Philiosophy Major

College Majors
81

<p>Don't be a dumb ass Formidable. You seem caught up in the notion that employers actually care about what major you have. Didn't you read what Kultur Wolf wrote? </p>

<p>Plus Economics doesn't "fill that role". For your information, grad schools (especially business schools) will more readily take a non-Economics-based major like Philosophy over an Econ major (considering both candidates are as qualified in the other criteria). Get a job before you start posting useless, biased information on these boards.</p>

82

<p>honestly, why can't more people be like BIGTWIX and ehiuno...</p>

83

<p>Whoa whoa, hold the phone there, now it's really pro-philosophy here and negative-economics here, something which I plan on majoring. I'm willing to bet that there is slightly more philosophy majors than econ majors, cause philosophy is more interesting to learn. But I'm not planning on going the graduate school route, I just want to be fine with a bachelors, and here you're implying that it's not really a useful degree when you say that business majors accepts any non-econ degree first? Isn't it the same for med school that won't accept biology majors first?</p>

84

<p>If people feel that a philosophy degree is valuable and an excellent preparation for obtaining a great job, so what? Let them try. Maybe they will be great thinkers, maybe they will have a great job, or maybe not. Only time will tell.</p>

<p>I will only interject that philosophy majors do not corner the market on intelligent thought. The degree doesn't guarantee that a person will be a good writer, or a logical thinker or work well in a business setting. You can find these kinds of people in all walks of life.</p>

<p>BTW, an economics major will have an easier time in a graduate business program (MBA) than a philosophy major (or any number of other majors).</p>

85

<p>"If people feel that a philosophy degree is valuable and an excellent preparation for obtaining a great job, so what? Let them try. Maybe they will be great thinkers, maybe they will have a great job, or maybe not. Only time will tell."</p>

<p>I will say now, that a philosophy degree is not always the greatest. But a great philosophy degree might be considered the ultimate in liberal arts education as much of philosophy deals with advanced rhetoric, complex, abtract thinking, and other intense topics.<br>
It is not the best major for employment, but every major has their faults. One thing to remember is that most people do not end up working in their majors, which is why generally, a great philosophy degree can be considered a great gift/accomplishment. The intellectual competence that is sought after in a philosophy major is generally a higher level of intellectuality sought after by say an english major or Economics major.<br>
An econ major, imo, is just as good as a philosophy major depending on your goal. My goal for college is to become educated, perhaps an "elite" thinker. Economics majors might usually have the goal to become an "elite" business leader, but that is not me. (econ is definitely better than business majors though cause econ is a study that actually makes you think alot still).
I however, unlike an econ major, seek making my life the greatest it can be, by means of honing my mind and thinking abilities, whereas an econ major, generally notsomuch (this is not an absolute statement), but rather they want financial success over the intellectual success.</p>

<p>"I will only interject that philosophy majors do not corner the market on intelligent thought. The degree doesn't guarantee that a person will be a good writer, or a logical thinker or work well in a business setting. You can find these kinds of people in all walks of life."
True, but it can be easily argued that the greatest thinkers in world history were philosophers, and it would be a privelege to be able to attain the same higher levels of thinking.</p>

86

<p>"I'm willing to bet that there is slightly more philosophy majors than econ majors, cause philosophy is more interesting to learn." </p>

<p>Generally speaking, Billy Lee, Economics & Psychology are among the biggest majors on college campuses (along with Poli Sci). Philosophy isn't usually one of the bigger department/major at a university.</p>

<pre><code> "I just want to be fine with a bachelors, and here you're implying that it's not really a useful degree when you say that business majors accepts any non-econ degree first? Isn't it the same for med school that won't accept biology majors first?"
</code></pre>

<p>If you have no desire to pursue an MBA, then an economics major is perfectly fine. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with an econ major applying to a business school; business schools just tend to prefer kids who have majored in something that's not business-oriented (it's part of their diversifying the student body policy). So yea, it's similar to how medical schools will take a student who has majored in something like art history or english over a biology major (this of course means that the english major had to have done excellent in his science classes as well as the MCAT).</p>

