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Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and fa

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that I had no interest in and no use for. Our history / social studies classes would be greatly improved if they incorporated more philosophy.

xor1 10y ago
Could you expand on this? I'm curious what you mean. My only exposure to philosophy was an intro course in college.
- irrational 10y ago
  What is the philosophy behind arrow functions in JavaScript? Should I just use them blindly, or should I understand why this exists and why/when I should use it? What problem does it solve? Why?! In my opinion every article about some aspect of programming should begin what an explanation of the philosophy behind it's development. Why does this exist? What problem does it solve? When should it be used/not used?
  - dbancajas 10y ago
    sounds a lot like being a grad student.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  The way I see it, most subjects in school focus on teaching you what to think. Philosophy focuses more on how to think. That's obviously not true in all cases (there are plenty of dogmatic philosophies) but in my opinion it's much more common for people to teach things like math, biology, history, etc. as a series of objective, memorized facts and formulas. Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so much of it is subjective and relies on criticism and analysis. In that regard, learning philosophy serves as a foundation for learning all other subjects, or learning anything in life, for that matter. I also personally believe there's more beauty in great philosophy than in any poem or song. There are plenty of Socratic dialogues, stoic passages, and political pamphlets that still give me chills when I read them. Chapter VI in this short book of dialogues, for example: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17490/17490-h/17490-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17490/17490-h/17490-h.htm
  - jknightco 10y ago
    Based on your comment I'm going to assume you've never taken a mathematics course above Calculus. Anything beyond that is the absolute antithesis of "memorized facts and formulas".
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      It also fails to apply to any sciences I'm aware of at the research level. Philosophy pretty much only exists at the research level, but it's also a much smaller pool of jobs than most fields.
  - tnecniv 10y ago
    > Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so much of it is subjective and relies on criticism and analysis. Any education in a topic worth it's salt should include that once you get passed the intro courses (because the intro courses are often necessary to provide context for your analysis). Whether curricula succeed in doing so, or students engage themselves enough to do so, is another matter.
mkalygin 10y ago
I would like to add that in most cases it is crucial to understand philosophy behind everything. Whatever you try to learn, if you don't understand the way of thinking, don't see a roadmap, then you don't understand a subject. In schools and colleges this is not always the case that we learn philosophy of a subject. Especially in schools. This is sad.
Stasis5001 10y ago
Math classes ramp up in a gradual way that develops critical thinking and intuition in a very small sandbox, where it's easier to appreciate the results. Thinking in, say, just the x-y plane makes it far easier to isolate relationships than philosophy, which tackles much bigger problems and gets you into controversial problems almost immediately, with no clear answers. The basic math framework is rigid and precise, whereas philosophy only gets that rigidity at much higher levels where, guess what, it starts to merge with the field of mathematical logic. Of course, a one size approach won't fit everybody.
- musgravepeter 10y ago
  To me the key point is "no clear answers" in philosophy. In math you learn to follow a series of developments, building structure that leads to statements that are true. These are the foundation for more bricks in the wall and even bigger constructions. e.g. The proof of Fermat's last theorem. My sense of philosophy - after reading maybe a dozen of the classics, was there was little that was accepted as true. Yes, there are self-consistent chains of reasoning but the foundation blocks are more a matter of "taste", and the amount of rigor in the chains varied - complicated by the fact that human language is inherently not very precise.
  - smelterdemon 10y ago
    Mathematics is also based on foundations which are in some sense a matter of taste e.g. Euclidean vs non-Euclidean geometries. IMO at a certain level of abstraction mathematics and philosophy are the same thing.
  - tremon 10y ago
