Thursday, October 24, 2013

Why Study Philosophy?

Here's a nice news story from Purdue University (where, as it happens, I got my Doctorate):
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/think/pages/2013/philosophical_conundrum.html

3 comments:

Chris Johnson said...

There's always the problem of convincing a large number of people that this is the case: that philosophy really can help in every field. And despite the best argument, some people may disagree. Among the different levels of people incredulous with philosophy, there's another who are more willing to believe. I think it would be best to show the most apparently useful applications of philosophy, like good argumentation in science or in politics. Good argumentation in literary analysis is harder to convince people of as useful but it is so annoying when lit crits just drone on and on by citing evidence and purely digested philosophy.

Robin said...

Interesting article. The suggestion about detaching from writing is one I'm going to try to follow. Part of the reason I stumble on essays is that I think my papers define me.

Matt Silliman said...

Important as systematic argumentation is to philosophy, it would be a mistake to reduce the discipline to it. Logic is just one very powerful tool among several others, including imagination, empathy, etc.