Anybody here a philosophy major???

jpaige · Post by **jpaige** » 05 Aug 2007 21:39

Yah, I guess the title says it all. Was wondering if any of you fellow college students were studying philosophy or considering it. Looking for fellow book nerds to shoot the shit with about philosophy, and preferably philosophical logic (my concentration)??! what fun! Or I guess if you are just interested in it, preferably analytic and not continental, and would be willing to blabber online about it sometime.

Meh....did I mention that I was a dork

james_dean · Post by **james_dean** » 06 Aug 2007 04:25

I'm pretty interested in philosophy but haven't really done any reading or whatever since school... should get back into it. I'd be interested to at least read any discussions, doubt I could make any positive input though!

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 06 Aug 2007 09:55

I'm receiving my minor in philosophy. have one year left.

Colin · Post by **Colin** » 06 Aug 2007 17:30

I've gotten a zero in no fewer than three philosophy courses. Actually, that may be a lie. I think I dropped one of those.

Philosophy is mathematics but without the answers. Study math instead!

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 07 Aug 2007 05:36

I am interested in Philosophy, but I won't be doing it at uni.

jpaige · Post by **jpaige** » 07 Aug 2007 09:54

I'm actually studying logic and set theory currently so I am essentially doing math

. I think I'm going to make a lot of philosophy related posts in my blog once school starts up and I'm back in critical thinking mode. What univ. do you go to kevin?

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 07 Aug 2007 15:34

jpaige wrote: What univ. do you go to kevin?

Still in my hometown of Missoula at the University of Montana

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 09 Aug 2007 09:17

Colin wrote:I've gotten a zero in no fewer than three philosophy courses. Actually, that may be a lie. I think I dropped one of those.

Philosophy is mathematics but without the answers. Study math instead!

I agree in a sense. Philosophy is fun, but it's meaningless, and doesn't actually achieve anything. It's just speculation. There are so many fields these days, that were once only the field of philosophy, and now actual answers are being discovered using science instead (consciousness, happiness, dreams etc.)

jpaige · Post by **jpaige** » 09 Aug 2007 14:22

I think that some area's are still very much relevant morality, ethics and philosophy of language, mathematical logic and a few others. I think its a false assumption that all of philosophy is like nietzsche and sartre talking about despair and death just sort of poetically expressing their take on the world. I'd like to think that philosophy still contributes something to the world but its a touchy issue even amongst philosophy professors and grad students. At the very least it teaches skills that other disciplines don't especially analysis and writing skills.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 09 Aug 2007 18:12

I didn't suggest that philosophy is just about existentialism or nihilism at all.

I disagree that it's important for mathematical logic. In fact if you look at the current leading mathematicians, and mathematical breakthroughs, it's maths, not philosophy, which is making the progress.

If we talk about language, it's people like Daniel Everett, Steven Pinker and Marc Hauser who are making the progress, not philosophers.

If we look at morality; it's science that is telling us why we have morals and how they developed, and the evidence of science is showing that most the philosophical arguments for why we should have particular moral beliefs is rubbish, and the real reasons stem from evolutionary psychology and biology.

bdams19 · Post by **bdams19** » 09 Aug 2007 23:48

what thread?

shreddaily · Post by **shreddaily** » 16 Aug 2007 14:03

philosophy 101:

Jeremy is an arrogant piece of shit.

agree- then you pass

disagree- then you are Jeremy, cause no one else disagrees.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 16 Aug 2007 14:23

I'm arrogant because I expressed my opinion on philosophy? I'm not the only person to hold that view;

"Well we have an established series of jokes about philosophers which I don't have to give! Essentially philosophers often ask good questions, but they have no techniques for getting the right answers. Therefore you should not pay too much attention to their discussions. And we can ask what progress they have made. A lot of problems which were once regarded as philosophical, such as what is an atom, are now regarded as part of physics. Some people have argued that the main purpose of a philosopher is to deal with the unsolved problems, but the problems eventually get solved, and they get solved in a scientific way. If you ask how many cases in the past has a philosopher been successful at solving a problem, as far as we can say there are no such cases" - Francis Crick

Conversations on Consciousness - with Susan Blackmore (pg 74 - Oxford University Press).

Francis Crick won the 1962 Nobel Prize for co-discovering DNA. He was a physicist, biologist and neurologist.

edit; Or is that attack based on you insulting me in the worlds topic, then not liking the fact that I pointed out you had simply misunderstood what I initially wrote? I'd rather be "arrogant" than stupid.