    True, but that is because philosophy doesn't deal with answers. It deals with a more fundamental question, the question of truth itself. Instead of providing a framework for finding singular answers to exact formulations like mathematics does, philosophy ultimately provides a framework for exploring and expanding the limits of certainty. Please remember that the entire STEM field grew out of the questions of those philosophers you dismiss as "no clear answers": our entire scientific process (empirical theory-building) is based on the previous explorations of philosophers on truth and knowing. Similarly, both capitalism and Marxism grew out of the questions of philosophers about the structure of society. You need questions before you can answer them. Philosophy deals with the questions. Our answers to those questions have become the main pillars of modern society.
cja23 10y ago
I majored in both math and philosophy. I know many people who hold the exact opposite opinion from you, placing high value on math and considering philosophy a complete waste of time. Certainly the quality and focus of instruction is a huge factor in determining how much a student enjoys the subject as well as how much long term benefit they receive from it. I've had both math and philosophy classes that I loved and many that I hated. I think the largest benefit to the most people would come from focusing on where math and philosophy meet and overlap: logic, analysis, how to create and evaluate an argument/proof, the limits of human understanding, etc. Both math and philosophy have much to say on these matters. By focusing on both disciplines, maybe it will be easier to avoid reducing math to boring memorization of computational rules and philosophy to "pie in the sky" mental masturbation detached from all reality.
whytaka 10y ago
I agree that Philosophy is important, and probably more so as you say, but a love of Philosophy and an appreciation for Mathematics is hard to beat. Philosophy can invite discord due to the circular nature of using language to define language with the intention that this is supposed to bring clarity to our reasoning. Not to mention that the name "Philosophy" is often co-opted by charlatans to advance their brands. But Philosophy coupled with Mathematics brings a kind of calm that's removed from language and an appreciation for simple, provable, truths.
77pt77 10y ago
> and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. I guess we'll just have to completely disagree on that.
- lineindc 10y ago
  How do you even get a job as a philosopher?
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    You ingratiate a working philosopher.
    - bluebeard 10y ago
      Ingratiate, that's a good word. Strangely opposed to the word ingrate.
      - 77pt77 10y ago
        Never thought about that in those terms, but yes, it's interesting.
      - ghurtado 10y ago
        Both come from the latin "Gratia" (favor), but you can thank the extremely ambiguous prefix "in" for the confusion. Depending on the word it can act both as "into" as well as "without".
  - grzm 10y ago
    Professors, think tanks, policy research groups.
jcoffland 10y ago
I disagree. I find math much more interesting. Philosophy is vague. It's all guesses and interpretation, with the exception perhaps of pure logic. I like the purity of math. It's all a matter of preference.
- pizza 10y ago
  I feel as though math and philosophy are both logic but with differing acceptable conventions of well-definedness (insert https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/)
- anamoulous 10y ago
  Like in math, it is humbling to revisit philosophy from a historical perspective and to be reminded of the cumulative impact of simple ideas (to us) that were being considered 2000+ years ago.
- Swizec 10y ago
  I always saw philosophy and maths as the same. Philosophy is what math and logic especially looks like when you're using words instead of leibnitz notation and other modern notations. I mean, howdo you explain modus ponens without the notation? You say that not A and not B is the same as not A or B. And that's a poor transpilation from math notation to words. What if you never saw the math notation and had to use regular words? And then to spell out the proof? Oof
- ThomPete 10y ago
  The concepts you deal with in philosophy are vague, the challenge is to provide very precise analysis of these vague (fuzzy?) concepts. But yeah I don't think one is better than the other. Each provide value. I would actually claim that to live your best life, be an engineer. They seem to me at least to be living in that sweet-spot between the abstract, creative and the concrete.
  - apocalypstyx 10y ago
    Along with a increased chance of being a creationist and/or jihadist. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-explained/ http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-... http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engineers-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-eng...
jplasmeier 10y ago
I agree, but there is a lot of value in approaching Philosophy from a mathematical context (both as a student and as a philosopher- c.f. Russel, Wittgenstein, et al had backgrounds in mathematics and left a huge mark on the subject). I was a math major for much of my undergraduate career, but by my junior year I realized that I was actually only interested in the philosophy behind it. In fact, I had little interest in my freshman Philosophy 101 course, though after studying math, I realized that I would have loved to study philosophy more. As a freshman, I was enamored by math as it was this ivory tower of abstract truth. I loved learning about what math could say and how the notation worked and the notion of formal proof etc. but slogging through proofs was abhorrent after awhile and I dropped the program. I had come to understand that math was actually just the same sort of discourse as "soft" philosophy, just formalized. Learning about counterexamples to math as a "closed system of reasoning"[0] (Godel's theorems, constructive mathematics, etc.) simultaneously ruined my perception of the nobility of math and spurred my interest in philosophy (specifically analytic philosophy and philosophy of language) and cognitive science. That's where the real "unsolvable" or "interesting" problems lay (e.g. the mind-body problem). I would highly recommend anyone who is intellectually curious to learn and understand formal mathematics for the purposes of understand philosophy, but also to recognize when to quit (if ever!). [0] - I may be butchering these terms, but I hope the meaning is clear
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > simultaneously ruined my perception of the nobility of math and spurred my interest in philosophy Can you explain this? Math isn't perfect, so might as well abandon all formality? This feels like "Science doesn't have all the answers, so maybe I can find them in the bible?" I'm not sure how constructivism hinders mathematics, or Godels in the long run. The mind-body problem is unsolvable because it rests upon vague or false assumptions; It is philosophical nonsense : "communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness." https://xkcd.com/169/ https://xkcd.com/169/
joyeuse6701 10y ago
For someone who speaks of the virtues of 'the love of knowledge', you sure are picky about what knowledge is worth learning.
nabla9 10y ago
Real philosophy can't be limited to some set of tools or into some set of books and approaches that fits into curriculum. Philosophy is completely open ended pursuit. I firmly believe that philosophy without mathematically oriented thinking at the core is limiting. Teaching and studying of formal logic has been traditionally part of philosophy. In practice there is no real border between philosophy and formal sciences (logic, mathematics, statistics and theoretical computer science). Consider the problem Kant faced in Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §13. Two objects that are intrinsically alike must be interchangeable. But there are objects that are intrinsically alike and you can't exchange them. Kant was incredible philosopher but he was thrown off by looking at his hands. Left hand and right hand seem to be intrinsically same, but you can't replace one with another. Kant concluded that things like chirality and mirror images could not be understood with intellect and reasoning using concepts. Time and space were part of sense intuition. Mathematics would disagree. Spatial intuition is not fundamental building block for reasoning about time and space. Algebra, geometry and topology are. Many modern day problems facing humanity can be understood only as systems thinking using, probability, mechanism design, games, incentives, equilibrium, trade-off, hysteresis, etc. But many schools of philosopy still try to use tools and concepts that can't describe the system. edit: Several important contemporary philosophers and schools of philosophy are not are in fact limiting themselves. Saul Kripke for example. --- I think philosophy should be part of curriculum in school. But it should be live philosophy centered in problem solving and rational thought. The traditional history oriented curriculum should be part of history. History of science, technology, philosophy, economics and ideas in general is more important than the narrative trough kings and power cliques.
- flatline 10y ago
  I think this is an excellent description of where philosophy has gone wrong for me personally. I took a class in high school and found the study of what amounts to history to be rather tedious and fruitless. A close friend was a philosophy major in college and understood lots of abstractions that came from the field, but it would seem that none of them were applicable to everyday life. They were not useful or practical in any fashion. It's very much like learning the history of mathematics without being able to e.g. solve an integral, or model a problem in the real world and make meaningful observations about the model and its relation to the subject. History is fine if it's what you're into, but the other is not taught in any widely disseminated fashion and I believe people and society are deprived as a result. There are entire sub-disciplines of philosophy that are useful and practical for everyday decision making. Here I would disagree that you need a formal background in mathematics. Game theory, statistics and the like are certainly valuable, but they are still more a part of the engineer's or mathematician's toolkit and will be glossed over due to their rigorous technical underpinnings that are simply out of reach for many individuals. Rhetoric, critical thinking, stoicism, ethics, and the like are pretty approachable topics that have somehow been elided from the educational system in any established fashion in the US - and they used to be at the core of a liberal arts education. Great religious thinkers, politicians, and intellectuals have left a legacy of work that speaks across time and space to a modern reader.
segmondy 10y ago
You could make these type of arguments over and over. How about doing multiple? Math, philosophy, music, dance, cook, workout, just do the things that you enjoy, and do meaningful things. Dance to your own damn beats whatever it is that plays in your head and tickles your fancy. last year, math it was and for about 4 months straight, I studied maths every morning, then I left it and started tooling around with the piano, then I started coding, now I'm coding and tooling with the piano again. I do have some philosophy books waiting to be read. I'm living my best life. Whilst you might have no interest in math, biology or other subjects. Some people do. I do have use for math and interest. I wish I had strong biology and chemistry background, bio engineering interests me, but I can only watch from the outside.
imranq 10y ago
For me, philosophy shows the ideals of human affairs and the the higher ideals, but it seems to suffer from too many opinions and contradictory viewpoints. Mathematics gives you the kernel of the universe. Its a much finer grained tool that represents absolutes. Can you look at the heat equation and see the beauty in it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation That the heat from your laptop flows in this way thoughout the air around it. As does the warmth of breath, or body heat or the heat surrounding an open flame? And then there are logical principles that create "elegant" logical structures like in group theory, where you develop two different ways of looking at things only to find out they were one and the same all along (e.g. Lagrange's theorem).
amelius 10y ago
Philosophy, as it is typically taught, contains too much historical annotation and attribution to my taste. I want the factual/logical content only, not the "Wittgenstein said this" and the "Nietzsche said that", because it almost implies that I have to choose a side.
- eru 10y ago
  I doubt it is because there might be no such core. (Or rather, if you believe in the core, you are automatically a analytic philosopher? A school I have many sympathies for, but hardly the only or even mainstream of philosophy.)
eru 10y ago
Alas in philosophy you can't even be properly wrong.
- drinkjuice 10y ago
  Of course you can, given a set of axioms. Hey, what does that remind me of..
  - eru 10y ago
    That whole approach would just make you an analytic philosopher. It wouldn't even work with so-called `continental philosophy'.
johncolanduoni 10y ago
Why is it so hard for people to accept that it's probably a good thing not everybody wants to do exactly the same things as they do? Do you really think that if everybody focused their life on any single intellectual venture you picked, we'd live in a better (or even functioning) world? Or that people who enjoy X and don't like Y (or simply don't like it as much!) should just deal with being unhappy so you can conclude that Y is the One True Intellectual Pursuit?
- navd 10y ago
  I don't think that's the argument being made. But that by learning X or Y, you can add a lot of substance or perspectives to your life that you may not have had before. These 'things' more likely than not can bring many positives to aspects of your life that aren't related.
Nimitz14 10y ago
Philosophy is for people too stupid to do math.
gbersac 10y ago
Totally disagree. Philosophie try to find answer to question which can't be answered. It's just a lot of energy wasted in unsolvable problems. And it is far easier. In philosophy there is no truth, everyone can be right. Math is a lot tougher, and so, teach you discipline and rigor much better.
jfv 10y ago
I've heard a similar argument before but I'm skeptical. As a science-trained person with only a little exposure to philosophy, while philosophy uses rational arguments, etc., it seems like it's all too easy to bullshit your way out of. My question: what does graduating with a degree in philosophy say about one's abilities, and how can you show it? (I would argue the types of problems that an upper-level science/math/CS person is expected to solve very clearly shows analytical and creative ability to anyone with a little knowledge of the subject)
Chris2048 10y ago
> Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. Is this sarcasm? If not, can you outline "the supposed benefits of doing math" versus the benefits of studying philosophy, that are "far more applicable to most people's everyday lives"?

