What is it like to study a degree in Philosophy?

Pretty much that, although there were also end-of-term exams, and a couple of the essays in the first year were only 1,500 words if I recall. I had between 6 and 8 hours a week of actual classes, and in my second year this was spread over Monday - Wednesday, giving me a four-day weekend, so there was a lot of "reading" time. And mine was a three year course, not four.

I used a lot of my spare time (while my friends were busy studying real subjects) learning web development, which is what I actually do for a living now, and training in jujutsu.

That's humanities for ya. God I miss it.

I learnt most of my philosophy in the pub...cheers...

Reply to Michael

What was included in these end of term exams apart from formal logic? Was the whole course hard? Did you struggle anywhere? Where your papers marked with an iron fist?

Reply to bassplayer

haha I suppose that is the supreme wellspring from which advanced literacy is born.

Reply to intrapersona The exams were like the essays. I didn't do any formal logic. It was just questions on some notable philosopher or theory. Summarise the views, expound on any criticisms and support, and so on. For the most part I was in the second highest grade range (60-70%) so I wouldn't say I struggled or that they were marked harshly. Heidegger was probably the hardest, but critical thinking was so easy that I finished the 2 hour exam in half an hour and got above the 70% needed for the highest grade.

Reply to Michael I see, when you phrase it like that it would seem quite hard to fail as long as you understood what the theory was or had read what the philosopher philosophized about.

I would go so far as to say that even if you didn't study much at all, as long as you still could verbalise ideas very comprehensively and had a strong vocab then you would pass. True?

Reply to intrapersona Yeah, outside of classes I didn't do much work but still managed a 2:1. Maybe my course was easy or maybe I'm just naturally suited to the subject. Or maybe my time on PF debating with clever people payed off

Quoting Michael

Or maybe my time on PF debating with clever people payed off

Indubitably kind sir, I concur with your statements and/or sentiments in precise accordance.

Reply to intrapersona I did an undergraduate degree comprising quite a few units of philosophy, on an actual typewriter, using liquid paper for corrections. Seems arcane now, it was late 70's -early 80's, nobody had computers then, let alone the Internet. I still have some of those essays and I learned a lot from the experience. I had some great teachers, and they were very open-minded towards me considering how contrarian I was. But it is at least as difficult as any other liberal arts subject, like history or literature - takes application, reading and work.

Quoting intrapersona

Is it anything akin to writing on philosophy forums?

No, you have to follow the direction of the professor. This is why it is better to study philosophy at school rather than simply on your own, you are necessitated to follow the direction which is provided by the institution, not simply your own interests. Your own interests will become stale, and not being exposed to the vast world of interests of others, you will waste too much time, and not proceed toward your full potential. The institution provides you with an array of interests, and requires that you must become proficient in numerous different areas. This is good.

Quoting intrapersona

Is it anything akin to writing on philosophy forums?

Not really.

The principle seems the same; read the topic, search related material, find evidence, analyse and finally expound a 2500 word . . .

Well, you'll have to do a lot of reading and writing, where you're reading a lot of specific/required literature. You also have to attend lectures, pay attention and participate in class discussions. And you have to take exams, etc. All of this involves cognizing what you're reading/hearing/etc., and you're required to give direct, supported answers to objections and so on, all of which is unfortunately almost nothing like online forums.

. . . illiterate piece of jargon that doesn't say anything about anything at all really.

That's not going to cut it, of course.

Do that twice per semester

Twice per semester?? It's more like reading hundreds if not thousands of pages every semester, writing papers that will be graded strictly for clarity, logical flow, etc. as well as for basics like grammar, spelling, citation conventions, etc., and that you have to defend against pointed objections about once per week. Tests on stuff you read and covered in class are usually every 2-3 weeks, not including a couple big exams (mid-term and final). Tests are designed to make sure that you paid attention to and understood both the reading you were required to do and the lectures from your professor, per how he/she explained the material. Again, this is nothing like online forums, where people routinely have trouble understanding or don't seem to pay much attention at all to even very simple ideas in simple language. Philosophy is full of complex ideas in complex, often quite idiosyncratic language.

