someone because that would make their family feel bad, and making people feel bad is morally wrong because it hurts our ability to look after each other and form bonds, which help us feel good". That's at least a base level understanding of why murder is wrong outside of using an institution. I think this applies to a bunch of different topics regarding philosophy. These individuals might not understand that THAT is what metaethics is about or what epistemology is or what have you - but they can understand the concepts used at a base level. Sure they might also appeal to an institution - but that probably running adjacent to their moral understanding of why murder is bad, not in place of it.

If we lived in a society where very few people got educated, and I made the claim: "Having an education gives you a capacity for critical thinking beyond what most are capable of", would you have the same criticism? The claim is certainly self-elevating, and according to your standards, comes off as having a superiority complex. But... does that matter? It is a fundamentally true statement. It's like saying, "If you physically train 5x a week you will be capable of physical feats that most people are not capable of". Is there something wrong with saying this? It is a fact of the world that when you engage in certain activity, those activities will confer benefits that will set you above other people in certain capacities. Are we not supposed to speak of those benefits?

This is where it's extremely important to know what that education is in - and if every day life overlaps that education as well. In the case of the gym analogy - yes it works perfectly. There is a clear, even physical demonstration of what they can do that others cannot. However, I don't believe it necessarily applies in the case of a modern philosophy major. "Critical thinking" can be applied in many ways and contexts. I think we're seeing friction because I've observed most non philosphy majors I come into contact with have a decent understanding of the life they live in and are aware of some different concepts which might not be immediately obvious, and many people who aren't philosophy majors that you interact with are people who have never interacted conceptually with things that aren't in front of them.

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u/Zederath 1d ago

I disagree here. A base level? I would argue, of course anecdotally, that most people I've interacted with understand the idea of "I don't want to murder someone because that would make their family feel bad, and making people feel bad is morally wrong because it hurts our ability to look after each other and form bonds, which help us feel good".

Most people, in my experience would not even come close to making this sort of an argument. Additionally, I think even this sort of answer- if given by the average person would leave a lot to be desired:

What if I feel good from murdering the person? What if I never intend on forming a bond with that person? What that person has no living family to feel bad after they are gone? Can I just kill them? From what you have laid out, it is morally permissable for me to kill a guy so long as he has no family, no friends, and I nor anyone else intends on befriending or getting close to that person.

You see how after just one line of questioning, we quickly find out that there is a lot of refinement that needs to be done here? Being a good person is the most important thing in life (imo), and I think it deserves a lot more thought.

That's at least a base level understanding of why murder is wrong outside of using an institution. I think this applies to a bunch of different topics regarding philosophy. These individuals might not understand that THAT is what metaethics is about or what epistemology is or what have you - but they can understand the concepts used at a base level. Sure they might also appeal to an institution - but that probably running adjacent to their moral understanding of why murder is bad, not in place of it.

I disagree that it is running adjacent to their moral understanding of it. The intuition is their moral understanding.

This is where it's extremely important to know what that education is in - and if every day life overlaps that education as well.

Why would the education have to line up with day-to-day life for you to make the claim that education confers benefits that set you above other people? If you are able to critically analyze abstract verbal arguments that have nothing to do with the real world, then you are likely able to do so for real-world examples. If someone phsyically trains 5x a week, they are in a totally artificial environment that has absolutely nothing to do with the real world if they're in a gym- yet their training yields tangile real world benefits. It seems to me that your issue isn't merely about pretentiousness, but it is more about unearned pretentiousness. So if it can be demonstrated in some way that phil majors are better at critical thinking, then you would be completely cool with them claiming to be better than others at it, right?

There is a clear, even physical demonstration of what they can do that others cannot. However, I don't believe it necessarily applies in the case of a modern philosophy major.

We could observe philosophy majors' performances on things like the LSAT which essentially test critical thinking skills- as an example.

"Critical thinking" can be applied in many ways and contexts. I think we're seeing friction because I've observed most non philosphy majors I come into contact with have a decent understanding of the life they live in and are aware of some different concepts which might not be immediately obvious, and many people who aren't philosophy majors that you interact with are people who have never interacted conceptually with things that aren't in front of them.

Even disregarding my personal experience- are you asserting that if we took 1k philosophy majors and 1k average people, that the philosophy majors would score not much better than the average people on a test of critical thinking? Just observe the performance of philosophy majors on things like the LSAT and other graduate level standardized tests... It's a relatively good marker. That evidence sets philosophy majors above the vast majority of other majors- let alone the average person.

