What do people without degrees/background in Philosophy, think of that term?

[LamaGT]

I think it's useful in its definition of a study of logic. The useless pondering over definitions, plus the plain pseudoscience in Classical works that for some reason is still taught today, should really be removed. Perhaps philosophy is a too generic term, and it really should be separated into several subjects.

 

[bugwar]

I study CS and I agree with civ_764. College was never intended as a ticket to the job market.

Judging from the plethora of liberal arts major graduates, and their performance on the job market outside the service industry, you are right.

Taking into account the real science majors, college is the ticket to the well-paid job.


Exceptions for both fields do exist.
Someone has to be the editor in chief of Vogue, after all.

 

[Kyriakos]

As highlighted already in the OP, i am very aware that philosophy does have a bad reputation (and noted that it mostly deserves it due to what it is by now, particularly after ww1, and even moreso after ww2). However in reality the actual field is not some sort of ticket for one to present himself as a 'sophist' (another term which got a bad reputation, but many centuries ago). Since its birth, with Heraklitos or his concurrent thinkers, it always was based on examination of the self and the position of the self (and consciousness) as a viewer of anything external. This is tied to objective/subjective thinking, and the meaning of 'knowledge' as a effect of the human ability to think.

While it is evident that a science degree does provide one with knowledge of its order and methods which are used in it (eg physics, chemistry, biology etc), it is also true that the people in those orders who try to deal in philosophy as well, very often (if not always) come across as very unaware of what is deemed as an actual decent level of abstract arguing even on the premises of their own scientific foundation. So to have a knowledge in actual philosophy is not really to be dismissed as a leisure-degree, although practically many can have started to study it for that, or related reasons

 

[ParkCungHee]

FWIW, I don't have a philosophy degree. I started studying it because it was actually useful to my field.

 

[Agent327]

As highlighted already in the OP, i am very aware that philosophy does have a bad reputation

Mostly with people who have no clue what philosophy actually entails, such as thIs person:

Isn't Philosophy the original entertainment major?
Hasn't progressed much since inception,
though it keeps trust fund babies off the streets.

 

[Tahuti]

Judging from the plethora of liberal arts major graduates, and their performance on the job market outside the service industry, you are right.

Taking into account the real science majors, college is the ticket to the well-paid job.


Exceptions for both fields do exist.
Someone has to be the editor in chief of Vogue, after all.

You get it the wrong way: College was never intended to prop up your resume save for within academia. Never. This is a late 20th century thing.

 

[Domen]

Some philosophical considerations (English subtitles):


Link to video.

 

[Smellincoffee]

My sense of spirituality developed out of the practice of Stoicism, so I regard philosophy, favorably, as the original search for understanding what made the Cosmos work, its meaning, and how people are to live in the world.

 

[bugwar]

You get it the wrong way: College was never intended to prop up your resume save for within academia. Never. This is a late 20th century thing.

Oh, you mean the institution evolved from the medieval mindset it glorified, into a form that had relevance?
Good for it.

 

[Hygro]

Oh, you mean the institution evolved from the medieval mindset it glorified, into a form that had relevance?
Good for it.

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/#.U38HELtVLx8

In one generation [1970-2004], then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent.​

Meanwhile, ostensibly unrelated:

 

[bugwar]

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/#.U38HELtVLx8

In one generation [1970-2004], then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent.​

Meanwhile, ostensibly unrelated:

Non Sequitur arguments don’t follow a logical sequence. The conclusion doesn’t logically follow the explanation. These fallacies can be found on both the sentence level and the level of the argument itself.

Example: "The rain came down so hard that Jennifer actually called me." Rain and phone calls have nothing to do with one another. The force of the rain does not affect Jennifer’s decision to pick up the phone.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Hygro's argument was closer to
'It rained so hard that... some houses revealed needs for repair/update for leaking issues' etc.
Basically he alluded to a fall in gain/productivity which happened in the same 3 decades of timeframe that the humanities were being seen more as pointless.

And indeed some level of refined thinking happens to be very useful, or even quite needed for one to do any non-menial labor

 

[BenitoChavez]

My view is that philosophy is the field of study that tries to answer the questions science hasn't/cannot. It relies more on logical arguments rather than gathering empirical evidence. Of course those arguments generally wind-up being arguments about semantics and it ends up being an exercise in language and grammar more than anything.

 

[Kyriakos]

My view is that philosophy is the field of study that tries to answer the questions science hasn't/cannot. It relies more on logical arguments rather than gathering empirical evidence. Of course those arguments generally wind-up being arguments about semantics and it ends up being an exercise in language and grammar more than anything.

Philosophy has heavily been tied to language, for example in the work of Wittgenstein. However this is not new in the field, cause already in the time of the sophists (5th century BC) a main cause for debate was over the importance of being 'orthoepes' (ορθοεπή&#962, which means 'using the exact term' for things.

Of course philosophy did not originate in the 5th century, or in Athens. Prior to the arrival there of Anaxagoras (and Protagoras, Theaitetos and so on) it was centered either in coastal Asia Minor (Miletos and Ephesos etc), Abdera (coastal thrace), and Italy (Elea, a city just south of Naples). The origins of the order were about the birth of things (material and non-material) as well as about logic.

The order existed at least since the 8th/7th century BC, ie 3 centuries before Socrates (and then Plato and Aristotle).

 

[Hygro]

I just can't help but notice that when companies were highly profitable and made the highest quality technology afforded them and cared about the long term brand of their enterprise, they were often run by various liberal arts majors, and as companies have slid into short minded, self-cannibalizing, less profitable enterprises brand losing firms they've also been more and more run by those educated directly by those with "practical" degrees.

JP Morgan was an art history major.

 

[Mouthwash]

Philosophy is the basis for pretty much all thought. You could perhaps call it 'metagnosis' as well, the knowledge of knowledge. Only maths and logic are more basal than philosophy, however, pretty much everyone who has completed high school has a knowledge of mathematics comparable to the Greek philosophers.

No, they don't. They just memorize a bunch of algorithms with Arabic numerals. Most people don't know enough to even ask questions about the nature of mathematics or why such algorithms work.

FWIW, I don't have a philosophy degree. I started studying it because it was actually useful to my field.

How so? Specifically.

 

[bugwar]

I just can't help but notice that when companies were highly profitable and made the highest quality technology afforded them and cared about the long term brand of their enterprise, they were often run by various liberal arts majors, and as companies have slid into short minded, self-cannibalizing, less profitable enterprises brand losing firms they've also been more and more run by those educated directly by those with "practical" degrees.

JP Morgan was an art history major.

Ah yes, J.P. Morgan, hero of liberal arts majors.

Not all of the tycoons of the Gilded Age were rags-to-riches stories.
J. Pierpont Morgan was born into a family of great wealth.
His father had already made a name for himself in the banking industry.
With Morgan's family resources, he enjoyed the finest business education money could buy.
He did not scratch and claw his way to the top of any corporate ladder.
His father arranged for an executive track position at one of New York's finest banks.

For all his accomplishments, he was harshly criticized.
The first decade of the twentieth century brought challenges to Morgan from the government.
His Northern Securities railroad company was deemed illegal under federal antitrust law, the first such action by the national government.
He was investigated by Congress for his control of the financial markets.
Even U.S. Steel was forced to relinquish its monopoly.

Jaded by the criticism, Morgan moved to Europe, where he lived his final days.
He was a favorite target of intellectuals who claimed that such tycoons robbed the poor of their deserved wealth.
He was a hero to enterprising financiers across the land who dreamed of following his example.
That is, of course, unless they were destroyed by his shrewd, fierce tactics.

Source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/36d.asp


While conservatives in the Progressive Era hailed Morgan for his civic responsibility, his strengthening of the national economy, and his devotion to the arts and religion, the left wing viewed him as one of the central figures in the system it rejected.
Morgan redefined conservatism in terms of financial prowess coupled with strong commitments to religion and high culture.
Enemies of banking attacked Morgan for the terms of his loan of gold to the federal government in the 1895 crisis and for the financial resolution of the Panic of 1907.
They also attempted to attribute to him the financial ills of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
In December 1912, Morgan testified before the Pujo Committee, a subcommittee of the House Banking and Currency committee.
The committee ultimately concluded that a small number of financial leaders was exercising considerable control over many industries.
The partners of J.P. Morgan & Co. and directors of First National and National City Bank controlled aggregate resources of $22.245 billion, which Louis Brandeis, later a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, compared to the value of all the property in the twenty-two states west of the Mississippi River.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan


Morgan initially was widely commended for leading Wall Street out of the 1907 financial crisis; however, in the ensuing years the portly banker with the handlebar mustache and gruff manner faced increasing criticism from muckraking journalists, progressive politicians and others that he had too much power and could manipulate the financial system for his own gain.
In 1912, Morgan was called to testify before a congressional committee chaired by U.S. Representative Arsene Pujo (1861-1939) of Louisiana that was investigating the existence of a “money trust,” a small cabal of elite Wall Street financiers, including Morgan, who allegedly colluded to control American banking and industry.
The Pujo Committee hearings helped bring about the creation of the Federal Reserve System in December 1913 and spurred passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/john-pierpont-morgan

 

[Hygro]

So basically the best education money could buy was an art history degree that gave him the education needed to excel in a top tier banking management track that lead him to be so good at what he did, he bailed out the entire financial system during a crisis, created the Fed so it wouldn't happen again, and inspired an antitrust act.

Thanks for making my case for me

 

[bugwar]

So basically the best education money could buy was an art history degree that gave him the education needed to excel in a top tier banking management track that lead him to be so good at what he did, he bailed out the entire financial system during a crisis, created the Fed so it wouldn't happen again, and inspired an antitrust act.

Thanks for making my case for me

If that is your take on J.P. Morgan, far be for me to disabuse you.

 

[Harv]

College was never intended as a ticket to the job market.

You get it the wrong way: College was never intended to prop up your resume save for within academia. Never. This is a late 20th century thing.

Honestly, I never really thought of it that way. This comes as a flash of inspiration. Absolutely no sarcasm is intended.

Sounds like a liberal arts major talking to an engineering major.

As for myself, I studied an engineering field. From what you are saying, Engineering is a side show in the world of University.

Regarding the OP, I am still lurking, but found the quote here interesting.