Don't forget that in the U.S., at least, you also have to take a crapload of required and elective courses in other fields--science, mathematics, English, etc. Getting your bachelor's degree in the U.S. is like going to High School II--just a harder, far more work and study-intensive version of high school.

for 4 years and finally you'll get a certificate at the end that doesn't entitle you to diddly squat. Sweet! I'm in!

That part, re a philosophy degree, is basically correct. If you want a philosophy degree to possibly do something specific for you career-wise, you need to do another four (or more) years of it to get a PhD. That's basically the same deal, with the exception that it's less like High School II in terms of the other stuff you're required to study, but the reading and writing requirements are boosted a significant amount, with the assessment of your writing, your verbal defense of your views, etc., being far tougher.

In my experience, by the way, both as a student and as a student teacher when I was in grad school, aside from not realizing the volume of reading and writing requirements in philosophy courses, one of the main things that drives students to drop philosophy courses (including students taking Intro to Philosophy-type courses as an elective--there's typically a belief that it will be an easy, unchallenging course) is that many people are uncomfortable both (a) having to defend cherished beliefs against pointed objections (religious views are a frequent source of grief there), and (b) having to argue for and defend positions that are the opposite of positions that they hold, which is almost always a requirement from any professor in early courses. Part of this is that people are somtimes uncomfortable simply having routinely speak (and defend views) in public (amongst fellow class members).

Also, as Metaphysician Undercover pointed out, what you're reading and writing about isn't usually going to be your own choice, especially as an undergraduate. You might not be very interested in a particular topic, or a particular approach to a particular topic. That won't matter. You'll still have to study that topic as it's presented in class and write and defend papers about it. Plus as I mentioned above, you'll often have to write and defend papers from two opposing sides of a topic. For example, you may be required to write a paper that develops an argument (in the context of what you've studied/been required to read in class) for realism on universals AND a paper that develops an argument for nominalism. And then you might have to read your papers in class and verbally defend both sides from additional objections (additional to the objections you were required to come up with an answer in your papers) posed by both the professor and your fellow students. Your grade will partially depend on how well you do with that. In that situation grades also partially depend on you being able to come up with and present objections to other students' papers they read in class.

This is another thing that's not anything like what we do on forums.

Reply to Terrapin Station

Thanks Terrapin, that outlined it in a lot more detail and gave me some context as to what it will be like.

I have no objections to the descriptions of tasks you listed (i.e. defending the opposite viewpoint I hold and putting down my belief systems for the sake of reason), albeit one... and that is reading thousands of pages per semester. I find prolonged reading very difficult and can only manage to pull through 10-20 pages a day max before my attention span withers and the sentences don't make any sense at all.

Per semester, this equates to 900-1,800 pages if reading 10-20 pages per day. The trouble is I doubt I can read everyday and that is why I wonder (granted I have understood the basic principles of what is being taught) if I could pass without reading much (<500 pages per semester), as long as I can verbalise ideas very comprehensively and with a strong vocab. True? I know from reading some philosophy books that majority of writers tend to just say the same things over and over again in different formulations.

Also, do you get help from others? Say if you struggled to understand some indistinct notion about nominalism, who is there to clarify it with? Fellow students? Professors? Tutorial classes? Did you find you had to do much of this personal clarification? Or did it always just make sense to you the first time you heard it all?

Re help, all three things you mentioned are regularly available--clarification from your professor, either during or after class or during a meeting outside of class time that you set up, help from fellow students--just be friendly with them, and tutoring that your professor might recommend (or that you can often find on your own, too). Further reading will also help clarify things, too, and of course now you have a lot of resources on the Internet. I didn't have that when I was in school. (Well, or the Internet was just starting to become popular around the time that I was finishing up my last grad degree--that was the mid 90s.)

