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Coincidentally, I recently had lunch with the department chair of CMU's Philosophy department. Like many people, I assumed philosophy was all about (in his word
by aroman 10y ago
Coincidentally, I recently had lunch with the department chair of CMU's Philosophy department. Like many people, I assumed philosophy was all about (in his words) "the dead white men". What I was calling philosophy was really the "history of philosophy".
I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that what CMU's philosophy department _actually_ teaches is logic, and philosophy of scientific research and math, and that the majority of professors in the department are jointly appointed at other departments within the university.
I told him I think we just need to ditch the name "philosophy", and he said "you know, my department offers five majors... only one of them is called philosophy."
- thomasahle 10y agoAt my university philosophy was only offered joint with another topic, such as Maths and Philosophy or Politics and Philosophy. The idea being, I think, to make sure the thinking had an object to study. What surprised me was, as it seems for you, that they basically only studied philosophy from the last fifty or hundred years. It's not really about Plato or Aristotle.
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- bmj 10y agoI went to a small liberal arts school. The philosophy department was tiny (only two professors, one of which also taught history and sociology), and only one other person in my graduating class earned a degree in philosophy. While the much of my advanced work (400-level classes) focused on dead white guys (Ayer, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), I had several classes on various flavors of non-western philosophy, reading, among other things, Confucius, Laozi, the Koran, and various Hindi texts. I wonder about the difference between the history of philosophy and philosophy. Few philosophers operate in a complete vacuum, so it isn't useful to have an overview of philosophical thought that had an impact on your particular area of study?
- programmer1234 10y agoThat said, David enthusiastically taught us about 100% white dude based approaches to forming a foundation for cognitive science. He's a good politician but I think he ultimately believes deep down that modern western science > zen BS for explaining the world, although he claims he basically will draw from anything if it seems consistent enough with his foundation.