Majoring in Philosophy

Quoting Sam26

to do philosophy really well you have to be able to write clearly and precisely.

I wish all philosophers would agree with this.

Long ago, I was a philosophy major. I became a lawyer.

The members of the philosophy department at the college I attended were devoted to analytic philosophy, ordinary language philosophy and pragmatism. That orientation wasn't uncommon at the time; perhaps it's not uncommon now. Regardless, the philosophy they taught emphasized the close study and careful use of language, logic and skillful argument. It's served me well in the practice of law.

Reply to Mitchell You mean there are really people who think this is not the case? I find that amazing.

Reply to Ciceronianus the WhiteYa, I think philosophy, when it's taught well, is valuable whatever field one chooses.

Quoting Sam26

Also, I use to think that writing and arguing was a waste of my time in these forums, but I've had to re-think this, because being exposed to the thinking of others has actually sharpened my philosophy skills. And while it's true that much of what's written in these forums is silly, including some of what I write, it still makes you re-think some of things you take for granted. It also sharpened my writing skills, but not enough, because I'm never satisfied with my writing. When I write I usually have to edit what I write about 10 times to get it right, I'm not naturally good at writing, and to do philosophy really well you have to be able to write clearly and precisely.

I was not a philosophy major. I majored in psychology, dropped out, and went back and got my engineering degree. Maybe psychology + engineering = philosophy. My experience has been similar to yours. Participating in philosophical discussions has improved my writing and made me more careful in what I say. It's made me more patient and less irritable.

I majored in philosophy long ago and then much later I started debating philosophical topics online. One thing that I've noticed about me in contrast to other posters in this thread is that I've found that for each day I've participated in these forums, I've grown stupider. I think that what's happening is that over time everyone moves toward the average, sort of like how long time spouses begin to look like one another over time, and since I was an outlier of intellectual superhero proportions, it was inevitable that I undergo stupidification by remaining present.

Reply to Hanover Ya, you really have to be challenged if you're to progress. There are a few people, a handful, in here that can challenge you, unless your so intellectually superior no one comes close. :D Other than that you'll have to be at a university with other intellectuals to be at the top of the game. Besides forget about being in here, all conversations with people tend to be less than what we (or I) expect, at least some of the time.

Quoting Sam26

to do philosophy really well you have to be able to write clearly and precisely.

Quoting Sam26

You mean there are really people who think this is not the case? I find that amazing

I take it you weren't exposed to much Continental philosophy in your curriculum ;)

Quoting SophistiCat

I take it you weren't exposed to much Continental philosophy in your curriculum ;)

I see what you mean. :-O

Reply to Sam26

I personally think majoring in philosophy (including studying it at a graduate school) has helped me improve my writing skills. I use to be a terrible writer (and I still have a huge room for improvement), but I learned how to write more clearly and precisely than before. I also learned how to summarize someone's argument concisely and accurately. What really helped me was that there were professors who cared enough to provide me constructive feedback that I can use to improve myself.

Nonetheless, I do think that I learned more philosophy outside of class from reading Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and philosophy books/articles in my spare time. Philosophy courses
provide you philosophy articles/excerpts that you can discuss in class, but you can easily access them on your own with your school account. Even if you don't have access, you can easily find a lot of philosophy papers uploaded by a professor in his/her own website for fair use.

I would also add that reading philosophy books written for both students and professional philosophers is what really helped me to learn philosophy. For example, Jaegwon Kim's textbook on Philosophy of Mind was written for both students and professional philosophers. In his textbook, he usually tries to represent arguments in their syllogistic form to help us see whether or not it is valid and sound. Moreover, he shows various of ways to "attack" the argument such as arguing that one of the premises is false or one of the premises is making an unwarranted assumption and so on. This helps you learn how argumentation works in philosophy and as you read more you'll eventually pick up pretty fast.

Reply to philoskepsis Thanks for your input. I also learned much more outside the class setting, but the class setting enabled me to understand how to do research, and to know what and who to read. Writing is the key to philosophy, but the one thing that I picked up from my professor many years ago was the ability to write simply. I try not to use a lot of philosophical jargon when I write, although sometimes it's unavoidable.

Reply to Sam26 One of my undergraduate degrees and of one my master's degrees were in philosophy. Honestly it's an incredibly useful field, but was not sustainable in an academic career. By the PhD level, opportunities in academic philosophy for research and funding were/are sparse (far better in Europe where I did a portion of my graduate work, but still rare). It's a wonderful field though - I think if I could change anything I'd probably have aimed to publish in philosophy quite a bit sooner than I did. In no small part because writing and the process of learning how to write does indeed play such a massive role in philosophy. That level of practicum and the exposure one receives to complex writing via the literature is unparalleled in any of the other humanities or liberal arts fields.

Reply to Larynx Thanks for sharing that Larynx, and welcome to the forum.