You can get through some things without doing all of the reading or without fully understanding everything, although you shouldn't expect great grades in those areas--but you can do well enough to pass. I always had a lot of trouble (and still do to this day) with continental authors in general. Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, etc. The way I wound up getting through that was primarily repeating, more or less by rote, explanations that professors gave for those folks' work. It's good to rely on a professor's explanation in a case like that, in combination with a few select phrases direct from the source (from Hegel, Heidegger, etc.), because you know he/she agrees with that interpretation. You just need to reword it a bit and try to change it up slightly so that it sounds like your own words instead. I typically didn't get great grades when we were covering continentals, because I'm sure it was clear that I didn't fully understand that stuff, but I went to school in the U.S., at typical schools with a heavy emphasis on the analytic approach, which is what comes naturally to me. So it wasn't a big problem that continental stuff always seemed like a bunch of intentionally obfuscated gobbledygook to me. If I had been a student someplace like UT Austin or NYC's New School for Social Research, that might have been a different issue.

Reply to intrapersona In my experience, many professional philosophers, that most farcical of oxymorons, are gargantuan egotists. Be prepared to not have your emails read, to engage in passive aggressive conversations, and to put up with a host of downright bizarre eccentricities.

Woodwork is a good route, there are many woodworking philosophers.

Reply to intrapersona Personally, I say for financial security study some programming language alongside philosophy. That seems to be where everything is headed monetary wise.

Or if you can play an instrument, join a band. Oh no, you wanted to make an income didn't you...

Reply to Question

Yes but learning that language is very difficult. You need to have certain type of mind, perhaps can easily remember insignificant details like doctors can AND a somewhat of a mathematical mind. I don't think I am geared for it, too meaningless.

Quoting Thorongil

In my experience, many professional philosophers, that most farcical of oxymorons, are gargantuan egotists. Be prepared to not have your emails read, to engage in passive aggressive conversations, and to put up with a host of downright bizarre eccentricities.

I feared this was so. Passive aggressive is somewhat easy to handle because it usually takes the form of a strawman or an inability to understand what the other party is putting forward.

What bizarre eccentricities are you talking about? Weird clothes and drug use?

Quoting Terrapin Station

So it wasn't a big problem that continental stuff always seemed like a bunch of intentionally obfuscated gobbledygook to me.

And it isn't in reality? lol

Reply to intrapersona It's not impossible. I'm learning some Python every day (and struggling to sustain the attention to keep my mind in line with the logical rigor it requires; but, you never know unless you try). It's hard, yes - but eventually, once you get the ball rolling I think it takes care of itself.

Reply to Question I think I'd rather be in something more social and compassionate. It just seems too lifeless... kinda like a monkey pushing buttons... something a robot can do... sorry, dont mean to say you are just a lifeless robot, but... yeah

Reply to intrapersona I agree. I tend to think programming will become an obsolete profession in the not too distant future given the advent of AI. But, just as people need sometimes psychologists or psychiatrists, so will an AI if it decides we aren't a threat to it or if it decides to co-exist with us. I just hope we can emulate emotions in an AI machine...

You can always side major in cognitive science. I've long thought about that; but, that field is increasingly requiring some computational knowledge also if you don't want to flat out go for psychology.

Quoting Question

I just hope we can emulate emotions in an AI machine...

I thought that depended on solving the riddle of consciousness first.

Quoting Question

You can always side major in cognitive science. I've long thought about that; but, that field is increasingly requiring some computational knowledge also if you don't want to flat out go for psychology.

I was thinking of majoring in cog sci but am declining because it is too statistics based and mostly writing up lab reports on stats. Not rewarding at all and would get more psychology out of a philosophy degree tbh.

Quoting intrapersona

I thought that depended on solving the riddle of consciousness first.

That problem can be solved ad hoc by a simulation of the entire workings of the human brain. This will be as close to real AI as one can get.
Quoting intrapersona

I was thinking of majoring in cog sci but am declining because it is too statistics based and mostly writing up lab reports on stats.

