Before I switched to computer science, I studied philosophy, and I encountered lots of people who seemed to think that philosophers had some kind of special rel

Before I switched to computer science, I studied philosophy, and I encountered lots of people who seemed to think that philosophers had some kind of special relationship to critical thinking. That makes sense in a way, but I also imagine that adherents to just about any discipline, whether it's mathematics or history or journalism, tell themselves a story like this.