What has philosophy done for the world?

[stevie21]

If the philosophy department of every teaching institution had closed a decade ago, what would be missing from the world today?
A friend of mine says philosophy teaches problem solving skills but everyone has these skills, some are fantastic at it and a tiny minority of us have been taught philosophy. Thus philosophy (teaching) isn't required for problem solving.
Aside from
1. It gives us something intellectual to chat about at parties, and
2. Creates graduates who can teach philosophy

can anyone give me some defence of the subject? I don't like it but I'm trying to convince myself that there are great reasons for studying it.

[Haggisdj]

There are probably 20 people debating an answer to your question at this very moment...

[Fran666]

Philosophy is cack my friend.

All it is is pointless questions with no answers. Plato and that bloody ship ~shudder~

[stevie21]

I would have expected these responses if I'd have posted the same question in "science".
I was hoping for some justification of pshilosophy that I've not yet thought of myself.

Come on. Someone??

[ursula62]

I suppose you would lose the concept of thought for thought's sake... philosophy comes from two greek words - love and wisdom. Nowadays I doubt there's much *practical* use for philosophical thought on a day to day basis, but as an intellectual exercise it stretches the mind and encourages alternative thought processes. Many of the fathers of politics were first and foremost philosophers.

[stevie21]

So, justification #3 is...
Intellectual masturbation ?

[kaktus]

All sciences be they social sciences, humanities or natural science have an element of philosophy. The theory of science is a philosophical discussion on how the scientist/researcher view the world and thus say soemthing about where the researcher comes from. The natural sciences obviously believe that everything can be measured and this is a theory of science in itself, but natural sciences also brings forth ethical and moral questions. What I'm trying to say is that philosophy is not just babbling on about Plato and Sokrates it is also where many of our thoughts on ethics and morals comes and they still do, it describes our basic opinions about life, the universe and everything.

This might be slight off the discussion on how important the study of philosophy is in itself, but it is in used other places than just the dark hallways of the philosophy department. I'm doing my masters right now in social sciences (mostly political science) and I would be whacked at my some of my exams if I couldn't talk about theory of science.

I guess that to me philosophy is a bit like art, I may not like some of it but hopefully it will make me use my head.

p.s. I'm sorry if my point about me exams is a bit weird but my uni is a bit weird and I'm not going to bore you with it's "unique pedagogical appraoch" - Their words not mine.... :0)

[stevie21]

"it describes our basic opinions about life, the universe and everything."

But you can have all of these without ever having been taught philosophy. What I'm after is something that would be missing from the world if philosophy wasn't taught.
If engineering wasn't taught then our bridges etc. wouldn't be as good as they are now.
If nutrition wasn't taught, we wouldn't be as aware of how good or bad certain foods were for you.
If philosophy wasn't taught...

[kaktus]

Goodness that was quick.

Well I don't know. I'm not sure if our sciences would be the way they were without an "ordered" way of thinking about science. But I don't know really. I'm not sure we could have thought that up without philosphy because that is philosophy, if you know what I'm saying...

The thing is, if I may go back to the theory of science, that if one have an urge to be able to measure everything - then philosophy probably is useless.

Don't know if you have checked wikipedia, but here is their link on philosophy

I'm off to get something to eat, when I get back I'll check in on this thread again. I'll ask my boyfriend your question maybe he has something intelligent to say. I'll read the link as well when I get back, maybe I can come up with something in defense of the poor philosophy... :) I like the question btw.

[stevie21]

Thanks for the link - I'll read more of that later.

To get sidetracked slightly, philosophers argue about how we acquire knowledge (and even about what knowledge is).
: Descartes: we cannot trust our senses. They can deceive us. The only course we must take to gain true knowledge is the course of our reasoning.

: Hume: Knowledge is gained through experience. Observations and experiences build our knowledge. Our senses are our tools for learning. "The mind is a blank sheet of paper on which experience writes"

Aside from the fact that Hume is patently wrong on his "blank sheet" assertion, one problem I have with philosophy is that even if the question of how we acquire knowledge WAS answered completely, it'd only bring to a close a debate which has no practical utility. It'd change nothing in our day to day lives.
Arguing just for the sake of arguing does nothing for me. As much as the pursuit of knowledge is great, noble, worthy and impresses me - why would you want to know the answers to the questions asked on that Wikipedia site?

To get very slightly back on track...
Describing something that doesn't rely on philosophy and then saying "oooh, but that IS philosophy" really gets my goat. "Life is philosophy". For me, (aside from not believing it) that just emphasises that you can do all of these things without being taught the subject as life and physics and everything else IS philosophy already!

If I sound argumentative, it's just because I'm too lazy to phrase my thoughts tactfully. Don't take any offence or feel I'm attacking you!

[Supernick]

I graduated in Philosophy in 2001 and don't regret it for a second. I feel that at the end of the day, most arts degrees these days are about attaining a standard of education, and being prompted to think about the world and others. Are you really learning anything more practical by doing English Literature?

