What bizarre eccentricities are you talking about? Weird clothes and drug use? — intrapersona

I'm speaking mostly about intangibles here. And it's not just philosophy professors, either. Many professors are quite simply very strange, awkward human beings.

Many professors are quite simply very strange, awkward human beings. — Thorongil

You should check out the engineering department, lol.

In the brain, where else? — Question

You don't understand what I am saying. Try to think about this a bit deeper and more intuitively.

Your experience exists somewhere. It is arrising from you brain, that is granted and proven! Nevertheless you can have neurons fire and no one to experience it. Neurons firing is one thing but qualitative experience is another and exists in a location... here is where you need to go deeper because when I say location you are just immediately thinking "he must mean some physical approximation of a location" but that isn't necessarily so. For instance, when Neo is plugged in to the matrix, his consciousness is existing within a software OF that system. Likewise, what I propose might be a solution is that there a other dimensions in which consciousness could operate while being linked to matter.

That is drifting off tangent though, my only point is is that subjective experience is does not exist within the brain, if that were the case all you would do is open the brain up and you would see yourself existing in there. Experience is taking place in another realm completely, the realm of subjectivity WHICH CAN NOT BE LOCATED!

Qualia are what one can describe as phenomenological experience. It is unique for every individual. Even identical twins will experience the color 'red' differently; but, never be able to know the difference between how another person experiences it apart from agreeing on the social convention that the word 'red' entails what they mean. This is different than the fact that 'red' is the color with the wavelength of 650 nm. — Question

That says absolutely nothing in regard to my original comment which was that the location of Qualia is needed for proof that someone is ACTUALLY FEELING emotions and not just saying they are... like the turing test or p-zombies.

I agree, I have never met an outward and friendly engineer. They always seem stuffy, too centred on details and facts and not able to deal with abstract information or inferred humour.

lol I'm an engineer. We tend to be kinda weird but an inability to deal with abstract information is definitely not one of our qualities.

Sorry I meant abstract information in the sense of inferring from incomplete data. Errr, like they are less likely to say something probably is the case if it has only 70% percent probability. I am not saying they are just skeptical, I am saying that they don't really have a child-like imagination anymore that enables them to think about how such an such abstract ideas could possibly be true. They could take a drug and be moved to high heaven with spirituality and come back and say "nothing of it, it was all in my mind and completely meaningless... who said they needed some powerlines fixed" and go back to whatever they were doing.

The ones I have ment have sorta seemed to be lifeless drones that have just ate up atheism and haven't given it a second look.

Kind of like scientific dogmatism, same with physicists and mathematicians.

They could take a drug and be moved to high heaven with spirituality and come back and say "nothing of it, it was all in my mind and completely meaningless... who said they needed some powerlines fixed" and go back to whatever they were doing. — intrapersona

I can see myself doing that. I'm pretty skeptical myself.

But in general the engineering crowd, or the STEMlord crowd for that matter, is filled with either a bunch of hyper-religious nuts or obnoxious nu atheists. The scientism is real, any philosophical discussion over dinner is cringey AF. Yo, what if, like, we're all one mind haha and it's just like energy dissipating in one string...that'd be awesome...

A lot of freshman choose engineering because they wanna make loads of money. They're weeded out pretty quickly once they realize that engineering's fucking hard and a lot of work. Nobody pays you 60+k out of college for a walk-in-the-park degree.

Yo, what if, like, we're all one mind haha and it's just like energy dissipating in one string...that'd be awesome... — darthbarracuda

Yes any BAD and UNLEARNED philsophical discussion is bad over dinner... as long as one party is studied in philosophy and the other party is ready to listen then it can work though and can make for good dinner party. Stoners are the worst at this :|

P.S. there are two kind of people in the world, those that can extract information from incomplete data and

Not like philosophy forums at all, 'cause you're face to face. Talking philosophy face to face, if it's good, is a million times better than online.

Cliquish.

Lots and lots of readings, in-class discussions, papers, tests, oral exams, thesis defense, etc.

I'll be 50 this year, and I'm thinking about pursuing a philosophy degree. But, I sometimes wonder if I could accomplish the same thing by reading on my own, and submitting articles to peer reviewed journals. Plato, Socrates, many other ancient philosophers, and Wittgenstein..none of them received any formal training. Am I being arrogant by even thinking of comparing myself to them?

I'm almost afraid I'll lose my edge if I attempt a formal degree.

Plato, Socrates, many other ancient philosophers, and Wittgenstein..none of them received any formal training. — anonymous66

That's not quite true. Socrates apparently read other philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Parmenides, etc., and Plato, aside from reading those, was also schooled by Socrates himself! That's some pretty good training. Plato himself considered it so good that he went to require that every philosopher should go through it (this can be seen, theoretically, in his discussions of education in, e.g., The Republic, and in practice in the fact that he established a formal school for such training, namely the Academy). As for Wittgenstein, he apparently was tutored by Russell and Frege. Moreover, his time at Cambridge was instrumental for the development of his views, not the least through his contact with Ramsey. Which brings me to my next point.

