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

[polymath257]

That can get interesting.  Certain ideas about what philosophy is and isn't would exclude a bunch of eastern philosophy... on account of how there's no application of an identical formal system between them.  Philosophy is not, whatever zhuang zhou was doing with his butterfly dream, for example.

Not that I agree with that statement - but it's something people have given some thought to.

And I think that the term 'philosophy' should exclude physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, and other sciences.

But I *would* include much of eastern philosophy.

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Only because you define it as philosophy. A grocery list motivated by environmental impact or economics is philosophy belief to you, not necessarily to me. I think you believe almost everything is or can be philosophy, I (and maybe others) don't. But to continue insisting that your belief is the only correct one sounds a lot like the religious.

It sounds like philosophy. 😛

And that is why philosophy has a bad rep.

If it limited itself to asking good questions (which it can and often does do), and pointing out assumptions that may be wrong, then it would be doing a fair amount of good.

But as it is, too many philosophers seem to want to create philosophical systems that they claim to be 'true and correct'. At that point, philosophy becomes useless. Answers are things you don't tend to get out of philosophy.