Best way to study philosophy
Hello, I just recently entered college and I have Philosophy as one of my classes and I want to be good at it, but I just can't concentrate while studying so let me ask, What's the best way to learn philosophy?:
Comments (69)
Just talk along and google difficult words. Write them up!
I often wondered about this. I imagine there are various approaches and they don't all work for everyone. Sometimes it can help to start with themes in philosophy and see what philosophers have made of these issues across centuries (eg, god; morality; truth). Or you can read a general introduction to the history of philosophy and use this as a springboard to explore what interests you.
What do you think about a lot and wish you could understand better?
You are the only philosopher you have to answer to.
As a general rule I suggest not highlighting the first time you read through the material because it is often the case that you will not see what is important until you have finished the reading. Philosophers often discuss something only to then say why they disagree.
Being confused can be a good sign. It show you understand enough to see that there is something problematic being discussed.
Try to be flexible in your thinking. Do not make the mistake of agreeing or disagreeing too quickly. It may be that what you are agreeing or disagreeing with is your own misunderstand of what is being said.
This.
Something else I always used to do is make my own "index" inside the back cover of a book. Like if there's a good example -- something that helped you -- involving a bird house, put an entry for "bird house p. 53" The book's index is not going to have an entry for "bird house". (Works for all classes.)
Also practice really listening to others when you discuss things in class. Most people don't listen so much as wait for their turn to talk.
I recommend
The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (3rd Ed) by Peter S. Fosl and Julian Baggini.
Keep this reference handy as you read through surveys and summaries of topics, and you should progress without much frustration.
"The world of Sophie" (De wereld van Sophie) by Jostein Gaarder.
What were the questions about? Did you read stuff from this forum? Congrats! 31/40 is very good! You can join now! ?
That's tricky indeed! Don't let these charachters control your thinking though! Do you know Feyerabend?
1) Use the Philosophy Forum as a means of learning philosophy.
2) Find any thread you are interested in - eg "Complete vs. Incomplete Reality"
3) Find any topic you are interested in - eg "I toy with the idea that there are many important phenomena in the world, which play a crucial causal influence in the way we view the world, but which we utterly fail to detect because we are human beings and not God (or angles, or intelligent aliens)"
4) Make an argument supporting or opposing the topic - whether 50 or 500 words.
5) Structure your reply along the lines of a "How to write a Philosophy Paper" - eg https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf
6) Support your argument with strong evidence - ie, incontrovertible logic or any established philosopher.
7) Find a source relevant to the topic - whether Plato, Wittgenstein or whoever - print-off a few relevant pages - highlight in yellow relevant ideas - try to include a few of these ideas.
8) Use a spell-checker
9) Post your reply - get feedback.
10) If no-one accepts your argument, then try again.
He is the only philosopher I actually liked reading. Thanks to a professor at university who recommended him. "Science in a Free Society" and the work for which he is known: "Against Method". Philosopher Ian Hacking once said it was the first time he saw the same book in three utterly different editions (contrary to, for example, Popper, whose books are all the same). You will learn, I can tell you, very well! You show interest! Keep it up!
If you’re lucky enough to have a friend or family member who will let you, teach them the lesson you learned that day. If they ask you questions, look them up on the spot and discuss the answer(s). The more you teach others or share with them what you learned, the more it will stick with you and it will also help you memorize more information. In teaching others, you almost always end up teaching yourself as well.
I tried doing this myself in college and it helped me tremendously.
Best of luck!!
~ laura
Ah the old rubber duck method. It's effective.
And you’re right, it can be effective!
I haven't read any philosophical matter, but I'd think that theology is a good place to start.
Looking at philosophy in a historical context, or reading in historical order also might not be a bad idea.
Indeed - showing where theology is mistake is one, quite common, way to hone your critical skills.
:up:
In three words: "Calvin and Hobbes". You can start with the story of the raccoon run over. True philosophy only has to do with a single problem: death. We are not able to face it. That is why there are so many philosophers. Since we don't know how to die, we don't know how to live either.