xor1 10y ago

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what you mean. My only exposure to philosophy was an intro course in college.

irrational 10y ago
What is the philosophy behind arrow functions in JavaScript? Should I just use them blindly, or should I understand why this exists and why/when I should use it? What problem does it solve? Why?! In my opinion every article about some aspect of programming should begin what an explanation of the philosophy behind it's development. Why does this exist? What problem does it solve? When should it be used/not used?
- dbancajas 10y ago
  sounds a lot like being a grad student.
gthtjtkt 10y ago
The way I see it, most subjects in school focus on teaching you what to think. Philosophy focuses more on how to think. That's obviously not true in all cases (there are plenty of dogmatic philosophies) but in my opinion it's much more common for people to teach things like math, biology, history, etc. as a series of objective, memorized facts and formulas. Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so much of it is subjective and relies on criticism and analysis. In that regard, learning philosophy serves as a foundation for learning all other subjects, or learning anything in life, for that matter. I also personally believe there's more beauty in great philosophy than in any poem or song. There are plenty of Socratic dialogues, stoic passages, and political pamphlets that still give me chills when I read them. Chapter VI in this short book of dialogues, for example: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17490/17490-h/17490-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17490/17490-h/17490-h.htm
- jknightco 10y ago
  Based on your comment I'm going to assume you've never taken a mathematics course above Calculus. Anything beyond that is the absolute antithesis of "memorized facts and formulas".
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    It also fails to apply to any sciences I'm aware of at the research level. Philosophy pretty much only exists at the research level, but it's also a much smaller pool of jobs than most fields.
- tnecniv 10y ago
  > Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so much of it is subjective and relies on criticism and analysis. Any education in a topic worth it's salt should include that once you get passed the intro courses (because the intro courses are often necessary to provide context for your analysis). Whether curricula succeed in doing so, or students engage themselves enough to do so, is another matter.

mkalygin 10y ago

I would like to add that in most cases it is crucial to understand philosophy behind everything. Whatever you try to learn, if you don't understand the way of thinking, don't see a roadmap, then you don't understand a subject. In schools and colleges this is not always the case that we learn philosophy of a subject. Especially in schools. This is sad.

Stasis5001 10y ago

Math classes ramp up in a gradual way that develops critical thinking and intuition in a very small sandbox, where it's easier to appreciate the results. Thinking in, say, just the x-y plane makes it far easier to isolate relationships than philosophy, which tackles much bigger problems and gets you into controversial problems almost immediately, with no clear answers. The basic math framework is rigid and precise, whereas philosophy only gets that rigidity at much higher levels where, guess what, it starts to merge with the field of mathematical logic. Of course, a one size approach won't fit everybody.

musgravepeter 10y ago
To me the key point is "no clear answers" in philosophy. In math you learn to follow a series of developments, building structure that leads to statements that are true. These are the foundation for more bricks in the wall and even bigger constructions. e.g. The proof of Fermat's last theorem. My sense of philosophy - after reading maybe a dozen of the classics, was there was little that was accepted as true. Yes, there are self-consistent chains of reasoning but the foundation blocks are more a matter of "taste", and the amount of rigor in the chains varied - complicated by the fact that human language is inherently not very precise.
- smelterdemon 10y ago
  Mathematics is also based on foundations which are in some sense a matter of taste e.g. Euclidean vs non-Euclidean geometries. IMO at a certain level of abstraction mathematics and philosophy are the same thing.
- tremon 10y ago
  True, but that is because philosophy doesn't deal with answers. It deals with a more fundamental question, the question of truth itself. Instead of providing a framework for finding singular answers to exact formulations like mathematics does, philosophy ultimately provides a framework for exploring and expanding the limits of certainty. Please remember that the entire STEM field grew out of the questions of those philosophers you dismiss as "no clear answers": our entire scientific process (empirical theory-building) is based on the previous explorations of philosophers on truth and knowing. Similarly, both capitalism and Marxism grew out of the questions of philosophers about the structure of society. You need questions before you can answer them. Philosophy deals with the questions. Our answers to those questions have become the main pillars of modern society.

