How many people here studied Philosophy and/or Religion in college?

It's close for me but I think I agree with Plato over Aristotle, Plato's cave was something I particularly enjoyed, (definitely Aquinas over Anselm and Ockham) I particularly enjoyed the Stoics and wished we had more time to study them.

 

A computer is useless to some people, a bow and arrow useless to others

I was raised in a deeply religious family. Therefore I could not casually dismiss relegion. Therefore I have studied it.

I majored in economics and philosophy. I hoped that philosophy would help me find some fundamental life truths. That did not happen quite as expected. But what I did discover is the elusiveness of truth. The history of philosophy is a long sequence of deep thinkers attempting to answer profound questions. Each succeeding philosopher would essentially do a critique of previous ideas... only to have his ideas again critiqued by succeeding philosophers.

From a technical skills perspective I learned how to write and think... which has been valuable and satisfying.

From a human perspective I learned to be skeptical about ideologies and people with intimidating brilliance... since I had studied a long line of highly respected people who had their ideas demolished by those who followed them

 

It was mostly 3 or 4 hours a week (I forget how many credits it was) of the professor being a prick by asking people questions and then playing semantics with whatever their response was.

 

Yeah the Allegory of the Cave is one of my all time favorites. I think the Hellenistic period in general is fascinating (for me, I have always been drawn to Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy).

 

Come to think of it, I have actually studied religion at uni as part of my semi-useless major in cultural anthropology. But, it was a very short course and did not really get me much apart from some theoretical frameworks by some prominent scholars. The professor was awesome though, although most co-students expressed dislike for him for no real reason at all.

 

He was an older man who had conducted fieldwork amongst the Navajo and used to say stuff in Navajo on random, creating a dramatic silence and then say "that means class dismissed."

He was a bit "mentally absent" in his lecturing, kind of like the stereotypic professor with a thick gray beard and hair sticking out to all sides from his head with a hoarse voice and cronic cough . True legend.

Studying at the Liberal Arts departments nowadays will, of course, mean a majority of female students and not just any kind of females, but rather the "you-know-whats". When these criticised him, I asked them why and the response they would give was - unsurprisingly - based on (irrational )feeling - "he is like one of those who would call you 'little darling'." Asking what the heck that means, the reply was "I just feel..." Friggen idiots! Obviously, all of them favourised this younger man who was really dopey because he was cute or something. But, they did not dare to confess they were just objectifying him.

 

I studied philosophy in highschool but I'm not from USA. Didn't studied it in college but I red some books.

 

Question: How can one act in an immoral way yet claim that they have acted in a moral way? Answer: Morality is relative to the individual ergo subjective as opposed to being universaly uniform to all humanity. What is moral to one will be immoral to another. To me the boundary that separates action from immoral action is harm and in the absence of harm I see no cause to label harmless action as immoral (Basis of my moral code). Where things become highly subjective is when we try to define harm as what constitutes harm is not universally agreed upon thus the subjectivity of morality.

The moral litmus test I use when faced with a moral question is does an action in and of itself cause harm physically, psychologically or materially to others or their possessions and if the answer is yes to any question then it is immoral else it is amoral (there are exceptions to the rule so I argue it as a general guideline). To me a moral person is one who actively seeks to live a life that avoids harming others to the highest degree possible.

 

In your opinion, is abortion a harmful action?

 

Two of the best classes I ever took. Introduced me to more than I was ever exposed to growing up. Interesting to learn about all of the different religious beliefs and how these beliefs, in many cases, influenced later religions.

I'd recommend both, especially to christians.

 

Thx for the response

Following your post...
What about when the harm is subjectively different?
A child may wish to stay out late for a special occasion
That child mat feel greviously harmed if denied
Otoh the parents may have good reason to forbid staying out late

You could adjust the situation for adults...
Maybe a worker who arrived late with a good excuse
And an employer who fires him for being late

If moral judgement is only based upon my own view of damage
Then I would point out that psychopaths and sociopaths have very skewed versions of reality
And might even think that murder causes no harm and is therefore moral

Further, one might conclude your action to be moral simply because you are insensitive to the harm

 

All I know of Wittgenstein is what James Mannion in his own book "Essentials Of Philosophy" mentions in passing.

I like Wittgenstein's idea of breaking down language and sentences into simple facts. This is also how I myself analyze things -- by breaking them down into more "atomic" pieces.

Oddly however Wittgenstein went on to somewhat schizophrenically rewrite his own philosophy in complete contradiction of itself.

Aside from Wittgenstein, I don't view word games as true philosophy. I only view them as distractions.

So I think it would be an exercise in predetermined futility to read his first book followed by his second which is a complete contradiction. But I do not doubt you could take a full semester on Wittgenstein where those two books are your complete texts. And the final exam would be a paper on which is which -- the first or the last?

I like philosophers who are consistent -- like Scruton, Russell, and Descartes.

 

@Matt84 you need to pick an avatar to go with your moniker.

 

That's funny because I favor Aristotle over Plato.

 

Philosophy is a good major for divinity studies.

Since as Bertrand Russell argues that you must keep Religion and Philosophy and Science all separate, with Philosophy as the referee between the other two, that would be its greatest application.

Philosophy also goes well as a double major with math. To be a good math teacher or math researcher you really need to be a philosopher as well.

 

Expanding your mind, and thinking about the "why" of things, is never vanity/luxury. It lets you see things from a different level, or a different perspective. You act like being poor means you have no time to read Plato. It's not an either/or thing.

 

Oh you could take an entire graduate seminar on just the Philosophical Investigations alone. I don't know if I would call Wittgenstein's work a contradiction (since he doesn't hold them both to be true simultaneously); but it's true he does leave his early work behind (he criticizes his early thought and the attempt to ground propositional truth in essential features (either externally or internally) as dogmatic - the meaning of language, he argues in the Investigations, is predicated on its use - i.e. language games - he argues that language has multifaceted uses and trying to break something down into its essential meaning is to dogmatically assert one use over another. Rather we have to look at the question(s) of what it means to follow the rules of language usage. And so on...(this never really captured my imagination like other philosophers).

By the way, if you are interested in Descartes and Aristotle, you might find Anthony Kenny's work to be of some interest (if you are not already familiar).

Personally, I find Descartes's argument in the third Meditation to be difficult to reconcile with his argument in the second: he needs an epistemically benevolent God in order to ground the truth of clear and distinct ideas (and overcome the evil genius hypothesis), but the argument he uses to get his proof of God's existence already presupposes the truth of clear and distinct ideas (I know Descartes responds to this in his replies to Arnauld, but I find his argument there (on memory) unpersuasive). Still I do enjoy reading both Descartes and Spinoza; however, I must draw the line with Leibniz (easily on my list of the worst 5 philosophers of all time).

 

Yeah, so does MacIntyre - interestingly enough.

As for me, the top three philosophers I would want to read if I were stranded on a desert island: Plato, Hegel, and Theodor Adorno (obviously).

 

I took Theology 240 as a night course at St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

I found it interesting.

 

For me ...

Aristotle, Descartes, Russell.

 

There are only 2 things I disagree with Descartes on --

1 - Animals ... they are just like people. Especially cats, dogs, ponies, horses, dolphins, and whales.

2 - God ... the best proofs of God(s) come from Aquinas.

 

By the way, I'm sure you're already familiar, but if not, you may want to look at Copleston's 9 volume set on the history of philosophy. It was written with seminary students in mind (and many still hold it to be the best (one authored) comprehensive history of Philosophy). Kenny's set is newer obviously but I find the Copleston texts to be irreplaceable.

 

Thanks for the question.

I would run the above situations by my moral litmus test by asking does it cause any physical, psychological or material harm to the child, and the answer I come to is no to all thus the child is not objectively being harmed, even if they believe that they are. Feeling harmed is not synonymous with being harmed. In life I have found that many of my perceived psychological harms have been self inflicted due to an unrealistic view of reality... just like the child in the above example.

I would see the above as a ethical failure of the employer as it would leave me with the impression that the employer placed money over humanity. Others may see it a different way thus another demonstration of the subjectivity of morality and ethics.

Thus the subjectivity of morality. I am a man with long hair and am seen as immoral by some simply and singularly because of my long hair. Does my long hair objectively cause any harm to self or others? No says I. We all decide for ourselves what is or is not harmful to self or others, again a demonstration of the subjectivity of morality.

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

The reason that I quote Machiavelli is that I try to examine morality not as I think it ought to be, but how it objectively is. My moral code is objective to me, but becomes subjective once I express my moral code to others.

 

Yes, thus my objection to abortion. There are exceptions to the rule though such as preservation of the life of the mother.

 

Thanks for the suggestion (I have heard of it) I will see how much I have to read when the semester startsand if it's not too bad