This is certainly what popular culture often thinks philosophy is. One of the great platitudes you hear is all religion and all philosophy is simply humanity's inability to face death. I think this is exaggerated, I have met way too many people interested in philosophy who have no notion yet that they are going to die - mainly on account of them being in their 20's, and mostly oblivious to death, as young people so often are in the West.
Death may be the 'Big Problem' in the end but much philosophy is simply trying to work out how to spend and understand your time. What is maths? What is art? What is beauty?
Quoting Primperan
"Death" may be the poet's muse, but the "true" philosopher contemplates – reflectively engages with – the real. :fire:
:up:
Entertainments. Mathematics will interest the mathematician. Art is an artist thing ... Those are just diplomatic ways of rejecting the only problem that haunts us all our lives: that we have to die.
Quoting 180 Proof
The only real thing is that we have to die. For the one who dies, it is the same whether he lived 3, 30 or 300 years. Is the same. And we have to die.
You are more children than Calvin. He imagines heroic worlds and characters. He is Captain Spiff and, also, Stupendousman. But he knows how to take advantage of his time. He amuses himself. Because you never know when death will come. Why do tedious homework when your end could come at any moment? The longest and most profound treatise on philosophy is less philosophical than the sentiment expressed in a simplest comic strip. You are lost. Go back to the principles. Forget Plato, Aristotle, or Kant. Read a "Calvin and Hobbes".
If you think like that no wonder death is on your mind. You sound like Woody Allen. I am not haunted by death and I have worked alongside palliative care and in suicide intervention for many years. I've found many dead people and watched many die. It interests me how few people ever give death a thought. Most people I've known (pessimistic philosophers exempted) don't seem to realise that they will die unless they become very sick or extremely unhappy.
An existential bias which ignores the ontological horizon. Only a truism, Primperan, not philosophy. Think it through, dig deeper, further than "Calvin & Hobbes".
I like that bumper sticker with calvin pissing on shit.
The ontological horizon will exist for God (if It exists) or the world (whatever it is), since they are eternal. We only know one thing: that we have to die. There are many ways to entertain time, forget the fundamental or reject it. Does not matter. One day a loved one dies, disappears from the world, but not from you, and you remember what your destiny is. Then you can start building an ontology. Does not matter. You are going to die no matter how beautiful the palace of concepts you build is.
In other words...
You'll havta trust your brain to make the right connections between the different strands of ideas/thoughts that philosophy is, in actuality, made up of. It's not something, in my experience, we have control over unless you're some kind of "mind monster" (you're perpetually in the driver's seat, the mind obeys your every command).
I guess you don’t consider the phenomenologists, Wittgenstein, Heidegger or Nietzsche to be true philosophers then.
Yes, if not exaggerated, it's myopic. In fact, the vast majority of philosophical inquiry is about objective knowledge and ethics/morality. That should give us a clue that philosophers, certainly, are thinking of the going-concern notion of life. If anything, philosophy is too full of life. It "reeks" -- as a light-hearted reference to alive.
I don't deny that Calvin and Hobbes is brilliant, but...
There's a lot more to life than death.
In my case, the best way was already offered in high school, in the course of Ancient Greek Language (not optional! :smile:) It is there where I "met" Socrates, this great philosopher. Yet, as much as I loved this course, it did not consist a step in my "philosophical period", since I was more interested in other things at the time! (I actually "discovered" and got involved in philosophy in college, where Philosophy was an optional course!).
So, although this is not the case for the great majority of people, it is still a good starting point: Start from where philosophy has started (in the West): Ancient Greece. Read about and from as many ancient Greek philosophers, from pre-Socratic to Plato and Aristotle. You can find a lot of material in the Internet. Ponder on their arguments and views. Whatever doesn't match your taste or reason, just drop it and go to the next one. Make it "as light as possible". Stick to the things that make sense to you. For example, consider Heraclitus' "Everything flows" and "You cannot cross the same river twice". Why has he said that? What does that mean to you. Exercise your reasoning. You can discover a new huge world of interest! :smile:
Ok, buy I thought we were talking about philosophy and the best way to study it, right?