cja23 10y ago

I majored in both math and philosophy. I know many people who hold the exact opposite opinion from you, placing high value on math and considering philosophy a complete waste of time. Certainly the quality and focus of instruction is a huge factor in determining how much a student enjoys the subject as well as how much long term benefit they receive from it. I've had both math and philosophy classes that I loved and many that I hated. I think the largest benefit to the most people would come from focusing on where math and philosophy meet and overlap: logic, analysis, how to create and evaluate an argument/proof, the limits of human understanding, etc. Both math and philosophy have much to say on these matters. By focusing on both disciplines, maybe it will be easier to avoid reducing math to boring memorization of computational rules and philosophy to "pie in the sky" mental masturbation detached from all reality.

whytaka 10y ago

I agree that Philosophy is important, and probably more so as you say, but a love of Philosophy and an appreciation for Mathematics is hard to beat. Philosophy can invite discord due to the circular nature of using language to define language with the intention that this is supposed to bring clarity to our reasoning. Not to mention that the name "Philosophy" is often co-opted by charlatans to advance their brands. But Philosophy coupled with Mathematics brings a kind of calm that's removed from language and an appreciation for simple, provable, truths.

77pt77 10y ago

> and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. I guess we'll just have to completely disagree on that.

lineindc 10y ago
How do you even get a job as a philosopher?
- 77pt77 10y ago
  You ingratiate a working philosopher.
  - bluebeard 10y ago
    Ingratiate, that's a good word. Strangely opposed to the word ingrate.
    - 77pt77 10y ago
      Never thought about that in those terms, but yes, it's interesting.
    - ghurtado 10y ago
      Both come from the latin "Gratia" (favor), but you can thank the extremely ambiguous prefix "in" for the confusion. Depending on the word it can act both as "into" as well as "without".
- grzm 10y ago
  Professors, think tanks, policy research groups.

jcoffland 10y ago

I disagree. I find math much more interesting. Philosophy is vague. It's all guesses and interpretation, with the exception perhaps of pure logic. I like the purity of math. It's all a matter of preference.

pizza 10y ago
I feel as though math and philosophy are both logic but with differing acceptable conventions of well-definedness (insert https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/)
anamoulous 10y ago
Like in math, it is humbling to revisit philosophy from a historical perspective and to be reminded of the cumulative impact of simple ideas (to us) that were being considered 2000+ years ago.
Swizec 10y ago
I always saw philosophy and maths as the same. Philosophy is what math and logic especially looks like when you're using words instead of leibnitz notation and other modern notations. I mean, howdo you explain modus ponens without the notation? You say that not A and not B is the same as not A or B. And that's a poor transpilation from math notation to words. What if you never saw the math notation and had to use regular words? And then to spell out the proof? Oof
ThomPete 10y ago
The concepts you deal with in philosophy are vague, the challenge is to provide very precise analysis of these vague (fuzzy?) concepts. But yeah I don't think one is better than the other. Each provide value. I would actually claim that to live your best life, be an engineer. They seem to me at least to be living in that sweet-spot between the abstract, creative and the concrete.
- apocalypstyx 10y ago
  Along with a increased chance of being a creationist and/or jihadist. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-explained/ http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-... http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engineers-and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-eng...