Yes, there's a bunch of stats and data analysis involved; but, you aren't confined to work in a lab analyzing results on behavioral tests on humans if you don't want to. It's just (and no offence to the psych majors) a more valuable degree than one in psychology alone.

Quoting Question

That problem can be solved ad hoc by a simulation of the entire workings of the human brain. This will be as close to real AI as one can get.

Won't solve qualia though which is necessary for proving emotional reception.

Reply to intrapersona Qualia are epiphenomena or emergent properties distinct for every human being; but, shared through language. Nothing private there as long as there is a consensus about what we are talking about, which is always open to revision.

Reply to Question Where does this emergent property exist though? It is running on the brain, but it's existence is not to be found in there. Like a projector projecting on a screen, the content is not the 1s and 0s that trigger photons from the aperture but is the image on the screen and as of yet we can't seem to locate where this screen is yet we exist there all our lives.

Qualia is needed for proof of emotional reception... see this video i uploaded:

Quoting intrapersona

Where does this emergent property exist though?

In the brain, where else?
Quoting intrapersona

Qualia is needed for proof of emotional reception...

Qualia are what one can describe as phenomenological experience. It is unique for every individual. Even identical twins will experience the color 'red' differently; but, never be able to know the difference between how another person experiences it apart from agreeing on the social convention that the word 'red' entails what they mean. This is different than the fact that 'red' is the color with the wavelength of 650 nm.

Quoting intrapersona

What bizarre eccentricities are you talking about? Weird clothes and drug use?

I'm speaking mostly about intangibles here. And it's not just philosophy professors, either. Many professors are quite simply very strange, awkward human beings.

Quoting Thorongil

Many professors are quite simply very strange, awkward human beings.

You should check out the engineering department, lol.

Quoting Question

In the brain, where else?

You don't understand what I am saying. Try to think about this a bit deeper and more intuitively.

Your experience exists somewhere. It is arrising from you brain, that is granted and proven! Nevertheless you can have neurons fire and no one to experience it. Neurons firing is one thing but qualitative experience is another and exists in a location... here is where you need to go deeper because when I say location you are just immediately thinking "he must mean some physical approximation of a location" but that isn't necessarily so. For instance, when Neo is plugged in to the matrix, his consciousness is existing within a software OF that system. Likewise, what I propose might be a solution is that there a other dimensions in which consciousness could operate while being linked to matter.

That is drifting off tangent though, my only point is is that subjective experience is does not exist within the brain, if that were the case all you would do is open the brain up and you would see yourself existing in there. Experience is taking place in another realm completely, the realm of subjectivity WHICH CAN NOT BE LOCATED!

Quoting Question

Qualia are what one can describe as phenomenological experience. It is unique for every individual. Even identical twins will experience the color 'red' differently; but, never be able to know the difference between how another person experiences it apart from agreeing on the social convention that the word 'red' entails what they mean. This is different than the fact that 'red' is the color with the wavelength of 650 nm.

That says absolutely nothing in regard to my original comment which was that the location of Qualia is needed for proof that someone is ACTUALLY FEELING emotions and not just saying they are... like the turing test or p-zombies.

Reply to darthbarracuda I agree, I have never met an outward and friendly engineer. They always seem stuffy, too centred on details and facts and not able to deal with abstract information or inferred humour.

Reply to intrapersona lol I'm an engineer. We tend to be kinda weird but an inability to deal with abstract information is definitely not one of our qualities.

Reply to darthbarracuda Sorry I meant abstract information in the sense of inferring from incomplete data. Errr, like they are less likely to say something probably is the case if it has only 70% percent probability. I am not saying they are just skeptical, I am saying that they don't really have a child-like imagination anymore that enables them to think about how such an such abstract ideas could possibly be true. They could take a drug and be moved to high heaven with spirituality and come back and say "nothing of it, it was all in my mind and completely meaningless... who said they needed some powerlines fixed" and go back to whatever they were doing.