One thing that I consider invaluable in my time inside my university is the opportunity to meet other academics. Much of my current research has been shaped not so much by the classes I attended, but rather by the people I met, including, crucially, my current supervisor and other logic students (having such good people criticize your work or suggest new research path is an amazing experience). I also benefited greatly from attending congresses and presenting and hearing talks, often about subjects rather distant from my own research area. So I would say that obtaining a degree in philosophy can be very fruitful indeed, for the kind of people you meet, if not for the classes you attend.

I did philosophy as an undergrad, albeit at a younger age than yourself, but found it very beneficial. And this was the case, even though I was a kind of maverick who believed that Western philosophy had generally lost its way. In hindsight, the teachers I had were very courteous and not at all authoritarian - they just asked the right questions, asked me to justify my case, even though in hindsight I might have been very impudent. In the end I opted for comparative religion rather than philosophy, but I'm glad I studied it and have learned a lot from the discipline. But, make sure you pick a good school.

I'm doing a grad diploma at a late age, and meeting a lot of grads and undergrads. I agree with Nagase, (welcome here Nagase, btw, your experience and intellect is a boon to any forum) I'm getting a lot out of the face to face meetings with practising philosophers, and sitting in on seminars where people present papers and have their careful work kindly torn to shreds by their peers. It's a terrific challenge. Even if you radically disagree with some current viewpoints, the prevailing ethos where I am is a dialogic or dialectical method, so no viewpoint is too far out, as long as you understand how to put together an argument - there are Christians and Buddhist digging deep, logicians writing incomprehensible symbolic brilliance, aesthetics folk writing silly stuff about possible worlds (ok I don't get aesthetics), people nagging at persistent unsolved problems in many fields. I do think it's the sort of discipline though where shy people might well lose out, that would be my one caveat. But getting your head round complex problems and other people agreeing you have done, that's good for the self-confidence.

Plato, Socrates, many other ancient philosophers, and Wittgenstein..none of them received any formal training. — anonymous66

That's not quite true. Socrates apparently read other philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Parmenides, etc., and Plato, aside from reading those, was also schooled by Socrates himself! That's some pretty good training. Plato himself considered it so good that he went to require that every philosopher should go through it (this can be seen, theoretically, in his discussions of education in, e.g., The Republic, and in practice in the fact that he established a formal school for such training, namely the Academy). As for Wittgenstein, he apparently was tutored by Russell and Frege. — Nagase

Perhaps it's nitpicking, but would you call any of that "formal"? How long was Wittgenstein tutored before he wrote his Tractatus, was awarded a Doctorate, and started teaching?

It seems to me that Wittgenstein was something of an arrogant ass, it just so happens he was also a genius and had some great insights.

Thanks for the warm welcome!



I don't have the details, but if I'm not mistaken he did own a lot to Frege, as it's clear for anyone who reads the TLP. And I think his Cambridge years helped him immensely to better shape his ideas; to have as conversation partners people like Anscombe, von Wright, Ramsey, and Kreisel was probably essential for the development of the late Wittgenstein. In fact, had he had more formal training in mathematics, for instance, would probably have made him a much better philosopher (his Remarks on Mathematics being infamously weak).

The point is that although Wittgenstein managed to write a substantial treatise without much formal training (though he did have some), his own philosophical outlook vastly improved after he found himself in a more academic setting, in no small part because he was in constant contact with a lot of other brilliant philosophers. So we don't know if lack of formal training was an asset or a hindrance, though we do know that in some cases (mathematics) it was actually a hindrance.

The point is that although Wittgenstein managed to write a substantial treatise without much formal training (though he did have some), his own philosophical outlook vastly improved after he found himself in a more academic setting, in no small part because he was in constant contact with a lot of other brilliant philosophers. So we don't know if lack of formal training was an asset or a hindrance, though we do know that in some cases (mathematics) it was actually a hindrance. — Nagase

That is a good point.

It really varies a lot depending on the class and the professor. In first and second year you do the readings and the prof talks a lot, because they're trying to introduce you to weighty topics that you haven't encountered before and it can be slow going. You learn through instruction, trial, and error how to write a proper philosophy paper and you probably learn the basics of formal logic.

In upper division courses the class size shrinks and there is a lot more discussion. Usually the prof does a bit of lecturing but most of the information you ingest comes from the assigned readings, and the prof just supplements in class, answers questions, or directs a discussion among the students.

Lots and lots of reading, lots of paper writing, and most classes will have a midterm or final exam as well. These can involve short answer questions or take the form of multiple in-class essays. Usually you get a lot of wiggle room on essay topics, and many professors will let you write your own topic if it is relevant and approved before submission.

In my experience, philosophy professors love what they do and it is not uncommon at all for the discussion to migrate from the classroom to the pub down the street. I learned more over pints of ale at the bar than I did in most of my lectures during second year.

Just noticed how old this thread is... sorry.

Allegedly, higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought.