In a world with less morons, argumentative skills would actually be quite useful. People tend to forget that the point of philosophy isn’t to ask stupid questions. It’s to learn how to make good arguments as to why the question is stupid.
Philosophy degree, like other humanities degrees such as English and Psychology, are good stepping stones to other disciplines: law, psychotherapy, teaching, etc. You learn how to read analytically and write papers. Graduate school and professional studies are all about that.
But philosophy majors also have some of the highest scores in the LSAT and GMAT — the required tests for entry to law and business school respectively, according to figures from the Educational Testing Service (ETS). And when it comes to earnings for people who only have undergraduate degrees, philosophy majors have the fourth-highest median earnings, $81,200 per year, out-ranking business and chemistry majors, according to the ETS. Bar none, philosophy majors have the highest salary growth trajectory from entry to mid-career.
All views of modern science is based on some philisophical idea. All. Even mathematics. Simple things like numbers
Without philosophy you wouldn’t be able to post anti-philosophy posts on 9gag because computers would not exist.
I used to join the rabble and poke fun at people with what we thought were useless degrees. But no degree is useless. The fact that you put in the work is very important and is valuable to any employer. I think maybe minoring in philosophy along with a more widely marketable skill world be the most valuable.
I’m in public education and my degree in philosophy has been very helpful. First the subject offers the best training in reading comprehension possible. If I can half understand Heidegger (no small feat) then the repetitive bureaucracy of an IEP and word salad of admin is a walk in the park. In addition I’m trained to explain ideas to people and to find meaning in absurdity.
The real problem is society thinking certain careers are useless just because they don’t directly correlate to financial success. You can become a professor of philosophy or history or any number of other subjects people laugh at. Some people live fulfilling lives by devoting themselves to an academic discipline.
Reminds me of a video I saw recently of a young man saying that his father has been a physics professor for 30 years, and the young man says he makes twice as much as his father. The implication is that the son made a better career choice because he makes more, but I disagree with that. The “right choice” for each person doesn’t just come down to what has the highest salary.
Jokes aside, a properly constructed philosophy degree actually imparts some pretty impressive logic and reasoning skills, not to mention a deeper understanding of people’s actions and motives.
Unfortunately, part of the issue is that the perception that a liberal arts degree of any kind doesn’t provide meaningful skills often leads to students within the program without proper guidance feeling their program is worthless, which in turn leads them to not take it very seriously and perpetuates the cycle.
As someone who has a liberal arts undergraduate degree (which I absolutely did not take very seriously) and a STEM graduate degree (which I absolutely did take seriously), and has worked in academia as an instructor, administrator, and student advocate, I can confirm that most undergrad degrees are interchangeable in the job market (with exceptions for specific background knowledge required for certain fields). Nobody expects you to have all of the knowledge for a job as you walk off the commencement stage; instead, they view a degree as proof positive that you can both competently learn things and jump through the kind of bullshit administrative hoops that are unfortunately ubiquitous in today’s work culture.
**tl;dr**
In general, a degree is a degree. You are mostly just proving you *can* learn, and that you can follow directions with at least reasonable accuracy. Some exceptions apply.
A reminder that our constitution was written by philosophers. The Declaration of independence was written by a philosopher. Literally every political and social concept, rule, or law we have was developed by a philosopher. The concept of freedom through governance itself was written down by philosophers.
I personally believe that education is a worthy endeavor for its own sake. It would be amazing if higher education was readily available and not locked behind massive student loans. Right now it’s viewed as a financial investment, so if you don’t see an adequate return it’s considered a waste.
It would be awesome if colleges functioned in a way where they were meant as a way for personal improvement over simply being treated like glorified job training.
TL;DR: I went on this long philosophy rant bc it’s Sunday and I’m bored.
The consciousness that knows is not the same as the consciousness that thinks. If all you had were thoughts in you you would be like a dreamer who doesn’t realize he’s dreaming. You can simply be and therefore exist. Thoughts are just stories and identities we make for the reality we live in so it’s easier to process.
In that process though it becomes more complex, bc we continue to add identities and meaning to things. This “constant thinking to realize” is a farce. You depend on “unknown knowns” all the time in life. The phone you are reading this on has more unknowns to how it works than knowns to you. It would take more than your life to understand all of it. It might as well be magic.
We exist because we are beings. Thinking is a convoluted game. The real point of life is This, this moment, it is all you *ever* have to work with.
Rene Decarte is awesome to read up on because this quote imo is used out of context. He brings up a lot of what I say above. That quote is his answer to “what do we know with absolute certainty?” He came up with thinking but by the time he was done he realized you can not think at all and exist.
He wasn’t saying “I make myself by way of thought”. It instead was a deduction of “I know I must exist because I have thought/think it.”
Similar to the ancient Sanskrit saying of “Tat Tvam Asi”, ” Thou Art That”. I exist because that is reality, This is It. The inscription at the top at the Oracle of Delphi was “Gnothi Seaton”, Greek for “Know Thyself”.
I could ramble like this for hours if anyone wants to hear more. I love philosophy!
My philosophy degree was incredibly useful. It taught me how to think logically and attack problems in a systematic way, which turned out to be very useful when I was a technology consultant and web designer. And it also taught me theories on how knowledge is acquired and verified, which has been very useful in my career as a school principal.
Anyone who thinks philosophy is just for nerdy college professor jobs is being incredibly narrow in their thinking.
With the development of AI and a crisis in American politics (regarding truth and ethics), philosophy has never been more useful and relevant. In fact, one of the best things we could do to fix American politics is start teaching philosophy and ethics in high school.
Try to imagine teaching an AI-driven car how to solve the Trolley Problem, and you’ll start to see how important philosophy is these days. Billion dollar industries are depending on getting AI’s to solve complex ethical problems, so you’d better believe that any company that is working on AI has people with philosophy backgrounds on their payrolls.
I like the very early South Park where Kyle has an existential crisis after reading Descartes.
“I think therefore I am. Thinking is what makes me exist. Wait, what if I stop thinking? Will I stop existing if I stop thinking? How do I stop myself from not thinking, even for a second? Aaaaahhhhhh…..”
And then he just fades out of existence.
My dad always told me that philosophy was useless. So I felt disdain for any philosophy class offered at university and never took them.
Fast forward twenty years, the people who I enjoy working with the most are people who either took philosophy in college, or like to read philosophy texts. They have an ability to engage in thoughtful conversation that is lacking in a lot of people. I wish I had taken more philosophy classes. I will encourage my kids to study philosophy, if not as their major, at least as a minor or even just a few extra credits. It’s super helpful regardless of your career path.
I’ve never been more validated as a philosophy major in my life than by this comment section. 99.99% of the time I bring it up people bring up the usual, insufferable comments.
Technically, according to Descartes, you don’t exist BECAUSE you think. Lots of things exist without thinking. But the fact that you think is proof that you exist. It’s a sufficient (but not necessary) condition of existence.
It’s like business school, if you can’t connect it to a specific skill it is worthless
The cat needs more lasagna
This is our most desperate hour. Help me, metaphysics – you’re my only hope.
My philosophy degree has been very useful in my career. I can now ask people *why* they want fries with that
In a world with less morons, argumentative skills would actually be quite useful. People tend to forget that the point of philosophy isn’t to ask stupid questions. It’s to learn how to make good arguments as to why the question is stupid.
Philosophy degree, like other humanities degrees such as English and Psychology, are good stepping stones to other disciplines: law, psychotherapy, teaching, etc. You learn how to read analytically and write papers. Graduate school and professional studies are all about that.
Philosophy, like Art, is useful because it illuminates what things mean, not just what they are.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/philosophers-dont-get-much-respect-but-their-earnings-dont-suck/
But philosophy majors also have some of the highest scores in the LSAT and GMAT — the required tests for entry to law and business school respectively, according to figures from the Educational Testing Service (ETS). And when it comes to earnings for people who only have undergraduate degrees, philosophy majors have the fourth-highest median earnings, $81,200 per year, out-ranking business and chemistry majors, according to the ETS. Bar none, philosophy majors have the highest salary growth trajectory from entry to mid-career.
Yep there’s literally an XKCD for this and programmers.. about regular expressions.
Philosophy and logic is pretty good if you become a programmer.
The best UNIX sysadmin I ever knew had a degree in philosophy.
I sure hope philosophy degree teach them things a bit more advanced than this sentence that is told to high school students as an introduction
Another comic about a guy and his cat?
All views of modern science is based on some philisophical idea. All. Even mathematics. Simple things like numbers
Without philosophy you wouldn’t be able to post anti-philosophy posts on 9gag because computers would not exist.
I thought I was on /r/boneachingjuice and was looking for the original.
But Northern Lion is a bio major.
more useful would have been to use the full quote which is:
“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”
I used to join the rabble and poke fun at people with what we thought were useless degrees. But no degree is useless. The fact that you put in the work is very important and is valuable to any employer. I think maybe minoring in philosophy along with a more widely marketable skill world be the most valuable.
I’m in public education and my degree in philosophy has been very helpful. First the subject offers the best training in reading comprehension possible. If I can half understand Heidegger (no small feat) then the repetitive bureaucracy of an IEP and word salad of admin is a walk in the park. In addition I’m trained to explain ideas to people and to find meaning in absurdity.
Oh look, more anti-intellectualism memes. How fun
My favorite part of this is that the philosopher was wrong. He convinced a figment of his imagination, which did not exist, that it did exist.
Philosophy majors have a high chance of either going to medical school or law school outside of premed or prelaw law degrees.
The real problem is society thinking certain careers are useless just because they don’t directly correlate to financial success. You can become a professor of philosophy or history or any number of other subjects people laugh at. Some people live fulfilling lives by devoting themselves to an academic discipline.
Reminds me of a video I saw recently of a young man saying that his father has been a physics professor for 30 years, and the young man says he makes twice as much as his father. The implication is that the son made a better career choice because he makes more, but I disagree with that. The “right choice” for each person doesn’t just come down to what has the highest salary.
My buddy has his masters in philosophy. He now works to develop ethical AI.
Jokes aside, a properly constructed philosophy degree actually imparts some pretty impressive logic and reasoning skills, not to mention a deeper understanding of people’s actions and motives.
Unfortunately, part of the issue is that the perception that a liberal arts degree of any kind doesn’t provide meaningful skills often leads to students within the program without proper guidance feeling their program is worthless, which in turn leads them to not take it very seriously and perpetuates the cycle.
As someone who has a liberal arts undergraduate degree (which I absolutely did not take very seriously) and a STEM graduate degree (which I absolutely did take seriously), and has worked in academia as an instructor, administrator, and student advocate, I can confirm that most undergrad degrees are interchangeable in the job market (with exceptions for specific background knowledge required for certain fields). Nobody expects you to have all of the knowledge for a job as you walk off the commencement stage; instead, they view a degree as proof positive that you can both competently learn things and jump through the kind of bullshit administrative hoops that are unfortunately ubiquitous in today’s work culture.
**tl;dr**
In general, a degree is a degree. You are mostly just proving you *can* learn, and that you can follow directions with at least reasonable accuracy. Some exceptions apply.
A reminder that our constitution was written by philosophers. The Declaration of independence was written by a philosopher. Literally every political and social concept, rule, or law we have was developed by a philosopher. The concept of freedom through governance itself was written down by philosophers.
I personally believe that education is a worthy endeavor for its own sake. It would be amazing if higher education was readily available and not locked behind massive student loans. Right now it’s viewed as a financial investment, so if you don’t see an adequate return it’s considered a waste.
It would be awesome if colleges functioned in a way where they were meant as a way for personal improvement over simply being treated like glorified job training.
Sucks that he’s working as a Starbucks barista but couldn’t he make some money with the talking cat?
