[capitalsigma]

I agree. Philosophy gives you a level of abstract reasoning of the form: "if we agree (with Kant) that we should only take those actions which could be universal law, does it follow that the death penalty is morally justifiable?" There is some degree of reasoning from premises here, but all of the objects you deal with are things that you come into with a bunch of intuition that you never really leave behind.

On the other hand, something like:

> Given a one-dimensional invariant subspace, prove that any nonzero vector in that space is an eigenvector and all such eigenvectors have the same eigenvalue.

really forces you to grapple with an entirely different level of abstraction

[Der_Einzige]

If you get spooked by deontology in most philosophy classes, than maybe it's better to not take those philosophy classes in the first place.

This world needs more utilitarianism and less categorical imperatives...

[capitalsigma]

Kant is actually towards the top of my list of "stuff I thought was dumb before I read the actual source material but which I now have a lot of respect for." The categorical imperative stuff is a reflection of a really profound value that Kant assigns to human life.

Utilitarianism benefits a lot from having a Cliff notes version that sounds less dumb than the Cliff notes versions of other ethical frameworks, but I don't think that is the right way to evaluate ethics. Besides, philosophy class ethics is really more of an exercise in "let's construct a formal framework that matches our intuitions" rather than "let's make normative judgements about stuff in the real world."