How worthless is Philosophy?

[Nanny]

While there is a lot of nonsense in philosophy (see Jordan Peterson) it does a good job of teaching how to think about stuff.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Reducing cognitive dissonance by any valid means would be lovely. We shouldn't give credit for more unless proven.

[The Grand Nudger]

Cognitive? Valid? Proven? Shouldn't?

[Bucky Ball]

I found a series of Ethics courses to be of value to me, as I sit on a medical Ethics Committee. 
It's useful to look at the unexamined assumptions in a statement or proposition. 
I'm sure there are some "eye rolls", when they get around to table to me, as I tend to nit-pick, secondary to my great Ethics professors, 
but I also get a lot of "thank you for raising that". 
As far as I know, they still don't know what my positions are with respect to religion. 
There are some fairly new (termed "feminist" "Duty to Care") Ethics that are in line with my positions in general. 
Have been slowly going through the Philosophy of Kant recently. One day I agree, the next I don't.

[Belacqua]

Should this discipline be required in college? 

It looks as though you may have wandered off again, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you for doing so. I thought I’d type a response to your OP, though, based on a good old philosophy text.

I know you’ve worked on Plato’s Phaedrus in the past, as I recall you mentioning it here before. It seems to me that parts of that dialogue are relevant to the issue at hand.

As you remember, the dialogue begins as a discussion of relations between an older man and his adolescent boyfriend. Such relationships are taken for granted, so what they’re discussing here is exactly what type of emotion and benefit should be involved.

Phaedrus has a copy of a speech by Lysias, in which the latter argues that it’s better if the two partners are not in love with one another. Or rather, it’s assumed that the adolescent won’t be in love with the older man, but the older might feel passion for the younger.

Lysias thinks of the relationship as entirely transactional. The older man gets sex and the company of a beautiful boy, and the younger one gets the practical benefits of increased status and guidance into the political life of the city. The more elite one’s mentor is, the more one will benefit, which means that the more beautiful a boy is the more he will have his choice of mentors.

Both Lysias and Socrates, in his first speech, argue that love can only interfere with this transaction, because love, as is well known, tends to make people irrational. A passionate mentor may behave in an embarrassing way in public, which would work against the gain in status that the boy wants. He also might become jealous, or ruin himself financially trying to please his boyfriend. So a cool, transactional, useful relationship is best, they argue.

Plato doesn’t make this explicit, but many commentators over the years have seen this as a description of transactional relationships in general, not only those between boyfriends. A life which is supposed to be utilitarian, commercial, and practical can only be disrupted by non-practical erotic passions.

Then remember Socrates’ second speech, in which he dialectically goes beyond what he just said before. He does not deny that erotic passion can make a person irrational, but he says that some kinds of irrationality are good. And here you have to remember what Plato means by the full weight of the term Erotic. It isn’t only sex. It is also a necessary drive toward the highest forms of understanding. So Socrates concludes that a transactional, passionless relation will be useful in a practical life, but that a philosopher must surpass this. He needs non-transactional, passionate attraction to what is best and highest. 

Socrates also makes it clear that such passion will have negative effects in a practical sense. Most people will consider this philosopher to be crazy. He will not fit well into the smooth-running utilitarian life of the city. 

So I think we can answer your OP question from Plato’s perspective. Whether philosophy is worthless or not depends on what you want. If you want to fit smoothly into the flow of society, it will not be helpful. If you take a philosophy class with a transactional goal in mind, you will not benefit. Saying “I will commit to three credit hours of Intro to Philosophy, and in return I expect to receive X benefit,” won’t work. A lot of people seem to think that taking philosophy in college will help a person to think more clearly or to be more rational. Judging by the conversations of people who have taken some philosophy in college, this certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. There might be philosophy classes in this world which have that benefit, but it’s clear that most of them don’t. 

Learning philosophy (maybe in a class, maybe not) may have great benefits, but they are not of the transactional, practical type. Expecting to get that sort of thing from a college class is not reasonable. The kind of benefits that one actually might get are not the kind of thing that practical societies tend to value.

[Fireball]

I've long had a problem with the teaching of English and History, based on the fact that I grew up in a country which speaks English, and anytime I take an interest in History, I can go look. That said, my horizons were widened thereby. Any education will have that effect. Study of philosophy will at least teach another way of considering a subject.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Study of philosophy will at least teach another way of considering a subject.

A purely subjective way.

[Bucky Ball]

Learning philosophy (maybe in a class, maybe not) may have great benefits, but they are not of the transactional, practical type. Expecting to get that sort of thing from a college class is not reasonable. The kind of benefits that one actually might get are not the kind of thing that practical societies tend to value.

When our Ethics Committee votes it has life and death benefits. They would be rather "practical".

[Pat Mustard]

I needed a credit and found "Introduction to Philosophy."  

One of the requirements for my history degree was introductory calculus. It was never adequately explained why.

Boru

So as you could calculate the results of the dreadful calculus every time it occurred.

Edit: To be serious, I would consider courses in ethics and critical thinking to be fairly essential in any course. I was fairly lucky in my course that I had a few lecturers and tutors who were of the opinion that the why and the consequences of various financial decisions and shady dealings were at least as important to impart to students as the mechanics of GAAP (business degree majoring in accounting). If I had just simply been taught the principles and techniques of accounting, I'd never have been able to see what the profession had become by the early 2000's, or how warped in thinking most economists are.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Purdue had "Communications for Technical Majors." Yep, they were trying to get nerds to communicate. I had to take it. I had tested out of English 1, 2, and 3. (Or whatever it was called then.)