Myths about Philosophy

Philosophy is very different from other subjects that are offered at high school or college.  So you're likely to come to your first philosophy class with confused or mistaken ideas about what it will involve.  These misconceptions make it harder for you to understand and enjoy philosophy and can lead to problems in your writing.  

Here are the big five:

1. Philosophers are mainly concerned with answering questions like: “Is that table really there?” or “What is the meaning of life?”.

While some philosophers do ask these questions, they also ask many others. Philosophy is best understood not as itself an area of study, but rather as a type of approach to areas of study.  Philosophers can be distinguished from other types of thinkers by their tendency to select the more foundational, abstract or formal questions that can be asked about an area of inquiry and by their emphasis on the importance of critical, reasoned argument in answering those questions.  Here is what sometwentieth century philosophers have had to say about this:

“[The aim of philosophy is] to be clear-headed rather than confused; lucid rather than obscure; rational rather than otherwise; and to be neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence." -- Geoffrey Warnock in Pyke (1996)

“The word “philosophy” means the love of wisdom, but what philosophers really love is reasoning. They formulate theories and marshal reasons to support them, they consider objections and try to meet these, they construct arguments against other views. Even philosophers who proclaim the limitations of reason adduce reasons for their views and present difficulties for opposing ones." -- Robert Nozick (1994)

The highly general nature of this approach means that you can do philosophy “of” almost anything. There are plenty of metaphysicians, epistemologists and ethicists around, but there are also philosophers of law, philosophers of science, philosophers of mathematics, philosophers of economics, philosophers of art, philosophers of language – even philosophers of philosophy.  (Let’s not even go there). 

2. Philosophy is closely tied to religion.

Although philosophy often gets shelved in bookstores alongside religious texts and self-help books, philosophy as it's done in college is quite distinct from both.  Academic philosophers don’t usually aim to develop or promote an all-encompassing “philosophy of life” in the way that religious leaders or spiritual guides do. Instead they apply themselves, in an often quite technical fashion, to highly specific aspects of a particular problem or question. They think that philosophy proceeds best when it is taken in a slow, piecemeal way. Another important way in which philosophy is very different from religion lies in its insistence on seeking reasons for believing claims, rather than taking those claims on faith.

3. There are no correct answers to the questions philosophers ask: in the end, “it’s all up to the individual”.

Students with a background in science come to philosophy trained in certain research procedures and standards of evidence that don’t apply – or at least don’t apply in the same way - to philosophical problems.  This means that they can have trouble accepting the idea that philosophical arguments can be good or bad, or that claims made in philosophy can be true or false. This reaction is nothing new. Back in the century before last, the philosopher William James wrote:

“When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared…what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar…then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! Can we wonder if those bred in the rugged and manly school of science should feel like spewing such subjectivism out of their mouths?" -- William James, 1897

But we need to be more careful here. Although the evaluative criteria that apply to philosophical arguments may be different from those that apply to scientific arguments, this doesn’t mean that they are inferior, or that in philosophy “anything goes”. Different subjects require different standards and methods.  This means that while it may well be that there are no correct answers to some questions philosophers might ask, this is a claim that needs to be argued for in any given case: it can't just be asserted as an article of faith, or used as an all-purpose rebuttal to any and every argument.  

4. You get a bad grade in philosophy classes if you disagree with your instructor.

Doing philosophy is mainly a matter of assembling arguments for some conclusion or other.  In philosophy classes you don’t get credit for merely stating your opinion on an issue: you need to provide reasons for believing that opinion to be true and reasons for rejecting arguments that claim it to be false. This means that you can receive an A grade for a paper even if the conclusion that you reach in that paper is the exact opposite of the one that your instructor favors.  What they will be assessing is your argument for your conclusion, not your conclusion itself. 

5. Philosophy is impractical.

Philosophy doesn’t have direct practical applications, in the way that studies in science, engineering, medicine, law or foreign languages do. But it does provide you with general, concrete skills that are useful in a wide variety of careers.  Studying philosophy will help you hone your abilities to think carefully and systematically about difficult and abstract questions, to construct tight and well-supported arguments for your conclusions, to ask probing questions and detect mistakes in reasoning, to defend your opinions against criticism, and to express yourself with concision and clarity.  The habits of mental hygiene and logical rigor that Philosophy provides you with will serve you well in many areas of life.

"With that cleared up, my young friend, you are ready for some general tips!"