Posted: Aug 07, 2016 8:03 am
Philosophy’s not so much one subject, as the asking of general and fundamental questions in any area where there’s not yet any generally agreed method of finding the answers. It seems to me that this is just something people do; to say that philosophy is not worthwhile and therefore imply that people should never question, for example, what counts as real, or ethical, is a lost cause unless there’s a regime which is seriously attempting thought control.
Philosophy is not of immediate practical use more or less by definition: if the asking of general and fundamental questions in some area comes up with clear and generally agreed answers, then that area becomes a new branch of knowledge and is no longer philosophy. Science was originally natural philosophy.
There’s a fantastic explosion of scientific knowledge going on, much of it without immediate usefulness, rather an increase of knowledge for the sake of it. To try to kill off questions outside the boundaries of science or logic (e.g. What is truth? What counts as knowledge and why?), would be to try to kill off the spirit of inquisitiveness and generalisation that got us here, why do it?
As various people have been saying, it’s not worth bothering with if you’re not interested, it would be like pushing someone to study music or literature or astronomy against their wishes. Teaching philosophy, as Thomas Eshuis and BlackBart said, is more a matter of teaching how to think, than what to think.
(Perhaps ethics is a philosophical subject which often generates lay discussion. Trying to answer ethical questions with science alone is apt to be either hopeless or beside the point, it’s difficult enough to avoid being anti-science, for example by claiming unevidenced retribution for sins by some non-human agency. Ethics, including, as tuco pointed out in #4, questions of what is “worthwhile”, is still philosophy, not science, even though scientific information is often relevant.)
Philosophy is not of immediate practical use more or less by definition: if the asking of general and fundamental questions in some area comes up with clear and generally agreed answers, then that area becomes a new branch of knowledge and is no longer philosophy. Science was originally natural philosophy.
There’s a fantastic explosion of scientific knowledge going on, much of it without immediate usefulness, rather an increase of knowledge for the sake of it. To try to kill off questions outside the boundaries of science or logic (e.g. What is truth? What counts as knowledge and why?), would be to try to kill off the spirit of inquisitiveness and generalisation that got us here, why do it?
As various people have been saying, it’s not worth bothering with if you’re not interested, it would be like pushing someone to study music or literature or astronomy against their wishes. Teaching philosophy, as Thomas Eshuis and BlackBart said, is more a matter of teaching how to think, than what to think.
(Perhaps ethics is a philosophical subject which often generates lay discussion. Trying to answer ethical questions with science alone is apt to be either hopeless or beside the point, it’s difficult enough to avoid being anti-science, for example by claiming unevidenced retribution for sins by some non-human agency. Ethics, including, as tuco pointed out in #4, questions of what is “worthwhile”, is still philosophy, not science, even though scientific information is often relevant.)