jplasmeier 10y ago

I agree, but there is a lot of value in approaching Philosophy from a mathematical context (both as a student and as a philosopher- c.f. Russel, Wittgenstein, et al had backgrounds in mathematics and left a huge mark on the subject). I was a math major for much of my undergraduate career, but by my junior year I realized that I was actually only interested in the philosophy behind it. In fact, I had little interest in my freshman Philosophy 101 course, though after studying math, I realized that I would have loved to study philosophy more. As a freshman, I was enamored by math as it was this ivory tower of abstract truth. I loved learning about what math could say and how the notation worked and the notion of formal proof etc. but slogging through proofs was abhorrent after awhile and I dropped the program. I had come to understand that math was actually just the same sort of discourse as "soft" philosophy, just formalized. Learning about counterexamples to math as a "closed system of reasoning"[0] (Godel's theorems, constructive mathematics, etc.) simultaneously ruined my perception of the nobility of math and spurred my interest in philosophy (specifically analytic philosophy and philosophy of language) and cognitive science. That's where the real "unsolvable" or "interesting" problems lay (e.g. the mind-body problem). I would highly recommend anyone who is intellectually curious to learn and understand formal mathematics for the purposes of understand philosophy, but also to recognize when to quit (if ever!). [0] - I may be butchering these terms, but I hope the meaning is clear

Chris2048 10y ago
> simultaneously ruined my perception of the nobility of math and spurred my interest in philosophy Can you explain this? Math isn't perfect, so might as well abandon all formality? This feels like "Science doesn't have all the answers, so maybe I can find them in the bible?" I'm not sure how constructivism hinders mathematics, or Godels in the long run. The mind-body problem is unsolvable because it rests upon vague or false assumptions; It is philosophical nonsense : "communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness." https://xkcd.com/169/ https://xkcd.com/169/

joyeuse6701 10y ago

For someone who speaks of the virtues of 'the love of knowledge', you sure are picky about what knowledge is worth learning.

nabla9 10y ago

Real philosophy can't be limited to some set of tools or into some set of books and approaches that fits into curriculum. Philosophy is completely open ended pursuit. I firmly believe that philosophy without mathematically oriented thinking at the core is limiting. Teaching and studying of formal logic has been traditionally part of philosophy. In practice there is no real border between philosophy and formal sciences (logic, mathematics, statistics and theoretical computer science). Consider the problem Kant faced in Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §13. Two objects that are intrinsically alike must be interchangeable. But there are objects that are intrinsically alike and you can't exchange them. Kant was incredible philosopher but he was thrown off by looking at his hands. Left hand and right hand seem to be intrinsically same, but you can't replace one with another. Kant concluded that things like chirality and mirror images could not be understood with intellect and reasoning using concepts. Time and space were part of sense intuition. Mathematics would disagree. Spatial intuition is not fundamental building block for reasoning about time and space. Algebra, geometry and topology are. Many modern day problems facing humanity can be understood only as systems thinking using, probability, mechanism design, games, incentives, equilibrium, trade-off, hysteresis, etc. But many schools of philosopy still try to use tools and concepts that can't describe the system. edit: Several important contemporary philosophers and schools of philosophy are not are in fact limiting themselves. Saul Kripke for example. --- I think philosophy should be part of curriculum in school. But it should be live philosophy centered in problem solving and rational thought. The traditional history oriented curriculum should be part of history. History of science, technology, philosophy, economics and ideas in general is more important than the narrative trough kings and power cliques.

flatline 10y ago
I think this is an excellent description of where philosophy has gone wrong for me personally. I took a class in high school and found the study of what amounts to history to be rather tedious and fruitless. A close friend was a philosophy major in college and understood lots of abstractions that came from the field, but it would seem that none of them were applicable to everyday life. They were not useful or practical in any fashion. It's very much like learning the history of mathematics without being able to e.g. solve an integral, or model a problem in the real world and make meaningful observations about the model and its relation to the subject. History is fine if it's what you're into, but the other is not taught in any widely disseminated fashion and I believe people and society are deprived as a result. There are entire sub-disciplines of philosophy that are useful and practical for everyday decision making. Here I would disagree that you need a formal background in mathematics. Game theory, statistics and the like are certainly valuable, but they are still more a part of the engineer's or mathematician's toolkit and will be glossed over due to their rigorous technical underpinnings that are simply out of reach for many individuals. Rhetoric, critical thinking, stoicism, ethics, and the like are pretty approachable topics that have somehow been elided from the educational system in any established fashion in the US - and they used to be at the core of a liberal arts education. Great religious thinkers, politicians, and intellectuals have left a legacy of work that speaks across time and space to a modern reader.

