[Serious] Generally speaking, is philosophy a worthwhile subject of study?

[Neo-Scholastic]

What's funny to me, in Bill and Ted's surprising profundity, my interest in philosopy was born the first moment I heard "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas playing on the school bus radio. How can one bear the fact of one's own appartent insignificance?

To some people that question seems more salient. YMMV

[vulcanlogician]

I think you put those less interested/educated with all things philosophy on a pedestal below yours.

I'll be honest, it's not necessarily a dislike of which ever philosophy but more often the philosophers. They often spend to much time/energy trying to impress others, i.e. using 100 words when 10 will do. You did it just now with the name dropping.

No, Brew. They actually give a shit about what they are discussing. You don't give a shit. And that's cool, man. But impressing people with 100 words isn't what's going on generally with philosophers.

Philosophers like to be thorough and accurate with their statements. They like their arguments to be air-tight (or at least water-tight). They like to anticipate objections. Sometimes these things lead to lengthy explanations. These are marks of honesty. It's better than glossing over or dodging problematic objections, isn't it? "Let's get this objection out in the open and respond to it."

And, yes, sometimes people use too damn many words. 

Sometimes, I am high on my own petard when I discuss an idea I find very interesting. I suppose that could come off as arrogant if viewed a certain way. But it isn't. When I write such things I'm usually very excited about the idea itself and could care less about being better or worse than others. I just would like to transmit my enthusiasm to others, really.

@Belacqua 

There actually is something you said somewhere in this thread (I can't find it) that might have come off as elitist. 

I know that it wasn't you. It was Aristotle talking about how working people can't properly philosophize. You were just communicating what Aristotle said. I'm very familiar with this idea of Aristotle's. I've always found it bothersome... like, I've always found it disheartening because I am of a low socioeconomic status. I didn't really have an excellent childhood education. But!-- back to your remarks about love-- I've always loved thinking about the big questions. As Plato put it, love is made of two gods: wherewithal and want. (poverty and plenty in some translations). I've got the want part down. But I lack the wherewithal. I still consider myself undereducated.

But as we've both said before, academic philosophy isn't the whole of philosophy. And several replies could be made to Aristotle's notion that working people somehow can't philosophize properly.

1. Spinoza supported himself by working long hours as a lens grinder. Is Spinoza some kind of shitty philosopher? Absolutely not.

2. With the advances made in technology in modern times, even working people could be said to "live like kings" compared to ancient Greek elites.

3. Aristotle (and Plato) were Greek elites. And this possibly prejudiced their thinking on the matter.

[emjay]

Wow, you totally ninja'd me there vulcan... I was about to say something similar. Ie I know I tend to write wordy posts but it's not about trying to impress anyone... far from it, as mostly I see it as a flaw; it's my own tendency to ramble combined with, similar to what you said, anticipating questions/objections and/or not wanting to be misunderstood. I dream of being more concise, and not over analysing things, but it's generally a losing battle

[vulcanlogician]

I struggle to be concise. There's a real tension between making an incomplete argument and saying too much.

[Belacqua]

And, yes, sometimes people use too damn many words. 

I was once described in the newspaper as "verbose," so I just have to own it. However the only person who's being judgmental here is brewer, who looks down on verbose people. I was born that way, man.

working people can't properly philosophize.

There's no doubt that Aristotle was elitist, by today's standards. He thinks that some people are just better than others, and honesty requires that we rate them accurately. This is before all those nasty Christians started the whole "God loves even the least of them" crap, so he doesn't try to hide his snobbishness. 

One thing that's certainly different: Aristotle thought that because of an essential human nature, all people should be aiming for the same sort of goal in life -- abstract thought. When I've read the Ethics with a group this is one of the things people are least willing to accept. No doubt more of us today would say that some people are good at one thing and some at another, and the world needs all types. Just because I go on and on about one or two subjects doesn't mean I'm insulting other things. 

