I have two degrees in philosophy. I quit my PhD with an MA after I realized academic life wasn’t for me.
When people find this out about me… they rarely react positivity anymore. Most are confused, some look upset, others get defensive or crack cliche jokes about how I got a job with a useless degree like that or if I work at McDonalds.
It seems to have gotten way worse the past few years. In my late 20s/early 30s people seemed to react a lot more positively to this fact about my life? People would ask me about it and why I did it and what I studied specifically. I really liked those conversations.
I feel naive as to why philosophy is so controversial for the average person, anymore than English or History is? I really enjoyed my studies and still do them as a hobby now.
yeah which is why i advocate everyone should study it at least a little. just leaving it to go without discussion or serious analysis just leads to anti-intellectualism and eventually fascism, but centralizing it just gives fascists a focus point to concentrate on getting into power. it’s a tough balance to strike. but the basics to me is, as someone who studied ethics, we need to be having conversations about ethics all the time because if we don’t, then moral relativists will justify genocide, rape, and whatever horrible shit they as individuals find acceptable.
we both agree that more left and more everyone is better, but i think we need to get everyone actively involved rather that passively involved
But that’s not advocating for everyone studying. It’s advocating for everyone being taught it. By a teacher. That implies that there would be a specific curriculum. And that curriculum will follow a specific dogma.
With other subjects you can have neutral teachings. Math is math. Others may be more complicated, like history, but there’s some degree of neutrality to be found
With ethics I think is inherently impossible to teach it on a neutral way. You would need to teach some particular set of ethics. And there’s not a scientific way to describe a set of ethic norms as the right one. Quoting Professor Farnsworth “Science have not prove that human life is important”. A set of ethics would be chosen as the correct one, and it will be taught by a teacher that will most likely come from a particular political scene. And even while agreeing with that political school of thought, I see great dangers in trying to officially push it as the correct one.
I remember in my school years. I had both religion subject (because it was a religious school) and moral subject (a subject mandated in school curriculum by the government). And it was just wrong, trying to push things like that into children (or adults) even if it was good (moral subject curriculum was written by a left wing government).
I think the members of society should conclude to the best ethical norms, not by indoctrination, but by experience. It should be the set of norms that they would see better for their experience in the society. Thus the way to “teach” people about the ethics we see as good is building a good society with those ethics. Basically teach by experience.
you don’t have to teach a particular set of ethics. you teach a framework of analysis and then analyze some systems. you’re still mixing morality with ethics, which is fair, they’re related. basically i’m advocating to teach kids to question every authority with a critical lens. but this hasn’t anything to do with religion, norms, or adopting a pre-existing system, but about teaching how to analyze systems
That is fair. And a sensible part of a school age curriculum (already included in my country, that’s included in philosophy mandatory courses). But I don’t see it having a extension to be included “everywhere”, once taught in school is taught. I won’t see a point continuing that formation in universities, same as I won’t see why someone studying history should have an algebra course in university.
where i am, the united states, serious analysis of philosophy and ethics doesn’t enter your curriculum until you are in college and studying either at a liberal arts school where even the engineers have to study the humanities, or you are majoring in one of the liberal arts. so i’m a little jealous of your outlook right now 😂
that’s where our status comes from teaching history majors math: it’s their first time learning it many times even though many places algebra was covered in middle school. our primary educations don’t start until adulthood here and we’re constantly behind, and those critical thinking courses are elective with it being totally fine to drop out of highschool up to 6 years before you ever would have been expected to be exposed to it.
and as long as that’s possible in one county, it’s possible in any country. our oppressors want us stupid, so talk to a kid today about identifying how someone else is justifying what right and wrong is today!