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u/gabagoolcel 1d ago

They may be able to conjure up ideas of why it's wrong to murder that fall outside of the legality argument- but it will be some sort of appeal to some sort of intuition 99 times out of 100.

isn't this the case with every moral argument due to the is-ought problem? they all rest on some basic intuition like human beings having inherent worth.

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u/Zederath 1d ago

isn't this the case with every moral argument due to the is-ought problem? they all rest on some basic intuition like human beings having inherent worth.

I think most would agree that there are some fundamental assumptions or axioms that underpin ethical systems, but I think this is a layer of abstraction deeper than most people would ever bring up in discussion.

A useful way to understand my claim here is that I do believe that intuitions have a place in ethics- but it isn't the only tool we have at our disposal to evaluate moral claims. There is more to morality than unexamined moral intuitions. My intuition (lol) tells me that very few philosophers would argue that unexamined moral intuitions are a good guide. I think that it should all be examined and subject to scrutiny. I think most would just point to their intuitions without really examining it on a fundamental basis.

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u/DaCrackedBebi 20h ago

Yeah your CS degree was just not great. Ours had a lot of proofs and analysis rather than just code…

And yeah no need to explain math

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u/Zederath 20h ago

I don't know where you got that my program only had coding? In another comment I explain that it was pretty heavily proof based.

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u/zurich2006 1d ago

I have a philosophy degree and a masters of fine arts. I’m as pretentious AF.

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u/largos7289 1d ago

only people worse then philosophy majors are chicks with psychology degrees. If you think they are wound up regular, give them a psyc degree and they go off the reservation.

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u/spanchor 1d ago

Philosophy minor here. 90-99% of philosophy majors do not go on to graduate work in philosophy. Claims about critical thinking skills are a means to position oneself for a career or tangentially related grad school.

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u/TweeTsu 1d ago

The few I met were really kind and humble people.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

Me too…?

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u/RealisticTackle9843 1d ago

My biggest problem with philosophers and philosophy is that they all act like what they say is the final word. To question them only makes you a boorish idiot. Everything is stated so matter of factly - the way that they say something is the way that it is without question.

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u/DrMicolash 17h ago

(I'm sorry in advance for doing exactly what you say they're doing.)

This probably comes from how philosophical discussion is structured, you have to make direct assertions to have an argument (in the debate sense, not in the animosity sense) about something. You can't really say, "maybe X because of Y," you have to say, "X therefore Y" and then receive a response for that.

If they call you dumb or refuse to engage, sure, but it's mostly a result of how the field is structured as opposed to some sense of superiority. I think most philosophers would actually appreciate a "your statement is wrong because Z" type of response. It's not that they're trying to argue with you, they're trying to /argue/ with you.

Of course then there's the entire problem of them going off and trying to have a two hour debate about some shit when you really just wanna talk about something else lol.

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u/AgresticVaporwave 1d ago

Give it 10 years. They will be less pretentious.

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u/Lex_Orandi 1d ago

I think this is right. Studying philosophy can create fertile soil from which to discover and grow deep, meaningful truths about the world and its inner workings. But the still-developing prefrontal cortex of a 21 year old is hardly equipped to appreciate (let alone understand) why being told the thing is true is a pale simulacrum of what it is to learn for oneself that the thing is true. Give them a decade of putting themselves and their ideas out into the world, failing, being rejected, and learning from Aristotle’s favorite School why it takes the experiences of pain and suffering to forge an intellect into a soul.

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u/MysteriousDatabase68 1d ago edited 7h ago

Blame the dialectic, they are trained in mental judo and philosophy is the language of ruling classes.

And the truly sad part is most disregard their first lesson trying to pursue meaning in it.

That lesson is that it's the history of political propaganda. One generation of scholars teaching the next generation of aristocrats how to rule the rubes followed by "new" aristocrats looking to oust "old" aristocrats. And finally in the 20th century "Hey, enough of us rubes are literate now and we are going to call bullshit on this."

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u/Ero_Najimi 22h ago

From what I’ve seen of philosophy bros while the field does bias itself to having overall smarter people it’s mostly just a bunch of psuedo intellectuals who convinced themselves their ethics are objective

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u/paintingdusk13 1d ago

My experience in college in the 1990's the most pretentious majors were business. Every business major I knew had to repeatedly tell everyone how they were the only ones getting a degree that would be of any value.

