Is a philosophy major as hard as they say?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>I rest my case.</p>

<p>Btw I was referring to the practice of tax law, not running a business.</p>

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<p>CEO’s don’t value logic in their decision making? Never whatsoever?</p>

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<p>Keep sippin’ your haterade fellas; all you’re doing is making us philosophy majors FaMoUz.</p>

<p>Oh, and I absolutely love all the “I bet pretentious philosophy majors can’t run a business!” It’s so ironical.</p>

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<p>Logical reasoning is not a skill exclusive to philosophy majors.</p>

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<p>Naw but majoring in philosophy is a way to set up good habits for thinking about situations and improving logical/analytical thinking abilities, in general. The logical part can be observed by looking at LSAT scores, where philosophy majors rank 2nd behind math, iirc. </p>

<p>Philosophy is a useful major for any profession and life in general, if not only for the knowledge it teaches but for the skills it instills.</p>

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<p>No, but unlike many other majors, it is the essence of philosophy.</p>

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<p>I don’t need a major to teach me rational thought.</p>

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<p>But you may need one to teach you logical thought.</p>

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<p>I don’t need to spend $40k ($1k/credit*40 credits) to teach me something that should be innate in most humans.</p>

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<p>Should be … but isn’t.</p>

<p>Maybe you shouldn’t have decided to pay $1k per credit. That may not have been the most rational decision.</p>

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I understand this thread is old but I’m seeing a lot of pure conjecture about philosophy. For most schools, I’m sure the introductory philosophy classes aren’t that hard at most colleges. That’s probably because most universities require a load of breadth courses to be taken regardless if they have anything to do with your major. However, get into the symbolic logic classes and you can see why many people could have a tough time with philosophy. Quantificational Logic is the basis of discrete math. I’m actually double majoring in Philosophy and Math. At times, my philosophy classes can be harder for me than my multivariable calc classes. You can argue that I may have a stronger aptitude for math but it is an anecdote of someone who is studying a subject that many people agree to be a hard subject who has a difficult time with philosophy. Also, these stereotypes of philosophers are wildly inaccurate. It’s like saying all computer science majors have acne, bad social skills, and live in their mom’s basement which obviously isn’t true. Also philosophy, on average, makes more than chemistry and biology on average http://philosophy.unc.edu/undergraduate/the-major/why-major-in-philosophy/

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Philosophy requires both “humanities” thinking skills and “math like” thinking skills. People good at one but not the other will think it is hard.

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My experience is that at the very top schools, philosophy might be the most difficult major there is. I wasn’t a philosophy major, and trying to understand and write about Wittgenstein almost killed me.