Learning Philosophy really helped me refine and articulate some of my basic moral principles, and so really changed a large piece of my belief structure. Fingers crossed I'm a better person for it, which is a good enough reason for me. :)

[joko]

I think it helps people figure out their emotions, why they behave irrationally, angrily etc. It helps people figure out for themselves whats the best thing to do, as opposed to simply what they want to do to, and to know the difference.

It helps people understand why other people behave the way they do and to see both sides of the story.

It helps people accept the trials and tribulations of life, rather than getting upset and confused and angry about things that can't be helped.

They may not realise they are using philosophy to help them cope, because I think it is inbuilt in most people to some degree.

I think more people should learn to be more philosophical - they would be happier and more content and so would those around them.

We've all seen the results when someone has a knee-jerk reaction to something or a 'hit-first-ask-questions-later' response.

[stevie21]

joko, I think you've misread the question.

[joko]

How so? I was just giving my opinion on the need to teach it

I was just saying that I think most people have a natural capacity for philosophy to some degree, and therefore I don't think its actually necessary to study the subject to degree level, though a lower level would benefit a lot of people.

[Gef]

Stevie, please don't tke offence but I think your question is cr*p. I'm not much of a philosopher myself so I can't be bothered backing this up with reasons.

[stevie21]

Very briefly...

joko - I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that this summed up your post :
"I think more people should learn to be more philosophical - they would be happier and more content and so would those around them."
and that your emphasis was on being philosophical as outlined within that link :

"The phrase "a philosophical attitude" is often used to refer to a stoical approach to life. This article concerns philosophy as a discipline."

Gef - definitely no offence taken. Not that anyone cares but I've asked a friend of mine why she likes philosophy and of what use it is (she's a big fan and I'm anything but). To attempt to be open minded, I'd posted this question in the hope of increasing my chances of finding something in favour of the subject.

I haven't found any so far - at least not in terms of the "angle" that I was looking for (i.e. my post from 17:10)

[SarCaustic]

Philosophy is highly important and it is all encompassing. It asks the questions we all overlook and ensure's nothing is considered without scrutiny. Without philosophy we'd have blind faith in science en masse, we'd simply accept the world as it is and consider all our perceptions to be universal and abosolute to name but a few things.

[stevie21]

SarCaustic - I think you're a little harsh on science.

Philosophers dating as far back as Kant (1724) pondered the problem of left and right handedness. How to decide exactly what "left" was and how to convey that to others was called the Ozma Problem :
http://definereal.tripod.com/unexp3.htm

Conveniently for me, science (physics) provided the answer.
http://lefthand.domnik.net/ontology.shtml

I'm sure I get the drift of your post but can you give me any examples of where it's bad to accept science blindly, perceptions absolute etc.?

[kaktus]

The world is flat stevie :0) and none taken stevie, it takes a bit more than that to offend me :)

Well what I meant is that if you have some sort of ordered way of thinking about the traditional questions philosophy tinkers with, isn't it philosophy even if isn't called that? I'm not saying that life is philosophy just that a discipline in itself has to have some sort of order to it, otherwise it can just lay down and die (in my opinion).

The concept of methodology, something every university student should know about (in my opinion) is based on philosophy (I think) and a scientist or researcher can run around about as much as they like but without a sound method they shouldn't get any credit at all. What I'm trying to say is that you have to consider what your field of study looks like and what you can do with it.

According to the boyfriend, philosophy is used all over the academic world but in his opinion its problem is, that philosophy isn't unique. I tend to agree with him without having thought it over. I for once use philosophy every single semester, but that would in the field of applied philosophy, as the wiki link calls it, not that I sit and have a chat about Descartes but before I eg look into gender discrimination in the Danish Defence... Btw the link calls theory of science for philosophy of science just in case you wanted to read about this fantastic subject (yawn).

cont.

[kaktus]

To be honest I know how you feel about philosophy in general. When I use theory (philosophy) of science, it is more likely to be a political scientist who had something more or less intelligent to say about it, not someone who has a degree in philosophy. But like I said in my first post, and like supernick said, what about litterature or Danish or English or Eskimo or a writers school. What has reading a book done for you?

I know I'm not answering your question directly, or at least I think I'm not answering your question directly. Is there any mathematicians out there? Maybe they can answer your question better, but then what on earth did maths ever do other than being a tool for physics, chemistry, astronomy etc.

[Gef]

Stevie, reading your question again (now that I'm sober) I have to admit that I was wrong to call it cr*p.

It's actually a very good question although I admit I do not have a simple answer to it.

My degree is in chemistry although I also studied philosophy for one year. The most interesting part for me was studying propositional calculus and predicate logic - something which I found very useful when I later did computing (a long time ago!)

In many ways science and philosophy are intertwined. The ancient Greeks did no practical work but only "thought" experiments. Until recently some universities still referred to physics as Natural Philosophy.

Surely philosophy is about thinking logically. Unfortunately these skills are not taught as part of every science degree.

I disagree when you say that everyone has problem solving skills. To some they come naturally but for most they have to be taught.

Am I agreeing with you or not? I don't know. That's the fun in these discussions.