The natural sciences begin from a position of eliminated subjectivity: Let us imagine there are no humans and conduct observations accordingly. Call this objectivity. A study of matter without experience is half-truth at best. If you want truth, science alone is not enough.
Nonsense. Besides, what "we know" in no way entails reality. For clarity's sake, at least, it's useful not to conflate epistemology and ontology.
Being tangled up is part of the fun, I don't think it's a sign you're 'doing it wrong' so to speak. If you're trying hard to pay attention to philosophical ideas being presented, you will notice inconsistencies and points of tension. Sometimes those inconsistencies and points of tension aren't in the ideas being presented, even, sometimes they're in how you think about things! I'd take feeling confused and tangled up in the ideas as an encouraging sign, really. : D
One thing that can make the presentation of philosophy material a bit different from material in other classes is that there's a bunch of different ways that philosophy can be presented, and a lecture or class can switch between them sometimes.
( 1 ) Presenting a dispute or cluster of ideas together. Like if you're presenting what ethical theories are, and give examples of consequentialism, virtue ethics and deontology, you'll cover a lot of ground in the summary and there'll be loads of points of tension. Which isn't surprising, people argue 'internally' in these clusters of ideas all the time, like consequentialists arguing with other consequentialists. If this mode of presentation makes these idea clusters appear self contradictory, it might be intended to do so - since it's smearing a lot of things together that actually don't fit for the purposes of presentation without much technical detail.
( 2 ) Textual analysis of an idea - you're talking about particular ideas of particular thinkers with textual support. These are questions like: "What role did the wax argument play in Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy?" - particular thinker (Descartes), particular idea (how properties and bodies work together), particular text (Meditations on First Philosophy)
( 3 ) Presenting a dispute between two specific thinkers or ideas - this would be like you take a topic that two people disagree on, you summarise their positions (maybe with textual support) and what you think they disagree on, then you maybe get to provide a take on the dispute. Like consequentialism vs deontology or Mill vs Kant on ethics.
Quoting DesperateBeing
To pass a class (based on philosophy A level in the UK) you'll need to be able to demonstrate that you understand ideas you're quizzed on. That might be with textual support, or as suggested by having canned responses you've made which are precise and cover the needed material. EG see this list of exam questions and its marking scheme.
Question 1 there is:
With indicative answers:
Another thing you'll be assessed on is your essay writing ability. Which roughly comes down to - is your argument precisely written, how much redundant information does it provide, does it hold together as an argument and also (very importantly) can you ( 1 ) anticipate counterpoints to what you've written, ( 2 ) contextualise them precisely in what you've written and ( 3 ) respond well to them. The principle of charity is a helpful rule of thumb here - do your best to understand everyone, and steelman their arguments if you are able.
For general advice about philosophy (as a hobby anyway): learning to enjoy the tangle you're in is necessary for enjoying long term study.
Good luck!
What absurd clarity! You must be the unique person who does not know that you have to die. Good luck with that.
If that is so, how will they be able in the first place to even think about conducting experiments? If you imagine there are no people you should imagine youself gone too, hence, no science about this objective world can be achieved.
Quoting emancipate
I think it's at best no truth at all. A truth cannot exist without experience, neither a half truth. Science and journalists can find lots of truth though, and a philosopher must absorb them before he can even start philosophizing about them.
Yes indeed it is a thought experiment which is lacking. Scientists don't think "let us conduct experiments which take subjectivity into account". That's why it is so effective.
Quoting AgentTangarine
Empirical observation of physical phenomena has led to the formation of general principles about matter, technological advancements, and a general mastery of physical reality. Its domain is the physical. It oversteps its boundaries when it makes knowledge claims about consciousness, mind or experience.
Ssshh! He's not being a troll, just not talking in philosophical terms.
Quoting Primperan
Just to explain a little bit here. In common sense knowledge, we do know that everyone would die sooner or later. But we're not disputing common sense knowledge here, but the epistemological one -- which @180 Proof has been trying to get clarity of.