segmondy 10y ago

You could make these type of arguments over and over. How about doing multiple? Math, philosophy, music, dance, cook, workout, just do the things that you enjoy, and do meaningful things. Dance to your own damn beats whatever it is that plays in your head and tickles your fancy. last year, math it was and for about 4 months straight, I studied maths every morning, then I left it and started tooling around with the piano, then I started coding, now I'm coding and tooling with the piano again. I do have some philosophy books waiting to be read. I'm living my best life. Whilst you might have no interest in math, biology or other subjects. Some people do. I do have use for math and interest. I wish I had strong biology and chemistry background, bio engineering interests me, but I can only watch from the outside.

imranq 10y ago

For me, philosophy shows the ideals of human affairs and the the higher ideals, but it seems to suffer from too many opinions and contradictory viewpoints. Mathematics gives you the kernel of the universe. Its a much finer grained tool that represents absolutes. Can you look at the heat equation and see the beauty in it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation That the heat from your laptop flows in this way thoughout the air around it. As does the warmth of breath, or body heat or the heat surrounding an open flame? And then there are logical principles that create "elegant" logical structures like in group theory, where you develop two different ways of looking at things only to find out they were one and the same all along (e.g. Lagrange's theorem).

amelius 10y ago

Philosophy, as it is typically taught, contains too much historical annotation and attribution to my taste. I want the factual/logical content only, not the "Wittgenstein said this" and the "Nietzsche said that", because it almost implies that I have to choose a side.

eru 10y ago
I doubt it is because there might be no such core. (Or rather, if you believe in the core, you are automatically a analytic philosopher? A school I have many sympathies for, but hardly the only or even mainstream of philosophy.)

eru 10y ago

Alas in philosophy you can't even be properly wrong.

drinkjuice 10y ago
Of course you can, given a set of axioms. Hey, what does that remind me of..
- eru 10y ago
  That whole approach would just make you an analytic philosopher. It wouldn't even work with so-called `continental philosophy'.

johncolanduoni 10y ago

Why is it so hard for people to accept that it's probably a good thing not everybody wants to do exactly the same things as they do? Do you really think that if everybody focused their life on any single intellectual venture you picked, we'd live in a better (or even functioning) world? Or that people who enjoy X and don't like Y (or simply don't like it as much!) should just deal with being unhappy so you can conclude that Y is the One True Intellectual Pursuit?

navd 10y ago
I don't think that's the argument being made. But that by learning X or Y, you can add a lot of substance or perspectives to your life that you may not have had before. These 'things' more likely than not can bring many positives to aspects of your life that aren't related.

Nimitz14 10y ago

Philosophy is for people too stupid to do math.

gbersac 10y ago

Totally disagree. Philosophie try to find answer to question which can't be answered. It's just a lot of energy wasted in unsolvable problems. And it is far easier. In philosophy there is no truth, everyone can be right. Math is a lot tougher, and so, teach you discipline and rigor much better.

jfv 10y ago

I've heard a similar argument before but I'm skeptical. As a science-trained person with only a little exposure to philosophy, while philosophy uses rational arguments, etc., it seems like it's all too easy to bullshit your way out of. My question: what does graduating with a degree in philosophy say about one's abilities, and how can you show it? (I would argue the types of problems that an upper-level science/math/CS person is expected to solve very clearly shows analytical and creative ability to anyone with a little knowledge of the subject)

Chris2048 10y ago

> Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. Is this sarcasm? If not, can you outline "the supposed benefits of doing math" versus the benefits of studying philosophy, that are "far more applicable to most people's everyday lives"?