<pre><code>"BTW, an economics major will have an easier time in a graduate business program (MBA) than a philosophy major (or any number of other majors)."
</code></pre>

<p>That's not true lkf725. Graduate schools in business are designed to teach everyone from the beginning. (That's why as long as you have a Bachelors from an undergraduate institution, you are qualified to apply for business school.) Yes, some of the material covered will be review for Econ majors, but the vast majority of what is taught is new material. No particular major has a definite advantage over the other. That's why business schools value work experience so much, because the kind of work experience you gain will simply help you perform better. And assuming you're not looking for a job out of undergrad that requires technical abilities (like the medical field), then it doesn't matter what major you end up doing in college. </p>

<p>Bottom Line: Pick what you like, because you tend to perform best in a subject you actually care about. Good grades & lots of interaction with professors = getting into a good grad school program or landing a job. Your major doesn't limit you. Trust me.</p>

87

<p>It would be very difficult to say if Aristotle was more intelligent than Einstein, or if Beethoven was more talented than Monet, or if Thomas Starzl is a greater mind than Bill Gates. You really just can't compare because there are all different kinds of intelligence and talent. Thus, I don't believe you can say that the greatest minds belong to philosophers. </p>

<p>I do realize that MBA programs accept people from all undergrad majors and all walks of life. However, I still think that a person who has had experience not necessarily with economics facts, but a person who is familiar with thinking in an analytical quantitative way will have less catching up to do than a person whose experience is in abstract thinking. Not that an english or philosophy major can't learn economics, finance, statistics and information systems, but it might be a "different" way of thinking than the abstract reasoning they are accustomed to.</p>

88

<p>As a philosophy major and economics minor, I find that my studies in both fields complement each other.</p>

<p>I think there is a misconception that the abstract or logical thinking abilities developed in philosophy do not easily transfer over to other, more practical or quantitative fields. I find that a lot of the abstract and critical thinking abilities I've learned from philosophy transfer easily to, and often help me understand better economic concepts. There are certain majors I think help develop these skills, namely, philosophy, history, math, physics, and economics. And to a great degree, I think it's up to the individual to connect different disciplines together and to integrate knowledge and understanding.</p>

<p>The biggest mistake for many people, I think, is to study, say, politics and math as completely separate disciplines with completely different ideas or concepts. On the surface, they are. But the intellectual can integrate knowledge from math, computer science, physics, history, economics, philosophy, politics, etc. together. There are connections to be made, and if you can make those connections and see how everything relates, then you're already ahead of the pack.</p>

89

<p>I must not be much of an intellectual then (and that's okay). I can see that history and politics may relate as well as math and physics. But when I was in college, studying German did not help me with Chemistry, and Economics did not help me with English. My son just finished a Philosophy course that did not pertain in the least to his engineering classes. </p>

<p>If you are saying that a highly intellectual person can appreciate and succeed in a wide variety of disciplines, I agree with you. There are different kinds of intelligence and the same individual may posess more than one kind of intelligence. But I don't see that all disciplines relate to eachother. I guess I'm lucky I'm no longer in "the pack" because I honestly just don't agree with that point, doverdemon. Can you tell me something you learned in philosophy that helps you understand Economics?</p>

90

<p>Well, I think all the traditional fields in philosophy have helped me understand economics: logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.</p>

<p>Both formal logic (symbolic logic) and informal logic (everyday arguments and how to avoid fallacies) has helped me think, well, logically, and critically about economic issues. What causes what, and what are some of the easiest mistakes made in economic reasoning? How to differentiate between a shift in quantity demanded and a shift in demand? Why is it that the price elasticity of demand for a large category of goods or services, such as food, is almost always lower than for an individual good or service, such as bagels?</p>

<p>Metaphysics, although seemingly removed from worldly events, leads me to inquire about such things as causation, what exists (and what doesn't), how we categorize things, etc. It develops critical thinking in a way similar to that of logic.</p>

<p>Epistemology is especially useful in not just theory, but applied economics. How do we know? Can we ever be certain of our knowledge? Nicholas Nassim Taleb, a mathematical trader who writes on the role of uncertainty in business and investment, is involved in this task. What do we do in the face of uncertainty? The knowledge we have or lack thereof is a major theme in economics--the idea of information asymmetry and job signaling, for example. Understanding the theory of knowledge from a philosophical perspective certainly helps understanding much of economics, even if it is not essential.</p>

<p>Ethics, meanwhile, is relevant in normative economics, but also the foundations or nature of economic systems, as well as the concept of utility. When I was reading John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, for example, I couldn't help but see the connections between his idea of the greatest happiness or greatest good, and the idea of utility in economics. Ethics applies ostensibly too in areas such as corporate/business ethics, and helps explain the importance of having law and order as a prerequisite to a free market.</p>

<p>Granted, I don't think anything I learn in philosophy is absolutely essential to understanding economics. I'm saying (merely) that philosophy (and other disciplines) are not as unrelated to other disciplines as the case seems to be on the surface. For me at least, and surely others, philosophy has contributed to my understanding of economics, as well as of other disciplines.</p>

91

<p>I stand corrected...I guess there are connections to be made!</p>

92

<p>Man, I may want to consider Philosophy. It's always been known that philosophy is an intellectually respected major. But I have parents to take care of, and my mom expects me to take care of her later on, so I don't know if I'll get a good paying job to support me and my family if I looked for jobs with a Philosophy degree. But a 4 year degree is better than nothing. My parents have always argued and worried about money their whole lives, and I feel I want to pull this family out of it. Not that I'll have an extravagant lifestyle though.</p>

<p>I can learn many more life lessons and learn and get different perspectives of the philosophers and their ideas in class though. I think I will regret that, cause it may give me the tools to understand and tackle new ideas out there or old ideas new to me, topics involving Christianity, and arguing for it. Learning about Nietzche, etc, literature, all this stuff. It could've taught me to think more critically and abstract, and it could've helped me in my Computer Science course. If I had known this years ago, I would've tried it out regardless of the bad experience I had with like half the class in intro philosophy. Man they acted really immature.</p>

93

<p>If financial remuneration is a concern:</p>

<p>(1) don't go to an undergrad school that will leave you heavily in debt
(2) consider that other 4 year degrees are more marketable and secure than philosophy (for example, nursing, teaching, engineering)
(3) remember that you can read widely and study philosophy on your own if it interests you
(4) get data from the schools you are considering and find out what the recent philosophy graduates are doing and what their salaries are</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

94

<p>don't worry. if you get lucky, the philosophy classes will take the money worries out of you. because they'll give you even bigger worries that seem to be impossible to be resolved to think about.</p>

95

<p>Yeah I can study it on my own, but can a person develop critical thinking and abstract thinking on their own? I know I've had a tough time understanding poetry when I took it, and same thing with C++, but I feel C++ is easier to understand cause it's hands-on, unlike the theoretical parts.</p>

<p>I mean can someone display rhetorical skills without the aid or cultivation of a philosophy major? I'm not sure if anyone can plunge into any of Nietzche, Kant, or Descartes works, or ideas like existentialism, or stories with philosophical concepts without hearing some perspective on it first, am I right? I would love to gain these skills to use later on, but I would mostly do that to gain the respect of others. And I don't think I should pick a major based on that. I can't figure out things on my own no matter what, cause I'll always hear different perspectives and agree with various but selective points. If philosophy isn't about right or wrong answers, how come there is debate among people, and philosophy majors stress about thinking critically?</p>

<p>Anyway, I will stick with Econ of some sort, maybe take a couple of other useful classes outside of Econ, even if it's not on the same level as philosophy. I was considering nursing, but I figured I wouldn't be able to handle personal problems that well. Engineering was a thought, but at my age, I have to consider something more that I can handle and get through more easily because I'm going to be burnt out by school. I know I'm not following the general rule of doing what you should like, but hey I'm not the only one who decided their major like me, and life can be a career change for some.</p>

96

<p>Off topic here. But do philosophers mostly believe in facts backed by proof? Does this lead one to the hard sciences and not of religion? I mean, if life was based on proof how can things that do not yet exist be proven? That is how art works no? Creating something that doesn't exist. This kind of reminds me of Plato's ideas of 'Forms' existent in another realm, and that if I recall, there were some oddly shaped objects that have not existed in this reality yet. Does this mean that philosophers do not object the idea of God then? Discuss, haha. I hope I'm not too vague here, cause I think that's what the liberal arts can be about.</p>

97

<p>Billy Lee, generally speaking, philosophers, more than anyone else, stress the importance of well-reasoned arguments and justifications. But whether they translates into "facts backed by proof" is difficult to judge. What facts are, if there are any, and what constitutes good proof (which can vary in degrees) are important topics in philosophy.</p>

<p>I hate to draw this distinction, but in Western philosophy, there is generally a divide between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. While analytic philosophy stresses the role of reason, analysis, logic, and argumentation, continental philosophy focuses more on somewhat subjective interpretation. Now this is a very crude outline of the divide, but I bring this up to show you that philosophy is a very broad discipline, and different people have different conceptions of what philosophy is and how it should be practiced.</p>

<p>A common distinction drawn in types of knowledge, though, is that of the a priori-a posteriori distinction. Look it up on Wikipedia. This is the idea that certain types of knowledge, such as mathematical knowledge can only be known a priori, that is prior to experience. Other types of knowledge can only be known a posteriori, that is after experience. The latter type is essentially empirical knowledge we gain from the natural and social sciences.</p>

<p>For some philosophers, God is not something that is susceptible to empirical knowledge. So for these philosophers, science discovers facts within its domain of empirical inquiry (namely, the physical world). Since God is not something that can be defined in empirical terms, God is outside of the domain of science. For other philosophers, God, like everything else, is within the domain of science. So for these philosophers, God is within the domain of science, and the proposition "God exists" is one that can be verified empirically.</p>

<p>I hope this answers your question.</p>

98

<p>We all ultimately teach ourselves. You can listen to a professor lecture or listen to a TA review questions, but ultimately the real learning in any subject comes when you sit down and assimilate the information for yourself. Colleges are great, but don't overlook your free public libraries. You can also find what texts are being used in a college course and buy them for a fraction of their cover price online. Some of the most intelligent people I know are not the ones who have a stack of college degrees, but the one who are widely read and widely travelled.</p>

<p>Just a thought....</p>

99

<p>"Off topic here. But do philosophers mostly believe in facts backed by proof? Does this lead one to the hard sciences and not of religion? I mean, if life was based on proof how can things that do not yet exist be proven? That is how art works no? Creating something that doesn't exist. This kind of reminds me of Plato's ideas of 'Forms' existent in another realm, and that if I recall, there were some oddly shaped objects that have not existed in this reality yet. Does this mean that philosophers do not object the idea of God then? Discuss, haha. I hope I'm not too vague here, cause I think that's what the liberal arts can be about."</p>

<p>Some philosophers don't even care about proves. For instance, our dear Derrida and some postmodoern weirdos. The world is much more complex than some philosophical doctrines. I personally believe neither empirical descriptions of the world or the a priori, or metaphysical, conception of the world will ever describe the world in its entirety. But philosophy is a sort of lens, you see the entire cumulation of human understanding inside of it.
If you really hate those platonic or post Aristotelian super complex philosophies, try eastern philosophies, like confucius, lao tzu, Buddha, and some Heidegger.</p>