The ones I have ment have sorta seemed to be lifeless drones that have just ate up atheism and haven't given it a second look.

Kind of like scientific dogmatism, same with physicists and mathematicians.

Quoting intrapersona

They could take a drug and be moved to high heaven with spirituality and come back and say "nothing of it, it was all in my mind and completely meaningless... who said they needed some powerlines fixed" and go back to whatever they were doing.

I can see myself doing that. I'm pretty skeptical myself.

But in general the engineering crowd, or the STEMlord crowd for that matter, is filled with either a bunch of hyper-religious nuts or obnoxious nu atheists. The scientism is real, any philosophical discussion over dinner is cringey AF. Yo, what if, like, we're all one mind haha and it's just like energy dissipating in one string...that'd be awesome...

A lot of freshman choose engineering because they wanna make loads of money. They're weeded out pretty quickly once they realize that engineering's fucking hard and a lot of work. Nobody pays you 60+k out of college for a walk-in-the-park degree.

Quoting darthbarracuda

Yo, what if, like, we're all one mind haha and it's just like energy dissipating in one string...that'd be awesome...

Yes any BAD and UNLEARNED philsophical discussion is bad over dinner... as long as one party is studied in philosophy and the other party is ready to listen then it can work though and can make for good dinner party. Stoners are the worst at this :|

P.S. there are two kind of people in the world, those that can extract information from incomplete data and

Not like philosophy forums at all, 'cause you're face to face. Talking philosophy face to face, if it's good, is a million times better than online.

Cliquish.

Lots and lots of readings, in-class discussions, papers, tests, oral exams, thesis defense, etc.

I'll be 50 this year, and I'm thinking about pursuing a philosophy degree. But, I sometimes wonder if I could accomplish the same thing by reading on my own, and submitting articles to peer reviewed journals. Plato, Socrates, many other ancient philosophers, and Wittgenstein..none of them received any formal training. Am I being arrogant by even thinking of comparing myself to them?

I'm almost afraid I'll lose my edge if I attempt a formal degree.

Quoting anonymous66

Plato, Socrates, many other ancient philosophers, and Wittgenstein..none of them received any formal training.

That's not quite true. Socrates apparently read other philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Parmenides, etc., and Plato, aside from reading those, was also schooled by Socrates himself! That's some pretty good training. Plato himself considered it so good that he went to require that every philosopher should go through it (this can be seen, theoretically, in his discussions of education in, e.g., The Republic, and in practice in the fact that he established a formal school for such training, namely the Academy). As for Wittgenstein, he apparently was tutored by Russell and Frege. Moreover, his time at Cambridge was instrumental for the development of his views, not the least through his contact with Ramsey. Which brings me to my next point.

One thing that I consider invaluable in my time inside my university is the opportunity to meet other academics. Much of my current research has been shaped not so much by the classes I attended, but rather by the people I met, including, crucially, my current supervisor and other logic students (having such good people criticize your work or suggest new research path is an amazing experience). I also benefited greatly from attending congresses and presenting and hearing talks, often about subjects rather distant from my own research area. So I would say that obtaining a degree in philosophy can be very fruitful indeed, for the kind of people you meet, if not for the classes you attend.

Reply to anonymous66 I did philosophy as an undergrad, albeit at a younger age than yourself, but found it very beneficial. And this was the case, even though I was a kind of maverick who believed that Western philosophy had generally lost its way. In hindsight, the teachers I had were very courteous and not at all authoritarian - they just asked the right questions, asked me to justify my case, even though in hindsight I might have been very impudent. In the end I opted for comparative religion rather than philosophy, but I'm glad I studied it and have learned a lot from the discipline. But, make sure you pick a good school.