A horse walked into a bar and asked for a drink. The bartender asked him, “Hey! Aren’t you the same horse that was in here yesterday?”.
The horse replied, “I don’t think I am.” and POOF! disappeared.
You see, this is a play on words regarding Descartes’ philosophy about existence.
I would have explained this earlier, but that would’ve been putting Descartes before the horse.
When will this trend of low-effort “comedy” comics die?
TL;DR: I went on this long philosophy rant bc it’s Sunday and I’m bored.
The consciousness that knows is not the same as the consciousness that thinks. If all you had were thoughts in you you would be like a dreamer who doesn’t realize he’s dreaming. You can simply be and therefore exist. Thoughts are just stories and identities we make for the reality we live in so it’s easier to process.
In that process though it becomes more complex, bc we continue to add identities and meaning to things. This “constant thinking to realize” is a farce. You depend on “unknown knowns” all the time in life. The phone you are reading this on has more unknowns to how it works than knowns to you. It would take more than your life to understand all of it. It might as well be magic.
We exist because we are beings. Thinking is a convoluted game. The real point of life is This, this moment, it is all you *ever* have to work with.
Rene Decarte is awesome to read up on because this quote imo is used out of context. He brings up a lot of what I say above. That quote is his answer to “what do we know with absolute certainty?” He came up with thinking but by the time he was done he realized you can not think at all and exist.
He wasn’t saying “I make myself by way of thought”. It instead was a deduction of “I know I must exist because I have thought/think it.”
Similar to the ancient Sanskrit saying of “Tat Tvam Asi”, ” Thou Art That”. I exist because that is reality, This is It. The inscription at the top at the Oracle of Delphi was “Gnothi Seaton”, Greek for “Know Thyself”.
I could ramble like this for hours if anyone wants to hear more. I love philosophy!
My philosophy degree was incredibly useful. It taught me how to think logically and attack problems in a systematic way, which turned out to be very useful when I was a technology consultant and web designer. And it also taught me theories on how knowledge is acquired and verified, which has been very useful in my career as a school principal.
Anyone who thinks philosophy is just for nerdy college professor jobs is being incredibly narrow in their thinking.
With the development of AI and a crisis in American politics (regarding truth and ethics), philosophy has never been more useful and relevant. In fact, one of the best things we could do to fix American politics is start teaching philosophy and ethics in high school.
Try to imagine teaching an AI-driven car how to solve the Trolley Problem, and you’ll start to see how important philosophy is these days. Billion dollar industries are depending on getting AI’s to solve complex ethical problems, so you’d better believe that any company that is working on AI has people with philosophy backgrounds on their payrolls.
I like the very early South Park where Kyle has an existential crisis after reading Descartes.
“I think therefore I am. Thinking is what makes me exist. Wait, what if I stop thinking? Will I stop existing if I stop thinking? How do I stop myself from not thinking, even for a second? Aaaaahhhhhh…..”
And then he just fades out of existence.
Tooth Fairy Tats 2000 iirc.
My dad always told me that philosophy was useless. So I felt disdain for any philosophy class offered at university and never took them.
Fast forward twenty years, the people who I enjoy working with the most are people who either took philosophy in college, or like to read philosophy texts. They have an ability to engage in thoughtful conversation that is lacking in a lot of people. I wish I had taken more philosophy classes. I will encourage my kids to study philosophy, if not as their major, at least as a minor or even just a few extra credits. It’s super helpful regardless of your career path.
I’m a sales rep. I use it all the time. It helps me empathize and understand things more thoroughly.
I’ve never been more validated as a philosophy major in my life than by this comment section. 99.99% of the time I bring it up people bring up the usual, insufferable comments.
What a day to be alive!
Oh is it stem-jerkoff time again on Reddit?
These posts…😆…my entire career has been built on my philosophy studies. No, I’m not a philosophy teacher.
Technically, according to Descartes, you don’t exist BECAUSE you think. Lots of things exist without thinking. But the fact that you think is proof that you exist. It’s a sufficient (but not necessary) condition of existence.