| I studied philosophy about ~7~ 9 years ago (edit: pandemic time). Similar to a lot of other commentators here I use it every day, and for everything. An general apology of philosophy would be something like: > Philosophy is the pursuit of the truth. That pursuit, and the development of mental tools and models to reach it, ends up spilling out into, and enriching, every other aspect of human thought and experience. Whether you end up questioning if there is any such truth (epistemology), attempting to determine a moral truth (ethics), or working out models of correct/truthful reasoning (logic), you end up building up a robust toolset and understanding of being human. Even the schools of thought that hold there isn’t an absolute truth have a little problem in that _that_ is a truth they are stating. The point being, if you are to be human, then you must act on things being more or less true (did that person do that thing? On a more fundamental level, does that chair exist? On an abstract level, does the money in your bank account exist?). If you accept that being able to evaluate the truth of things is fundamental to operating as a human, then philosophy is a necessary undertaking that everyone practices to some extent. It is, after all, just the love of wisdom. A few specific examples of how it has been _useful_ to me and my career are: 1) Using my studies of logic to ground my understanding of programming languages - everything boils down to to binary, see “The Mathematical Analysis of Logic” or “The Laws of Thought” 2) Applying abstract mental models directly to code (see Plato’s theory of the forms and object oriented programming) 3) Understanding ethical issues with anything I do and being able to articulate them to others so that we can move forward on a decision not based on just everyone’s feelings. 4) Seeing things from the other side and arguing people to my own by showing them inconsistencies in their arguments - or by changing my own mind by discovering my own inconsistencies And so on and so on. As for the final complaint about who said what being an issue - naming is useful. It’s important to identify the source of an idea if you’re going to discuss it with others and share common frameworks (see my references to Plato and Boole above). Beyond that - I don’t know much, or care, about their personal lives. * Note: idk about the whole student debt to study philosophy thing though. There are huge advantages to taking it while in university (discussion with peers, context from professors, immersion in thought), but I can’t recommend the experience of student debt for a degree with such a low signal (for employment) and such a low barrier to entry (I.e. you can do this outside of the university as well). Ultimately I did well, but only because the Seattle barista scene was too competitive and I had to find a fallback career. |