Questions About University Philosophy

[Nemra]

What's the difference between studying philosophy at university and by yourself?

What are the differences between online studying and going to a university?

Can I call myself a philosopher if I don't have a degree but I think/contemplate most of the time about life/reality on my own?

At a young age, I've decided to not pursue philosophy at university because I thought that I wouldn't get a job; they are too strict; I wouldn't be able to think/contemplate freely about stuff. For me, the internet has been a wonderful tool to freely explore, even university-level stuff. However, it would be helpful to know what I'm missing by not going there.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Nemra

[Leo Gura]

You are missing a lot of technical rigor.

If you wanna get a sense of what a professional philosopher looks like, take a look at John Vervaeke. He's a good role-model of that. You can also listen to philosphy lectures from The Teaching Company to see what an intro college philosophy class is like.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Leo Gura

[Nemra]

 

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

If you wanna get a sense of what a professional philosopher looks like, take a look at John Vervaeke.

Ok.

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You can also listen to philosophy lectures from The Teaching Company to see what an intro college philosophy class is like.

I have listened some of their lectures. I know other platforms as well that aren't entertaining like the one you mentioned.

Do you recommend physically going to a university? Is it too much different from studying online?

Edited August 6, 2024 by Nemra

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Nemra said:

Do you recommend physically going to a university? Is it too much different from studying online?

It all depends on what you want and your goals.

College academic philosophy is quite different from what you see on YT or from me. It's a rather dry and technical affair. And I don't mean it's bad. It's just its own thing.

[nerdspeak]

I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy and later switched to politics for grad school. A few thoughts. 

1. By itself it won’t get you a job, but employers like philosophy majors if they also have a vocational skill. When I worked in finance, we preferred to hire philosophy majors over business majors, as long as the philosophy majors could prove they knew some finance basics. 
2. While it gets very dry at graduate level, undergraduate-level philosophy is about learning to structure and communicate your thoughts in an honest way. All humanities degrees are like this to a degree, but philosophy is more rigorous than English or history. You can only learn to do this by practice — writing papers and I’m seminar discussion. These are active skills, and very useful ones. You will miss out on these skills if you only watch YouTube.
3. Even better than Teaching Company to get a sense of real classes are the Berkeley iTunesU lectures from the late 2000s that are still on Internet Archive. I recommend David Ebrey’s Ancient Philosophy and Hubert Dreyfus’s Existentialism in Literature and Film (from 2008, before he got too senile). 

Edited August 6, 2024 by nerdspeak

[Nemra]

@Leo Gura

I just love understanding, especially when I do think from scratch. I don't want to be in some position, but we were all kind of relying on them, idk.

Is it possible to learn thinking/contemplating deeply without going to a university to study philosophy?

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Nemra said:

Is it possible to learn thinking/contemplating deeply without going to a university to study philosophy?

Of course.

The most powerful philosophy is right under your nose. Just sit down and think!

It's free  

You can acheive more philosophy with Claude AI in one year than you would in 4 years of university lectures.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Leo Gura

[nerdspeak]

Anything is possible. The question is, will it help you. 

Whether it will help you think/contemplate deeply, depends on your definition of thinking/contemplating deeply. Really, what it will do is help you clearly articulate premises and arguments about things in a structured way, that allows other people to challenge them. It will not help you learn to meditate or enter altered states or anything like that. 

Philosophy in the US and UK (again at BA level) is mostly about learning to challenge other people's arguments and build your own, while sign-posting to communicate clearly and without being unfair. Basically, it's about learning to build argument maps like those described by Desgupta (a Berkeley prof who teaches their methods course) here - https://shamik.net/teaching/materials/dasgupta a brief guide to argument mapping.pdf. 

It's not about pondering the nature of reality or anything like that, necessarily. Of course it could be, since philosophy can be about anything as long as you follow the rules of argument. You can choose to take courses in metaphysics that deal with that, but that's almost incidental to the skills they're trying to teach you. 

You can take an intro course at a community college for a few hundred dollars, why not try it and see if you like it. 

Edited August 6, 2024 by nerdspeak

[Nemra]

48 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The most powerful philosophy is right under your nose. Just sit down and think!

I walk like a psycho while doing it. 

But your teachings were a catalyst for me. I never could have imagined how good I could get. So, thanks!

48 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You can achieve more philosophy with Claude AI in one year than you would in 4 years of university lectures.

I love Claude AI.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Nemra

[Nemra]

@nerdspeak

Thanks for the info.

I'll look into the things you provided me.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Nemra

[nerdspeak]

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You can acheive more philosophy with Claude AI in one year than you would in 4 years of university lectures.

Don't you think the dialectical process of arguing with professors and other students is useful? 

Even with Claude AI -- yes, okay, I admit, I will upload chapters I don't want to read closely, ask it to make argument maps for me, ask it to point out logical flaws, etc. 

But, I wouldn't really know how to prompt it properly if I hadn't learned the skills directly in class. And it's very hard to find intellectually honest people to have debates with outside of university.

Most people in everyday life -- even smart ones -- don't want to work hard, don't know how to structure their thoughts, and will straw man your arguments and get emotional, rather than have a real discussion. 

Edited August 6, 2024 by nerdspeak

[Schizophonia]

I'm entering my second year of a philosophy degree.

Well, automatically it's more boring, "academical". 

[CARDOZZO]

 

[r0ckyreed]

56 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Of course.

The most powerful philosophy is right under your nose. Just sit down and think!

It's free  

You can acheive more philosophy with Claude AI in one year than you would in 4 years of university lectures.

I personally like ChatGPT 4 better than Claude. Gpt gives more thorough answers and will call you out on crap. Claude blows smoke up the ass. ChatGPT can analyze website links whereas Claude cannot.

Edited August 6, 2024 by r0ckyreed

[DocWatts]

Since John Verveake was brought up, his 'Awakening From The Meaning Crisis' series on YouTube is an excellent place to start.

Good example of how one can use thier academic training and credentials to speak to people on a substantive issues outside of academia.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2024 by DocWatts

[Nemra]

@DocWatts

Thanks.

[Nemra]

@Leo Gura 

I think a good question would be: Have the things you learned at the university for philosophy, which couldn't be learned elsewhere—like technical rigor—had a significant impact on how you think today?

Edited August 6, 2024 by Nemra

[Leo Gura]

22 minutes ago, Nemra said:

@Leo Gura 

I think a good question would be: Have the things you learned at the university for philosophy, which couldn't be learned elsewhere—like technical rigor—had a significant impact on how you think today?

It's hard to say. In some subtle way, sure. But really, my philosophy degree/education was such shit. Embarassingly poor in retrospect. And I went to a pretty good university and studied hard.

University cannot make you a good philosopher. If you want that, you gotta do it yourself. I consider academic philosophy a scam. But maybe there are some better programs out there than what I experienced.

Edited August 6, 2024 by Leo Gura

[Davino]

8 hours ago, Nemra said:

Can I call myself a philosopher if I don't have a degree but I think/contemplate most of the time about life/reality on my own?

Yes you can, I did so. I wrote in my LinkedIn Self-taught Philosopher side to side with other rigorous accomplishments. 

Companies actually value philosophical skills but they want to use them for their profit, of course. I once received a job offer by a philosopher working in HR for a big company. There are many times where having a philosophical mind has given me the competitive edge in the labour market.

So I invite you to also sell your philosophical skills as part of what you have to offer to the world.

[Leo Gura]

A philosopher working in HR is like a Navy Seal working as a flight attendant.