I'm doing a grad diploma at a late age, and meeting a lot of grads and undergrads. I agree with Nagase, (welcome here Nagase, btw, your experience and intellect is a boon to any forum) I'm getting a lot out of the face to face meetings with practising philosophers, and sitting in on seminars where people present papers and have their careful work kindly torn to shreds by their peers. It's a terrific challenge. Even if you radically disagree with some current viewpoints, the prevailing ethos where I am is a dialogic or dialectical method, so no viewpoint is too far out, as long as you understand how to put together an argument - there are Christians and Buddhist digging deep, logicians writing incomprehensible symbolic brilliance, aesthetics folk writing silly stuff about possible worlds (ok I don't get aesthetics), people nagging at persistent unsolved problems in many fields. I do think it's the sort of discipline though where shy people might well lose out, that would be my one caveat. But getting your head round complex problems and other people agreeing you have done, that's good for the self-confidence.

Quoting anonymous66

Plato, Socrates, many other ancient philosophers, and Wittgenstein..none of them received any formal training.

Quoting Nagase

That's not quite true. Socrates apparently read other philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Parmenides, etc., and Plato, aside from reading those, was also schooled by Socrates himself! That's some pretty good training. Plato himself considered it so good that he went to require that every philosopher should go through it (this can be seen, theoretically, in his discussions of education in, e.g., The Republic, and in practice in the fact that he established a formal school for such training, namely the Academy). As for Wittgenstein, he apparently was tutored by Russell and Frege.

Perhaps it's nitpicking, but would you call any of that "formal"? How long was Wittgenstein tutored before he wrote his Tractatus, was awarded a Doctorate, and started teaching?

It seems to me that Wittgenstein was something of an arrogant ass, it just so happens he was also a genius and had some great insights.

Reply to mcdoodle

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Reply to anonymous66

I don't have the details, but if I'm not mistaken he did own a lot to Frege, as it's clear for anyone who reads the TLP. And I think his Cambridge years helped him immensely to better shape his ideas; to have as conversation partners people like Anscombe, von Wright, Ramsey, and Kreisel was probably essential for the development of the late Wittgenstein. In fact, had he had more formal training in mathematics, for instance, would probably have made him a much better philosopher (his Remarks on Mathematics being infamously weak).

The point is that although Wittgenstein managed to write a substantial treatise without much formal training (though he did have some), his own philosophical outlook vastly improved after he found himself in a more academic setting, in no small part because he was in constant contact with a lot of other brilliant philosophers. So we don't know if lack of formal training was an asset or a hindrance, though we do know that in some cases (mathematics) it was actually a hindrance.

Quoting Nagase

The point is that although Wittgenstein managed to write a substantial treatise without much formal training (though he did have some), his own philosophical outlook vastly improved after he found himself in a more academic setting, in no small part because he was in constant contact with a lot of other brilliant philosophers. So we don't know if lack of formal training was an asset or a hindrance, though we do know that in some cases (mathematics) it was actually a hindrance.

That is a good point.

It really varies a lot depending on the class and the professor. In first and second year you do the readings and the prof talks a lot, because they're trying to introduce you to weighty topics that you haven't encountered before and it can be slow going. You learn through instruction, trial, and error how to write a proper philosophy paper and you probably learn the basics of formal logic.

In upper division courses the class size shrinks and there is a lot more discussion. Usually the prof does a bit of lecturing but most of the information you ingest comes from the assigned readings, and the prof just supplements in class, answers questions, or directs a discussion among the students.

Lots and lots of reading, lots of paper writing, and most classes will have a midterm or final exam as well. These can involve short answer questions or take the form of multiple in-class essays. Usually you get a lot of wiggle room on essay topics, and many professors will let you write your own topic if it is relevant and approved before submission.

In my experience, philosophy professors love what they do and it is not uncommon at all for the discussion to migrate from the classroom to the pub down the street. I learned more over pints of ale at the bar than I did in most of my lectures during second year.

Just noticed how old this thread is... sorry.

Allegedly, higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought.