exilio said:
Heh.
Yes, you can throw around the slang, and speak of people you know who have taken philosophy, or your own initial interest in the subject and almost sound as if you are genuine. But your posting is overwhelmingly specious.
You close your post by stating my reasoning is fallacious, but you never bothered to point out where...and neither did Sacrament. Why? Because, now stay with me here, you can learn this in basic philosophy, you are commiting your own kind of fallacious reasoning my circumventing the central issue.
I stated the form of the fallcay (inductive) and illustrated over the span of my entire post how your assumptions were misplaced. If you can't grasp the central point of my short-ass post, and yet you can excel in philosophy, then I'd have to say that that doesn't bode well for philosophy being "one of the most challenging degrees out there." You assume falsely that "if I can't quantify a body of knowledge, I discount it." This is wrong. I assume inductively that since every humanities class I've ever taken--and I had a solid 240 semester units by the time I graduated, plus I spent a great deal of time helping my sister and my ex girlfriend complete their coursework--was comprised largely of kissing the teacher's ass and telling them what they want to hear, then the average humanities degree requires little more than a great deal more of the same. I know people who majored in various humanities or social science subjects and yet came out with less of an understanding of the true heart of the subjects than I did. One of the big problems with these disciplines is that there is too poor a litmus test for BS (unlike science and engineering, which are almost entirely about ways of discerning the value of you conclusions).
Now, this does not mean that I discount the entire field of study. At the PhD level, a person will find themselves having to defend their thesis while being grilled by a panel of heavyweights, the ass kissing of whom becomes mutually exclusive (ie, the review board comprises different people with different views). I have never met a PhD in philosophy or psychology that understood the subject worse than I did (though I did have a professor with a masters in psych that was completely full of BS). As a matter of fact, i'd say that the two most exceptional teachers I've ever had were my psych professor with a PhD from UCLA, and her husband, my philosophy professor, who had a PhD in philosophy from U. Hawaii. They both were highly influential, teaching me more about the nature of the scientific process and the nature of knowledge (respectively) than any of my teachers thereafter.
It is a fallacy to think that my disparaging an undergraduate degree program is tanatmount to my disparaging the entire field of study.
It is a fallacy to equate the accomplishments of Kant and Socrates to the understanding of their works attained by a premed with an undergarduate degree in philosophy. If you get a profound understanding of the subject, that's splendid--but it isn't a requirement for the degree. if you're worried about managing to complete two programs, you're either fishing for kudos or you're declaring an intention to only do the least required amount to get the grades you need. If you were devoted to mastery of the subjects, you likely wouldn't give a rats ass ifg anyone thought it was a difficult courseload.
I came in here asking if the schedule was feasible, not what your opinion was of my major. And as it stands your reasoning is severely flawed and hopelessly biased. In fact, there is no reasoning at all.
Unlike that monument of reason? Good grief. I gave you my sincere and honest opinion of the OP. However, you came out with saying that philosophy was one of the most challenging degree programs, and I felt the need to call you on you opinion, which I regard as erroneous. It's all opinion, and it's just a pissing contest. I happen to enjoy debating stupid things that have no objective, absolute answers. But in the meantime, you managed to make a great many false assumptions about my motivations and biases, completely ignoring that I was first a philosophy major and then a psychology major before switching to ChemE and MCB. My biases come from my experiences in those subjects, in addition to my bias towards having a degree that will impart some skill beyond merely giving me command of jargon that stands as an impediment towards my having a debate with an average Joe. Socrates made his points in an easy-to-grasp manner, such as dialogues, with the express intent of making his work accessible. Since that time, academia has moved towards polluting the dialogue with jargon that makes it insanely inaccessible. I find any such sophistry to be a waste of time if it can be communicated. An English major, by contrast, is trained specifically to the art of communicating an idea that is accessible--as is the painter or the pianist.
As for psych, I think Freud is a fraud, and his whole crew blows shyt. If every psych teacher understood science as well as my former psychology of abnormal behavior professor, the psych degree would cease to be regarded as such a useless waste of time--the holders of that degree would have been required to have a rigorous understanding of science, just as engineers and biologists are. But, until the collective psych departments of academia get it together and purge their faculties of the snake-oil witch doctor psychoanalysts, psych will never be respected, and the degree will not be particularly demanding.
You equate being well read with having an understanding of philosophy, how wrong you are. That's the same as an actor stating they can write a moving drama simply because they act very well...one does not necessarily mean your an expert in another.
I equate the potential to understand philosophy by being well-read with the potential to understand philosophy by getting an undergraduate degree in philosophy. You are misstating my argument.
I understand your defensive tone, you made a judgement and were called on it, now you have to defend it to save face. You have zero evidence to support your claim about your ill-feelings towardas a major in philsophy, yet you spout off as if you did.
My tone is not at all defensive, as i haven't been called on anything in any manner that means anything to me. And I'm damned proud both of the understanding of physical and biological sciences I achieved by completing my two challenging degree programs, as well as my understanding of a broad range of the world beyond the hard sciences, attained by being constantly curious, taking a large number of extra coursework that didn't work toward my majors, being well read, having a sharp comprehension of what I did read, having a range of experiences to draw upon, and having exposed myself to many contradicting views. And perhaps you can point out where in the previous post I claimed to have ill-feelings about philosophy--I can't see how I failed to support a claim if I can't find where I made the claim, and I don't see it in the post above. I have ill-feelings toward the manner in which professors award sycophants and whiners, yes, and I supported this by my life's experiences. Had I lived a million lives, I draw my conclusions from the lot of them--but I have only one. You can criticize it by saying that I'm making an inference by my experience, and that would be fine--it is one of the reasons that I qualified my complaints as such. It's a matter of being forthright. But even if my reasoning doesn't please you, it's a damn sight better than your completely unsubstantiated claim of the difficulty of the philosophy major.
Perhaps you need to go back and read some more just what philosophy is all about, then you might gain understanding. Your degree in chemical engineering, while impressive, just isn't even close to affording you the insight required to make any kind of judgement about a major in philosophy.
...and your degree in philosophy will never give you an appreciation of all majors well enough to be a definitive expert on which is the most challenging. Admit that its all just a pissing contest, and you'll have a lot more fun with this thread.
So I guess that kills this thread.
Thanks to all that were helpful. And to all else, I will impart these wise words taught to me by my father, and my father's father: "May your legs grow together and your children be born with tits on their foreheads."
Goodnight everybody!
Oh, I guess you just laid the end-all be-all of closing arguments. Congrats.
