Originally posted by: KarenMarie
Originally posted by: Jehovah
Originally posted by: KarenMarie
Originally posted by: Jehovah
Hah; I'm a Philosophy major!
Beat that!
If you don't mind me asking... why did you decide to major in Philosophy? What can someone do with a degree in that?
First of all, of course I don't mind!
Second, I took it because I went to college with the intent to, I suppose this is rather naive of me, better myself as a person; not necessarily so that I'd have a piece of paper so I could market myself for better jobs.
Lastly, a philosophy degree is suprisingly adapt precisely because it is not so specialized - a lot of it consists of thought experiements and constant discussions (I hesitate to call it an "argument" beacuse the word is too emotionally saturated) where it simply boils down into advanced critical thinking. Of course the danger to that is breaking down to semantics (which is sometimes necessary because we are communicating with language, after all).
Simply put, it's not so much the degree that's important in the major, but what you get out of it, IMO.
On the flip side, to quantify a little more, people with degrees usually go on to higher degrees - usually onto philosophy and law (logic, politics and ethics are usually one of the bigger parts of philosophy) but a lot of them (including myself), opt to get a degree in another field, but have relatively little trouble because of the critical/analytic nature of Philosophy.
Thank you!
next question... can you make money with a degree in philosophy?
Simple answer: No.
Longer answer: It depends. A lot of people I knew i the department weren't so interested in making money (otherwise they'd be finance majors ), but the opportunities are there, IMO. But, from a strictly "they really want to benefit from the piece of paper that says I went to college" point of view, they really have to go on to a masters, or more likely, a PhD to really benefit from a pure 'on-paper' viewpoint (basically, to become professors), and that is precisely what they are doing is the impression I got from the other students in the department.
Let's put it this way; Philosophy translates to "love of knowledge" - it's the connection inbetween all the other disciplines;
- Logic is the connection to math, linguistics, etc.
- Ethics/Politics/Epistomology is the connection to law, sociology, psychology, history, etc.
- Metaphysics is the connection to Physics
- I would argue that Theology is even part of Philosophy
- Etc., Etc.
In my opinion; Philosophy is, more or less, 'reliant' on other fields to be applicable in "real life". But on the flip side, it is the end-all of the other fields as well.
I'll give you an example/personal anecdote:
Originally, I was on track to becoming a Psychology major; I was curious as to how the mind works. After all, who isn't? Anyhow, one of the requirements to getting my degree was that I had to take a few elective courses. Backtracking a bit, I don't know if this is pretty common among other universities, but a lot of the advanced courses in Psychology in my university is essentially a variation of pharmaceutical Neurobiology - anyhow, I took a philosophy course relating to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
One thing I found really significant that I learned in Philosophy; Psychology is dependent on the human mind being controlled by the physical brain, lest the medicines we use to "fix" mentally/emotionally unstable patients be placebos if this was not the case; this I found truly significant - after all, if the mind is completely contained in the brain, that means that;
- All of our emotions/actions/feelings are, ultimately, just a result of complex chemical reactions controlled by a big bundle of nerves.
- If that is the case, we are wholly dependent on the brain to make our actions; hence no free will.
- And of course, if there is no free will, such a thing as a 'soul' does not exist, and we are living in a world where all our actions/reactions are completely deterministic.
No! I wanted to disagree. I wanted to see if there were any explanations for "free will", such things as "souls" to exist, and most importantly, was completely awestruck by the fact that they talked about such things; they weren't constrained by such psychobabble as "if we stimulate nerve X this way, appendage Y will react in such and such a manner", always one "if p, then q" after another.
My conclusion? Psychology, and a lot of the other fields, is only about "how" the mind works - the reasons and ramifications of such a process is irrelevant. On the contrary, Philosophy taught me "why" something should be so - rather, it 'told' me in a logically sound way; the foundations of all the other fields, if you will.
The irony? After taking all the classes, I ended up being a hard determinist.