I think when I was verbosely going on about this before I mentioned Blake, and how he became a great thinker with zero formal education, and working all day at his trade. (As an apprentice before child labor laws, he was obligated to work like 12 hours a day 6 days a week.) It's clearly possible. How much this shows us that Aristotle was wrong, and how much we can attribute it to changing conditions I'm not sure. Like today we have the advantage of the printing press and public libraries, not to mention illegally downloaded pirate pdf files. 

And despite the fact that I am an elite snob who hates the working man, I suspect it's best for all thinkers (like all humans) to be grounded in something concrete. Literally, cultivate your own garden, or something like that. 

Many many schools around Japan have a copy of this sculpture, which shows a guy from the Tokugawa period who became a famous intellectual by studying while he was working on the farm. He's held up as a role model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninomiya_S...aSta_2.jpg

This concludes the name-dropping portion of this post. 

You know, nobody here is going to be a famous ground-breaking philosopher. We do the best we can because we like it (and because we have a glimpse of our father Plenty up above, giving us something to aim for).

---

I struggle to be concise. There's a real tension between making an incomplete argument and saying too much.

I assume that nobody's going to read me very carefully anyway, so I might as well just enjoy myself.

[vulcanlogician]

But even aside from being food for the mind, I think philosophy has knowledge value. Let's say an ethicist is examining arguments for Divine Command Theory, and comes to realize none of the arguments she's seen is satisfactory. Well, maybe there is some argument "out there" that really makes a case for DCT, unknown to the ethicist -- and so, arguably, no knowledge was gained in her analysis. But yet, I think the ethicist has gained some knowledge by plotting out the negative space and ruling certain things out. Can't we say that a person who has investigated something and ruled out a few possibilities has gained knowledge of a sort?

I would not call this knowledge. It is a refinement of her opinion.

Why not?

Isn't eliminating the false what leads to genuine progress in science? Isn't that why we want falsifiable hypotheses? Because, if we falsify it, we will have learned something? We will have gained knowledge... A lot of what Galileo did was disprove the old theory. And in doing so, he increased our knowledge. Doesn't disproving a widely accepted theory get you a Nobel Prize? THAT'S eliminating something.

I know that the case for divine command theory is weak. Before I read Euthyphro, I thought, sure, maybe without God, there can be no actual morality. After having read it, I'm convinced that God's existence or nonexistence simply cannot have anything to do with objective morality. Have I not learned something in seeing that DCT can be ruled out? Don't I now know something that I didn't know before? Sure, I haven't solved all ethics, but by knowing that A isn't true, now I can say "It's either B,C,D or E."

So the question is whether myth and literature (and, for that matter art and music) give *knowledge*. I don't think that they do. They help us refine our opinions. But because they cannot truly be tested, there is no real way to eliminate falsehoods. And that means there are no actual truth values and hence no actual knowledge.

This does NOT mean that the discussion isn't valuable. Art, music, literature, and philosophy are good subjects of discussion and are part of a meaningful education. But they are not knowledge-based subjects.

This is its own thread.

[LadyForCamus]

What's funny to me, in Bill and Ted's surprising profundity, my interest in philosopy was born the first moment I heard "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas playing on the school bus radio. How can one bear the fact of one's own appartent insignificance?

To some people that question seems more salient. YMMV

Funny thing; that song has always brought tears to my eyes and I laugh at myself, because  it still brings tears to my eyes even after Will Ferrell’s ridiculous performance in Old School. 😂

[vulcanlogician]

Dust in the Wind is a good song, man.

[The Grand Nudger]

Fiona Apple, criminal, best sleeper philosophy jam ever.

[vulcanlogician]

There's no doubt that Aristotle was elitist, by today's standards. He thinks that some people are just better than others, and honesty requires that we rate them accurately.

How accurately do you think Aristotle rated people? How close was he to the bullseye?

This is before all those nasty Christians started the whole "God loves even the least of them" crap, so he doesn't try to hide his snobbishness. 

Nobody objected to snobbishness before Christianity? C'mon man. What's wrong with snobbishness in a godless world?