Philosophy ?

Ungadunga911

So i have 2 classes left as far as the liberal arts section goes, currently doing philosophy over the summer just to get it out of the way and was just wondering if anyone has benefited from a class like this. It makes little to no sense to me in all honesty. I allot of people smarter than i, engineers to doctors that never took a philosophy course that do just well in life. I told my instructor its something that i don't need nor will i ever use it, im about half way through the course and all i know is that if someone asked me on the streets who were the pre socratics, i could tell them they were some dudes that loved wisdom that came before societies. So knowing that i cant see how i would ever reference or live my life in a different way vs just taking some philosophy class, waste of time 100%. I guess it depends on the individual, some benefit, some don't.

shochan

That class blew my mind...barely escaped it with a "C".

NetworkNewb

Ungadunga911 wrote: »

I allot of people smarter than i, engineers to doctors that never took a philosophy course that do just well in life.

I'd guess most actually had to take a course like this. Usually part of most degrees. (maybe not a lot of online degrees tho?) Just gotta bite the bullet

iBrokeIT

Use it as an opportunity to further develop your thought process and improve your writing style.

chrisone

Philosophy shows how a society may have thought at time and the good and bad about that form of thinking. It is part of history in my opinion and it is always beneficial to know your history before making the same mistakes of those that came before you. For instance philosophy for today's political climate would be, this whole political extreme left view on integrating some form of socialist aspects to our capitalism. If they understood the philosophy behind ideas of socialism which came from Marxist Philosophy, they would know the entire Lenin revolution, how people used that philosophy (Marxist) for good and bad (see The Gulag Archipelago), how it is failing in countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, etc., or how its working in other countries. One should truly know the philosophy behind ideas, not just blinding having emotional feelings because I hate (insert your rebel cause here) and wear a Che Guevara shirt so that you fit in with the cool people.

This is just a viewpoint on philosophy and why it could be interesting to learn. Obviously some forms of philosophy from our ancient past we may look at it and question why would I ever need that. But honestly if you read "Seneca - On the shortness of life" it is actually very brilliant and in some ways he talks about the same stuff we see people doing today, on how people waste their lives. It is a short read, probably 2-3 days worth, written around 50AD, right after Christs death. On the shortness of life, would fit in with today's social media short clips on self improvement that you see every other month from random people online lol Crazy it was written 2 thousand years ago.

https://www.amazon.com/Shortness-Life-Penguin-Great-Ideas/dp/0143036327
https://archive.org/stream/SenecaOnTheShortnessOfLife/Seneca+on+the+Shortness+of+Life_djvu.txt
https://www.amazon.com/Gulag-Archipelago-Abridged-Experiment-Investigation/dp/0061253804/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1529605519&sr=8-2&keywords=archipelago

Hopefully no one got butthurt over this, I am not making a political statement. Just trying to clear up why people study philosopy. Basically the educational programs of any country, if they teach the philosophy that they want to push, will help to carve the type of society they want to live in.

ccie14023

What philosophers are they making you study? It's a broad topic.

thedudeabides

Our ability to consider philosophical ideas is part of what defines our self-awareness. Most animals are simply born, do what they're programmed to do, and then die. Unfortunately a lot of people approach life the same way.

joelsfood

I definitely found my philosophy courses useful (plural, only rreason I didn't get a minor is because I had to audit one and got no credit for it). It's been 15 years, the courses, logic in particular, still hold value regularly

More importantly, it doesn' tmatter if a particular course holds use (and you'll never know what might be useful in the future). The real question is whether the degree will be of use for you. If the degree will be of use, then skip the whining and just do what you have to to get the degree. If you don't think the degree will be usseful in your career, then why are you wasting the time and money?

LordQarlyn

Thanks largely to my life experiences, I was able to CLEP most of my non-major courses including philosophy. However I would say there are "side benefits", such as opening your mind to thinking differently, exposure to ideas outside your comfort zone, thinking outside the box and so on.
This in turn can train your brain to take different and radical approaches to problem solving, in strategy, that can ultimately translate into material benefits.
As joelsfood points out, the real question of value is the degree you are pursuing.

mgeoffriau

My undergrad degree is in Philosophy. I have found it to be incredibly valuable in my IT career in how it shaped my ability to think critically and communicate clearly and succinctly.

josephandre

Philosophy was one of my favorite topics in high school and favorite courses in undergrad. I love reading philosophy books too. Just fascinating stuff, seeing how people in different times and walks of life thought about life, death, meaning, goodness, badness etc.

But to the larger point of the thread, despite my believing philosophy is extremely useful and rewarding, degree's are meant to be well rounded. Otherwise you go to a trade school or bootcamp

N7Valiant

I preferred my Intro to Philosophy: Symbolic Logic course. Less about Socrates and more about using almost mathematical methods of reasoning and deduction.

It helped to train me to think in a way that's conductive to IT whether it's in programming by using C# to reproduce the process of a flowchart explanation of how the code works in C++ (which at the time did nothing to help me write my program since I didn't know anything about it).

Or whether it's helping me realize that the reason those Exchange filters I set up aren't catching anything as I'm testing them is because even though e-mails are being bcc'd to me by another rule, I'm not an actual recipient in the "To" field so multiple rules targeting me as the recipient probably wouldn't apply.

Great stuff, much more applicable to my career than Anthropology or even Microbiology.