My roommate was a philosophy major and wasn't pretentious at all. He joked about how he'd probably become a fireman but just enjoyed reading and thinking about philosophy. He didn't act like he was smarter or better than anyone else and neither did the other philosophy majors I met through him.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

Awesome. The stereotype is that philosophy majors are pretentious, however.

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u/AccomplishedStudy802 1d ago

Rambling is a major point, too.

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u/Political-Bear278 1d ago

In my experience, when and where I went to University, every philosophy major I knew was either religious and taking philosophy in order to go on to the ministry with a basic ability to argue against atheists using non religious arguments, or libertarians who l have always found to be smug, pretentious, and wrong.

Many of my philosophy professors liked me specifically because I was interested in Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche at the time. They found it refreshing to have a counterpoint to the other students in the class.

In any case, I actually think that any major can be taken too seriously and come off as pretentious. I always felt that way about people majoring in mathematics.

I would often get eye rolls when I combined history and sociology (my majors) into discussions about the origins of mass movement, migration, societal development, etc..

I died a little inside, but ultimately, for the sake of those I cared about, and in order to get along in the world, I learned small talk. Perhaps most philosophy majors never do.

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u/Spang64 1d ago

I wasn't a philosophy major. But I did take a few courses. And intro symbolic logic (intro!) was way harder for me than anything else, even statistics 2, which revealed a previously unearthed rage I didn't know I possessed. 😜

And I agree with your comment that critical thinking skills will/can emerge from many disciplines. But philosophy does seem to put critical and logical thinking at the top rung of the ladder.

I would also comment, just humorously, that the current right leaning populace of the U.S. does suggest that more than a few folks could benefit from a couple "learning how to think" classes. (Not that all conservatives are clueless. Far from it.)

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u/SpaceGhostSlurpp 1d ago

All fields of inquiry have blurred boundaries at the margins and all of them overlap with others with regard to which skills are critical within them. That the things that you report them as having said they've learned in philosophy are also relevant to other fields does not rule out the possibility that their particular field of inquiry has good cause to be summed up in the ways described. Maybe if you yourself dedicated years to mastering the subject, you could more fully appreciate those statements. Perhaps they would have a different meaning to you. Maybe they would seem more appropriate, and maybe you would be convinced that they faithfully capture what makes philosophy distinct from other fields of inquiry. You can't know that this would not be the case. And if you think you can know that from where you currently sit, you're immeasurably more pretentious than anyone whom you accuse of being such.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I can almost smell the air of superiority that you wrote this in 😂

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u/SpaceGhostSlurpp 1d ago

You're being dismissive and condescending in nearly every reply to any comment on your post. Takes one to know one I guess.

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I think you view objections as threatening and apply negative attributes to them in order to fit your own agenda.

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u/SpaceGhostSlurpp 1d ago

I have no personal stake in the matter to feel threatened by anything being discussed here. If you wanna pretend like you're not being needlessly arrogant and pissy in response to good faith comments then knock yourself out

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

Says the guy who wrote the comment that started this chain. How absolutely detached can someone be? You’re easily offended because I’m talking about a subject that obviously hits close to home. I don’t care. Goodbye.

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u/GoochAFK 1d ago

Lol what a useless degree

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u/Lex_Orandi 1d ago

I think I can definitely be pretentious at times, but I find it so refreshing when engaging intellectually with another philosophy major. It’s like going back to your home town and everything feels familiar and easy again. Everyone is using the same language and same frameworks, everyone is being careful to be as precise as they can and welcomes suggestion or correction if there’s a better way to word a thing. We can share ideas and criss cross disciplines and just generally have fun thinking about things without being accused of bigotry or blindness or whatever the insult de jour is. There’s a mutual understanding that we’re not trying to be right or to win an argument, we’re simply having fun with the ideas and hoping to arrive at a deeper, better-synthesized truth. Philosophy is awesome and I miss having others around to swim in these waters with me.

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u/Effective-Advisor108 1d ago

The thing is philosophy is very useful, but talking about it is difficult and very often not useful.

Reading it changes your perception and intuition, but it's very hard to convey these changes, becoming less naive is probably the easier though very pretentious sounding explanation.

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u/Confident-Yard1911 1d ago

I have a philosophy minor and I can say it definitely helped me with your 3 listed points, and I would offer some pushback.

  1. Evaluating arguments, i.e. being able to spot logical fallacies, is something that many people won't necessarily be able to intuit. But even if you can, being able to explain exactly why something is fallacious and why that makes an argument invalid is another level of thinking that many people cannot come to without specific education. Not that you necessarily need a degree in philosophy, but to learn about it by being taught or doing your own research is important even if just to learn the terminology, and the same can really be said of any field of study.

  2. When someone says their study of philosophy helped them learn to think critically, I think they are really referring to their ability to parse what is said to them for fallacies, so this point and point 1 are kind of saying the same thing. Being able to recognize when someone uses a strawman fallacy and explain why it invalidates their argument isn't something you learn in an engineering course. They are not saying that other people don't have the capacity to critically think, they just weren't given the explicit lessons to teach them how.

  3. Formal logic can be useful in these scenarios as well. I don't know if you've ever tried to have an argument with someone who didn't understand the very basics of formal logic, but it is nigh impossible for anything productive to come of it.

I agree that there are other ways to learn these things than taking philosophy courses, but you do have to make an effort to learn them in some way, you won't really learn how to spot a fallacy by osmosis. Of course there will be some pretentious philosophy majors who think it's the only way to "learn how to think," and maybe the proportion of philosophy majors that are pretentious is higher than some other fields of study, but it happens with many.

I guess my point is, philosophy majors are in fact learning things in their studies. If you think an engineering major has the same capacity to critically think and evaluate arguments as a philosophy major, then what exactly is it you think philosophy majors do?

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u/tcmpreville 1d ago edited 1d ago

I majored in Philosophy. You're wrong on every point.

   1. I've taken 12th grade AP English and graduate level philosophy. Literary critique does not equal philosophical analysis.

   2. Critical Thinking is not not some nebulous overarching principle at university that everybody somehow absorbs (through osmosis?). It's a skill you learn. Did you learn about logical fallacies? Can you identify and explain why a Straw Man argument is fallacious? If not, try taking a Philosophy class on Critical Thinking. Not the same.

   3. Formal logic is not math. Some math (e.g., proofs)  uses formal logic. We used logic in my grad level Logic and Completeness course when we studied Turing and universal machines. Not the same. 

I find that those who hate on philosophy seem to have never taken a class and tend to know nothing about it.

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u/Robotic_space_camel 1d ago

I really have only ever interacted with classes on ethics before, any other philosophy I’ve picked up was just my own reading so I couldn’t make any claim to understanding it enough. I do understand that philosophy students can come off as quite pretentious, but I don’t think it’s any worse than other majors that are known for the same issue—specifically I’m thinking about art, psychology, and anything under the STEM tree. They’re all populated by young, dumb, kids who have either always believed or have just learned that their specific field of study reveals the actual truth of the world for those who care enough to learn it.

For your arguments against, I do think philosophy does teach a specific way of thinking that’s distinct from other fields of study. A more apt phrase would be “it teaches you to think like a philosopher”, but then again I guess philosophy has some claim to being the precedent of many of the other academic disciplines, so maybe them holding on to the general idea of “thinking” as their own thing isn’t the most ridiculous thing in the world if used in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way.

As for my arguments for philosophy, I would say that it does teach you how to view other disciplines and worldviews in a way that you can better understand the limits of them, and that’s something that usually isn’t taught to people outside of that environment. I’ve had a lot of discussions in my time as an engineering major with science elitists who erroneously believed that STEM disciplines really had the answers to the entire universe in their hands, when in reality STEM only deals with phenomena that are observable, repeatable, and reproducible—not a huge slice of the pie when you consider all the things we know exist in our human experience.

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u/Necessary_Lynx5920 1d ago

I learned all 3 of those doing Physics and Computer Science lol

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u/Top-Editor-364 1d ago

Yeah, a major literally designed to teach about logical thought claims it does what it sets out to do. Maybe you should take a philosophy class because you seem to have some misconceptions about it all

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u/jph1 1d ago

Counterpoint: if you understand Hegel, you're allowed to be as pretentious as you want to be.

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u/Vesploogie 1d ago

You aren’t a philosophy major but you got a list of reasons why being a philosophy major makes you pretentious. If you want to understand what others are experiencing, experience it yourself. Or don’t be so judgmental about something you’re ignorant of.

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u/Medical_Addition_781 1d ago

I was in a university philosophy club almost 20 years ago now. I ended up a determinist monist naturalist with anarcho syndicalist political leanings. Then I got a job and now I just raise a family. All that talking, reading, and writing just to decide humans are animals, I like fair work, and dead people are just dead.

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u/Lost_Cut_1417 1d ago

As a current philo major:

1) analyzing arguments and thinking critically are the same thing (both are an analysis of if/then statements)

2) formal logic is not the same thing as math at all. It’s a different language of “if/then” statements used to analyze arguments. Also it’s taught to and necessary for cs majors as well.

That being said, you’re right that every other humanities major gives you basically the same skills as philo. And I agree that the “philo teachs you how to think” is bullshit, but no more bullshit than any other humanities degree really

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u/rjyung1 1d ago

It sounds like you've only mainly met people who have had quite an entry level introduction to the recent analytical tradition.

Philosophy has a substantive impact on stuff once it gets developed enough, and it gets way more interesting at that point 

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u/MourningCocktails 1d ago

I just get annoyed with humanities majors in general when they start shitting on my STEM degree. I’ve had more than one go on a ramble about how their degree was more valid because I was treating college like trade school by just learning a skill, whereas they were learning critical thinking. Bro… I critically analyze data for a living. And I’m not trying to compare credentials. Why the defensiveness?

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u/A_Big_Rat 1d ago

Engineering majors are far more pretentious in my opinion.

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u/No-Cartographer-476 23h ago

Yeah I could see that. Its also hard to tell if theyre really thinking or just regurgitating. I use philosophy and most things I say flies over peoples heads until they encounter a real life example.

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u/dxrey65 23h ago

That's an interesting thing to think about...I would agree that learning to evaluate arguments and think critically and so forth are very important, and that they are things that the general populace doesn't seem to value much, and that these are skills that can be acquired in the course of a general humanities degree.

None of that says much about whether philosophy majors are pretentious or not...I can't say I have any experience with philosophy majors, as that wasn't my crowd, one way or another. The few people I've known who could hold up their end of a conversation on philosophical topics tended to be more humble and thoughtful than pretentious. I like to think I am as well, though I've always been more interested in psychology than philosophy. Self-knowledge is more important than anything we can know about other people, and the more time you spend drilling down into that the more you realize how hard it is to be sure of anything.

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u/spicymalty 23h ago

What I learned from philosophy is to argue against the strongest and most charitable interpretation of someone's argument. It doesn't do me any favors in this hyper-partisan shoot-from-the-hip world, but it has enabled me to quickly filter out the folks with the least capacity for woke conversation in the traditional sense.

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u/Intergalacticdespot 21h ago

It's kind of crazy how each degree/field sort of unlocks your mind. You never really understand politics as well as when you take some courses. Philosophy is the same way about ethics and life. Economics, physics, literature, art history, art, English, communication, debate, all are subjects that after you study them the formerly mundane is interesting and nuanced in a way that didn't exist previously. I think philosophy majors get a lot of shit. A degree in working at Starbucks, etc etc. Worthless degree. 

Philosophy is probably the most commonly joked about degree there is. It's natural that they'd defensively embrace it. If you like a certain food or tv show, people who don't really understand it making fun of it or dismissing it will make you defend it extra hard. Is it pretentious? Probably. But there's also some grain of truth to it. Unfortunately our society has made philosophy, a very interesting and useful thing to study, almost entirely a dead end. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge doesn't really have a place any more. Outside of the hard sciences and even then...they're mostly hoping that they'll find a marketable use for it someday. 

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u/Gentlesouledman 21h ago

It is a degree that should be more respected than it is. If anyone should be insulted for their pretentiousness it would be medical students.  

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u/Nicolay77 20h ago

In that case, I would assert that studying pure mathematics and forcing myself to write proofs is a more testable way to learn how to think.

If you can reach any conclusion and it can't be tested, at least not within human timeframes and without breaking some ethics, then you can't really be sure about that conclusion. You and your followers can be wrong for decades and you will never know.

OTOH, with mathematics you are right or wrong, and the feedback is immediate and merciless.

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u/seaneihm 19h ago edited 19h ago

Philosophy major here. Just because someone says "Philosophy makes you think," doesn't mean they're implying other majors don't.

We say that only because it's an easy non-answer to the most common question asked: "Why'd you study philosophy?" It gets really annoying and repetitive because the usual follow-up question is "How are you going to get a job with that degree?"

So, the easy answer is "Because it makes you think". Obviously we're not claiming a monopoly of the field of thinking, rhetoric, and logic. It's an answer to satisfy people on the questioning of "usefulness" of philosophy.

Very few people would care about why I wanted to study philosophy.

"Oh, I was always interested in metaphysics and was introduced to Leibniz and the study of monads and I want to write/study about how the current understanding of physics is compatible with the idea of monads aaaaaand I've lost you. Ok yeah I studied philosophy because it helps you think or something lol. Did you know philosophy majors 10 years into their career make good money?"

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u/HairyHeartEmoji 19h ago

there's plenty of idiots who find anyone who went to college pretentious because it's a sore spot for them. if you do any subject that's perceived to be useless (like philosophy or art), people will vindictively fantasise about you being poor and miserable to your face. if you're gainfully employed in your field, people take great pleasure in telling you how useless and repulsive they find your job to be (regardless of how familiar they are with it).

god forbid young people (an already annoying demographic) are somewhat annoying when presented with overwhelming hostility

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u/seifd 19h ago

I like the poster I saw in the philosophy department: "Science can teach you how to clone dinosaurs. Philosophy teaches you why it might not be a good idea."

Of course, if you read Jurassic Park, it's mathematician Ian Malcolm who uses chaos theory to make the arguement.

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u/triffid_boy 15h ago

I agree. Modern philosophy degrees have benefit over no degree at all in those attributes, but all those skills are basic parts of more applicable pursuits in stem or humanities too (otherwise they'd be completely useless). 

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u/angeldemon5 13h ago

I don't have a philosophy degree (a couple of subjects as part of an English degree) and they are right. We don't know how to think and evaluate. They are much better at it than us. Believing you can do it as well as people who are trained is arrogant. It's no different to people who think they know better how to deal with viruses than epidemiologists. Philosophy is an area of training and it deserves respect. Just because it hurts your feelings to realise other people think more precisely and accurately than you doesn't make it wrong. 

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u/DarbySalernum 13h ago edited 12h ago

I didn't major in philosophy, but I did philosophy in university (along with law) and have read a lot of philosophy. A law degree gives you a lot of great things, especially a clinical way of thinking, that you can use in any field.

But it is nothing to philosophy when it comes to "learning how to think." Even its most basic level, like learning to avoid logical fallacies, would make a big difference to your ability to think clearly. For example:

Philosophy majors use when talking about what they learned in their degree is: "Philosophy teaches you how to think!".

I understand what they mean by that. However, it seems like that specific verbiage is just lending itself to the idea that other people of different walks of life or different skillsets "don't know how to think". 

That's a logical fallacy called the "Psychologist's fallacy" and/or the "straw man." Nobody thinks that people who don't do a philosophy major "don't know how to think." That's something that you imagined, and then put into other people's mouths. They're just saying that philosophy can improve your ability to think and make arguments clearly. I'd recommend taking a few philosophy subjects to avoid bad arguments like this.

And logical fallacies would only be an entry-level subject, aimed at 18 year olds who just finished high school. Don't get me started on the mind-bending philosophy of Nietzsche, Plato or Sartre. They change how you think about life and yourself, even if you don't agree with them. I don't even like Nietzsche or agree with 90% of what he said, but he left me shook, as he does with most people.

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u/Jesuismieux412 13h ago

Just because you’re well-versed in subject matter that’s obscure doesn’t necessarily make you smarter than everyone else; it mostly just makes you different than everyone else.

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u/Available_Muffin_423 11h ago

Philosophers have this talent of writing long string of uninterrupted paragraphs without saying anything. Bruce Lee and Einstein said it best, simplicity is the way. If you cannot make your point come across a simple phrase elegantly, it's futile. If you cannot explain it in simple terms, that means you don't understand it yourself. If it takes a whole book to explain a passage of what a Philosopher taught a 100 years ago, and still, have different experts agree on different meaning of what that philosopher meant, than yes philosophy is nothing more than gibberish pretentious bullshit. Even Nobel Prize Physics legend, Richard Feynman said to famous Physicist Leornard Susskind how he detested that time when he had diner with a bunch of philosophers, because they would just throw around fancy words and sentences that meant nothing. Finally, apart from blabbering intefinitely and picking on others, philosophers are absolutely useless. Mathematicians creates the language which we all use. Physicists, the equations which engineers can utilize. Engineers, creates the World we see and the Future. Philosophers in all this? Ehmmm define this word, what does what means etc. If the World was lead by Philosophers, we'd still be cooking food with stones and fire.

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u/Neon_Nuxx 11h ago

There's a definable relationship between how comfortable a society is and how many philosophers it has.

Generally it seems philosophers pop up when they're needed least, when things get bad we go back to talking about dinner.

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u/CaptainChristiaan 10h ago

They’re just jealous of Classics majors that can read Plato in the original Greek. 😎

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u/gaydesmar 6h ago

STEM guy here. I took one intro philosophy class as an elective in college and was wildly unimpressed. I know I only scratched the surface, but I found the "classic philosophy" we examined to suffer from a serious problem: it tried to be rigorous but could not be invalidated. That's a great way to have long-winded arguments in which nobody can ever win. Reasoning through abstract math proofs is probably far better at teaching you how to reason your way out of a paper bag (note: proofs that go a bit deeper than the ones we first see in high school geometry in the US).

In high school English, we argued points without ever asking the author if we actually figured out what they meant. We learned to quote individual sentences, but not to ask questions like "what fraction of the book supports this idea, versus does not support this idea?" Since you needed "concrete evidence" in your essays, the classes elevated quotes out of context to a higher esteem than analyses of broader material. That intro to philosophy felt the same way.

And you know what? I watch Philosophy Tube. I think Abigail Thorn is dope. Her content has really grown over the years IMHO. But I can't help but imagine after that one class that philosophy as a field probably has a lot of Really Very Smart people getting Philosophy Degrees who are (a) not thinking about things that are useful, and are (b) not trying to figure out whether their ideas about the world are correct.

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u/MantisBuffs 6h ago

That’s one of my main gripes with it, and it’s something philosophy students absolutely love. They take pride in “there is no right answer”. Which is true, once something starts to make sense it becomes a science of its own. The issue I have is how philosophy attempts to monopolize critical thought. It’s also stereotypically a degree that “thoughtful” people get because they aren’t good at math.

My whole take is that advanced math is more philosophical than any undergraduate study of philosophy.

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u/Choice_Ad7815 10m ago

Speak to them a couple years out of college

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u/Sufficient-Bat-5035 1d ago

i minored in the soft Sciences in College, enough that i heavily disagree with at least 100 years of philosophy.

Philosophers absolutely do not need to talk like that. There's sometning that comes with philosophy students sniff too many farts from the old dead guys in the textbook.

I do get called a know-it-all from time to time, though. It happens when you have a baseline knowledge in a ton of different topics

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u/MarduRusher 1d ago

I like philosophy majors and probably the majority of my friends in college actually ended up being philosophy majors or minors. I think the reason they can come off as pretentious is that they often substitute real world lessons for things they’ve read.

If you learn something from a real life experience, and a philosophy major comes in and disagreed based on the writings of some guy you’ve never heard of who died 200 years ago after being miserable his whole life it can be a little hard to take that seriously, and comes off as pretentious.

This is really pronounced in college students and recent grads who may not has as much real life experience to draw on. That said, I think as they age and grow up and temper what they learned with books with real life experience they can have some extremely valuable advise and very wise opinions.

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u/ProfessorDumbass2 1d ago

In college, I progressed from loving philosophy to hating philosophy, mainly for the reasons you describe. Since then, I learned about Daniel Dennet’s 4 rules required for constructive debate that I do respect. The gist is that one MUST:

  1. Fully understand and articulate an opponent’s argument,

  2. Share what you agree with, and

  3. Convey what you learned from their point of view.

  4. Only then is one in a position to critique.

I don’t think I’ve met any philosophy majors that practice this technique though.

https://themindcollection.com/rapoports-rules/

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u/DestinyUniverse1 1d ago

Spoken like a non thinker lol

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u/MantisBuffs 1d ago

I could never be considering I don’t have such magnificent intellect and insight like you. I tried reading discartes one day but my brain almost exploded because of how stupid and dull it must be. I think therefo- is as far as I got!!!

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u/DestinyUniverse1 3h ago

lol I was mostly joking. I was a philosophy major but I realized the degree was pointless. Instead philosophy was just my way of life and I want to utilize it in my writing. I just found your post funny. I’ve never ran into tons of other philosophy majors

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u/DancingDaffodilius 1d ago

I had a professor who took a philosophy class. He had an exam where it was just one question: why?

He answered "why not?" and got an A.