If you try to read @fdrake's post above, you'd get a good sense of how you should tackle philosophical examinations and inquiry. Because under this context, "reality" has quite a different existence than the common sense definition.
So, I guess the question becomes, why couldn't we just talk in common sense terms? Well, philosophical problems are philosophical in nature because there is another sense in which we'd like to know about the world. And if you think that this is not worth your time, there is, indeed, a school of thought that dwells only in common sense terms: one is the anti-realist empiricism. Phrase your posts like this and others can respond accordingly.
Yeah. Which is why I don't necessarily think you should devote your time to understanding death, because it's a fairly short topic. Acceptance kind of removes the grandeur of it all: yeah were going to die, anyways...
The easy way: Apprenticeship of some kind. You'll learn the ropes faster and it's much easier since you'll be given access to information (processed data); it's much harder to work with raw data. Philosophy is a mindset that has to be cultivated through praxis. Each philosophical issue, each of its branches, requires a standard template of questions, concepts & approaches that'll have to be internalized and applied, preferably in auto-pilot mode instead of manually (comes with experience I suppose, like driving).
The hard way: Go to university where your teach expects you to do all the processing. You'll be taught only broad principles after which you're on your own. Less information, tons of data you'll have to pore through. Tough!
:joke:
Quite the opposite of my university experience. So much so that some fellows would ask, could we focus on the broad picture, or "let's look at the forest more..." :smile:
But okay.
:grin:
I drew my conclusion from the fact that we're never taught logic in school though it's kinda like the master key to knowledge. We're supposed to abstract the principles and rules of natural deduction from math and the sciences that are part of the curriculum. In other words, we have to be, quite literally, another Aristotle or Chrysippus. No information on logic, only data which we havta analyze. A tall order in my humble opinion. Wrong? Ok, but there's a grain of truth in there somewhere.
You're not wrong. I skipped the formal logic in favor of the classical narrative and argumentation. You know -- write a brief exposition, or thesis. And mind you, we're not supposed to spell out "what's the over-arching idea here?" spiel. The idea was, when you start padding your thesis with the "over-arching thought", you're gonna get deductions on your paper. Fun times. :blush:
But I have come to understand his statement is also a form of gratitude. Education is reading and listening carefully; maybe teaching a few things. Another opportunity.
It is inherent in the culture of cancellation to call anyone a "troll" who does not think like everyone else. About a century ago, what they called him in some parts of the world was not a "troll" but "Jew." In Kant's Prussia, the term was "libertine".
On the other hand, it was Blaise Pascal who said that human beings hardly know anything and the little that he knows is that he has to die. He would be a "troll" too, right?
You would do well to read something elementary from 18th century philosophy, like "Answer to the question: What is the Enlightenment?" (1784). "Sapere aude!", mein Freund.
Ecclesiastical prejudices must remain in the mind, said another "troll" named Marcus Aurelius.
If you don't like what you read, nobody forces you to respond.
Happy day and happy holidays.
Quoting Caldwell
To all the so-called "analytical philosophers" the caricature that one of them made of those who dedicated themselves to metaphysics is applicable: they are only musicians without musical ability. If they were scientists, they would have studied mathematics. Analytical philosophers talk a lot about science without having the slightest idea about it. If they were what they think they are, they would have made some scientific discovery. But the dark secret is that NONE is owed to them. Apparently his contribution is different. Which one? Write boring literature that only they read? And maybe not even them... They only pursue the prestige of scientists as well as their social status.
I prefer to return to academic philosophy at the hands of Heidegger than of any analytical or neopositivist "philosopher."
Happy day and happy holidays.
Why would philosophers make a scientific discovery? Does a musician make a mathematical discovery? Analytical philosophy is concerned mostly with logic and language analysis. Not natural science.
Really? Music is too mathematical to be art and too artistic to be mathematics. You should listen to Bach, Beethoven or Chopin and look at some treatise on musical harmony.
Analytical philosophy is The Emperor's New Clothes. It is neither science nor art. It is just bad literature.