Philosophy = lower salary

Math majors switching to philosophy? That's why a major in philosophy should not exist -- you could take classes in it, sure, but there should be a cap, and you couldn't major in it.

It encourages the worst of lazy, impetuous tendencies among the young. "Oh, I don't have to contribute anything new to cognitive science or biology, but just discuss the implications all day long? Yay, I like doing no work!"

Anything that's basically just a "book club" shouldn't count a as a major. Old school philosophy may not have been this way -- the type that produced Adam Smith or something. But these days, it's all "Philosophy of X," where X = some existing field that we won't contribute anything to (e.g., literature, history, biology, etc.)

BTW, I looked up that chick on Facebook -- her profile pic doesn't show her face, so it's hard to say what she looks like. Majoring in it may get girls, but the key question is "which girls?" The way the article presents it, it sounds like pre-Law girls... yeah, no thanks.

yeah, i tend to lean to the idea that undergraduate philosophy is just math and english at the margins.

also, i don't think of N = 1 ;-) i think a lot of people look at college like a big bar tab, so why not major in whuteva?

so why not major in whuteva?

It'll bite you in the ass later -- you'll have 20-25 courses worth of catch-up compared to the more prudent. I'm of the mind that you should only be able to major in applied math (or something like it -- physics, pure math, etc.) for the quant people, and something like history for verbal people.

Later in grad school or by self-study, the quants can pick up basic biology, econ, whatever "moves" them, and get it right away with their applied math background, which will allow them to do a lot more in their chosen field. You don't want a flaccid brain when you finally get to plow the field of your dreams.

Same is true for verbal fields -- they involve some analytical reasoning, but very little that's useful. It's mostly cramming a lot of facts and trends into your head, and drawing analogies between them (rather than analogies that are based on ignorance of facts and trends, which is punditry). And history is really good prep for that.

Everything else would be electives, to give you a flavor of what you'll put your math or history major to work on after graduation.

There's been a lot of philosophy hatin' at gnxp lately.

I have defended it here, http://www.haloscan.com/comments/raldanash/4259981410531058632?url=http…

I understand to outsiders it doesn't always look like important things are going on. It DOES have many dysfunctional and parasitic elements. But I wince at the casual dismissiveness shown by people who are self-admittedly not in a position to judge its logical or personal fruits.

raz,

Definitely a big element of math and english in a lot of philosophy programs. Big YMMV though- I'd say philosophy is probably the most widely-varied undergraduate major in the way it's taught.

The key is how many of these philosophy majors are going on to grad school, particularly law school? I'm almost certain most of these majors are white and solidly middle class to wealthy and as is increasingly the case of this demographic going on to further their education.

To be honest, as a class issue, I have not known many of the above demographic (who are not Asian)to take to hard sciences or engineering. They tend to be overly represented in the liberal arts and go on to grad school to be lawyers; sometimes architects; bankers, which are more traditional fields for them. Basically, if the field did not exist 50 years ago and it can not be outsourced easily that is where the white upper-classes tend to go.

The person who switched from math was probably bored/overwhelmed. I switched from EE to compsci to dabble in other subjects.

"I'm almost certain most of these majors are white and solidly middle class to wealthy"

It was amusing to me to see 80% asians in my compsci courses and 80% white people in philosophy/humanities.

"I'd say philosophy is probably the most widely-varied undergraduate major in the way it's taught."

Even within the same program. Although there is intersection I've noticed different locii. For example, there are theology/ethics/old style metaphysics students, continental humanities/existentialism/film/art/english types, ethics/law/political philosophy stream people, philosophy of mind/science/logic etc. I've taken phil. of art, political philosophy, intro ethics, ethics, and audited others, but my emphasis was philosophy of science and cognitive science.

The philosophy courses I did take it was because of the quality of instruction, otherwise I'd read journals/monographs relevant to other interests. My writing is barely competent but I'd always do well due to secondary reading.

I agree with others re its status as a major (aside from occupational utility). You're better off taking the good courses in psychology/history/economics/whatever and your choice of science/math. That's more in the spirit of philosophy. There's too much worship of minutia related to the positions of historical figures, and the upper logic courses are worthless compared to equivalent courses in math or computer science. The philosophy it's relevant to was written by philosophers who are also mathematicians.

I can't speak for other departments, but within cognitive psychology, graduate admission committees generally prefer computer science and philosophy majors over everyone else, because computer science majors can write your code for you, and philosophy majors can think. In fact, they'll often take philosophy majors over people who majored in more related programs (psychology, linguistics, etc.), because they just tend to be better grad students and researchers. In our lab right now, five of the six non-undergrads were philosophy majors (including me).

I suspect that if you look outside the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology), you'll find a similarly disproportionate number of former philosophy majors among the grad students, post docs, and faculty.

Couldn't resist taking the bait.

1. Philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind don't involve simply discussing the implications of cogntive science and biology. In fact, philosophy of mind is a particularly bad example of 'philosophy of X' to pick on, because it's one area of philosophy where there's an unusual amount of positive cross-disciplinary interaction. Of course, there are always idiots who don't know the science and still insist on poking their noses into it, often embarrassingly (c.f. Jerry Fodor's recent attempt to 'disprove' Darwinism). But those who know both the science and the philosophy tend to get a lot of time even from scientists.

2. "It's all philosophy of X"?? This is news to me. Last I looked, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics were still pretty active research areas. In any case, how does one propose to make normative claims about what is good/legitimate science without doing philosophy of science?

3. The negative comparison of modern philosophy with the 'old school' philosophy that produced Adam Smith is puzzling. I would say that philosophy nowadays is more rigorous and more scientifically informed than in Smith's days. That is why there exist so many subdisciplines now called 'philosophy of X' --- the 'old school' philosophers were simply too ignorant of science to make any worthwhile commentaries on or contributions to it.

graduate admission committees generally prefer computer science and philosophy majors over everyone else, because computer science majors can write your code for you, and philosophy majors can think.

Is this controlling for IQ or GRE scores, though? IIRC, philosophy grad students tend to beast the GRE like physicists do -- but what I'm wondering is, given an individual of a certain IQ or GRE level, is it better for them to major in philosophy or applied math?

Take that really smart philosophy major, have their brain absorb a lot of math and physics instead of philosophy, and they'd be worth more as grad students in any field (cog sci, econ, whatever) than if they'd absorbed coursework in philosophy.

The humanities hate at a lot of blogs always brings a chuckle to me. The ones who are loudest about it are almost always the ones who systematically oversimplify reality to the point where it becomes unwittingly funny. Hey, synthesis of facts into a coherent system of understanding is an important task, but a few history, religion and philosophy classes ought to help you figure out what to chuck out and what matters.

Myself, I switched from CompSci to Religion. Why? Because I sucked at math and coding. It didn't come naturally to me as it did for others, whereas haunting old library archives and interviewing people and writing about it did. I definately wasn't under the impression that I would have great job opportunities after I graduated. That's why I learned a couple languages and kept up some of my computer skills. Hell, halfway through grad school I *knew* I hated the wonkiness and politics of academia. I loved doing original research and writing up about it, not endless running debates and rhetorical dick-waving contests. Thing is, I think most of the people in grad school in the humanities who aren't consciously on the academic career track (only a minority are on the track) aren't doing it with jobs in mind. It's a way of avoiding a harsh reality for a few more years in an environment they enjoy doing things they enjoy. For those of us like that, recieving the degree is a wistful realization that the halcyon days are over and can no longer be put off. It's not like we're going to suffer. We're not tards. Most of us get some sort of low-level white collar job with opportunities to move up if we knew well enough to be computer savvy and get a useful language under the belt. Sure, the starting salary isn't what an engineer is going to make, but it's a living.

I'm something of an oddball in that of the humanities grad students, I was the only one that took more than the minimum math and science required for my major. Some are cursorily interested in the subject, but not systematically so. The stereotype does hold true to a certain extent, I would say. Most of these folks couldn't do quant stuff, even if they had a desire to. I can't do it, and I had the desire to. However, I would not characterize the apathy towards it as antipathy. For the most part they realize the general importance of rigorous scientific method, save some key areas (y'all know what I'm referring to here). Some areas are worse than others. As it goes, where I was in the humanities was pretty low on the bullshit factor. My thesis advisor for example had her undergrad degree in Math. Most of sociology and anthropology is crap, with every department having a few holdouts due to actually having a functional brain. English and Lit departments are divided 50/50 into political nitwits and honest folks who simply like to teach about books and how to write. Of course Gender and Woman's Studies are crap, and even most humanities Grad students chuckle at the intellectual laxity and humorlessness of those who major in that kind of stuff. Of the humanities, I would say Philosophy is the most rigorous after the historical disciplines. Most of the post-structualist crapola is coming out of Lit, Anthro and Sociology departments. Philosophy, of the humanities, is the one that has the least fear of approaching the sciences in an intellectually honest way. So in summation, if you're gonna hate on the humanities, hate on the real foes :-)

Man, this getting long, so I better wrap it up. As the converse of my observation that most humanities grad students have neither the ability or the desire to master more than the basic undergrad math or hard science courses, I think folks on the other side are a bit too dismissive of the skill sets required on the other side. Let me put it this way, I've written up 20 page papers with citations in a single night that weren't crappy rush pieces. I can make a convincing oral argument with citations off the top of my head with short notice on subject matter. If science or engineering needs the horsepower of the brain to crank out equations and generate theorems to either build a dam or winnow out the function of a certain allele, in other words to be a cognitive strongman, able to remove obstacles and tear phone books with ease and elan, then the humanities require you to to be a cognitive trapeze artist. Nimble, graceful and able to think on your feet. Both have their place, and cross-training allows you to better your natural ability, but just as the lithe trapeze artist isn't going to be able to lift 500 pounds, the strongman isn't going to be hurling himself into the air with ease.

You know what really sucks...I studied plant genetics for years, and at the end of it all they stick me with a worthless "Doctor of Philosophy" degree!

Another thing about philosophers "breaking out" into other grad school programs -- that's really limited to ones that aren't very quantitative.

You may learn lots of logic in philosophy, but science uses little of the logic field of math, using mostly the calculus-type math (calculus, differential equations, etc.), probability / statistics, and maybe some linear algebra if you're working with big datasets.

The philosophy major has so much catching up to do, that he'd have to take a few years off before applying to grad school (like I did, though I majored in linguistics, but same thing).

Nothing wrong with going into cog sci, but wouldn't people want the widest possible range of choices? You could still choose a less quantitative field -- but with an applied math major, you could single-handedly conquer most of the virgin problems who won't give up their secrets to the non-quants.

I majored in philosophy and linguistics. Whilst almost none of the content encountered in philosophy is at all useful, the skills learnt are extremely valuable. One spends one's time reading people who are wrong, and working out how to pinpoint exactly where they go wrong, and how to say so. Furthermore, one learns to do this fast. I'm now doing a masters in cog sci. I spend part of my time doing behavioral research, and the other part doing computer vision research. Research meetings proceed entirely differently when one has experience in argument analysis. This has proven most useful, and I seldom find myself on the losing side of a research policy or methodological decision.

Besides some basic maths and comp sci, my undergraduate degree was not quantitative. Rather than having to "take a few years off" though, I'm picking the maths and stats up as I go along. There are fantastic online lectures and one can get through whole courses fast. I realise that having quantitative tendencies makes me an atypical philosophy major, but some people on this thread seem to suggest that philosophy should not be done by such. Quite to the contrary, the pairing is excellent. Not only is there no chance that any one of decent quantitative/rigorous character finds themselves succumbing to the dangers of a philosophy degree (such as buying into that postmodern vomit; a fate which befalls many a poor humanities student), but, given their aptitudes, it will teach them skills they might lack, and not press upon them skills they already have. If all goes well, they will likely find themselves able to penetrate novel literatures fast, moving between fields without breaking stride. They are free to pick up the maths and stats as they like. This is not to suggest that anyone coming out of high school with some maths aptitude should sign up for a philosophy degree to the neglect of maths, but rather that very few do (at least in my part of the world) and that it would be a Good Thing if more did.

One can hopefully translate this into an empirical question, and I would be very interested in appropriate data. Work may already exist. I know none of the education literature.

Also, responding to the "rational financial incentives" comment, one needs to keep discounting in mind. If degrees in philosophy are less aversive than higher earning ones, an agent who is discounting the future might still rationally choose to major in philosophy despite substantially reduced later financial rewards. It depends on the aversiveness of the studying options, the predicted later rewards, and the discount rate of the agent in question. If this is whats going on, one should find differences in discount rates between people pursueing fun, low earning majors, and those studying the more aversive high earners. Anyone got discount rate data on students from various majors?

Spike, have you been in anthropology class lately? The domination of hardcore constructivists doesn't exist everywhere. Sensible, useful literature does emerge from sociology and anthropology, you just have to look past the occasional insanity.

Harl:

I don't doubt it. It's better than it used to be, but it's nowhere near the quality and rigor of what was being done before the 70s. I actually used sociology archives from the late 1920s- early 1960s in my research and was struck with how useful the information was compared with stuff from today. Granted, there was a lot of stuff that was incorrect in it in light of today's knowledge of genetics and cognitive science, but it was actually trying to do things like gather and analyze social data in a systematic and empirical way.