I Don't Like Philosophy Students

[Keep_Relentless]

Hi everybody,

Don't take the provocative title too literally... :)

As a few of you know I have been passionate about philosophy from a young age, however, I have always opted not to pursue a philosophy degree. Recently the question of why or why not came up again, and I ended up stringing these words together:

"Another thing that turns me off though is just how belligerent I have found many philosophy students to be, how they seem so left-brained and rigid and possibly psychologically unhealthy, how they are fond of debating without expertise, how they think it's perfectly appropriate to make sweeping statements and criticisms about major historical movements/traditions/thinkers because they thought about it for half a minute, and how they write pretentious paragraphs with obscure vocabulary and elaborate grammar, just to say something that is actually very simple, but they're scared they will sound dumb if they write things simply.
I know this is all just my experience and my irritation and my bias (I'm not fond of arguing for "one true system", I am kind of relativistic). But it makes me feel like choosing academic philosophy would be like choosing intelligence without wisdom. However that doesn't tarnish my love of the subject intrinsically."

Is this something that many here can understand, or have I been hanging out in the wrong circles?
If it is a common theme in philosophy departments to find good logicists but poor psychologists, I wonder what do you think it means, and what attitude might we need to have about it?

After writing that passage I did notice that those who want to be teachers have to be very patient about this kind of thing (more patient than I showed myself).

Anyway hopefully this was worth contributing and not a mere rant.

Joshua

[Serpent]

Precocious adolescents can be tiresome!
It would make the lives of high-school and college teachers considerably easier if children learned mental discipline - or any discipline - earlier in their education. It really is easier to guide a six-year-old through a sequential, logical deduction than a sixteen-year-old. It is much easier to show a six-year-old the advantages of civil discourse than a sixteen-year-old.
So, college teachers:
Train your student teachers to teach mental discipline and rules of order in the elementary grades.
Wouldn't hurt to introduce the main schools of philosophical thought in middle school, for that matter.

[charon]

Joshua, what can I say? :-)

(I wondered what had become of you. Keep going!)

[TheVat]

From what I recall of taking philosophy courses at the undergrad level in college, the philosophy students at that time and place (American midwest, late 1970s) were rather opposite to Josh's description - right-brained and often having come to philosophy through eastern mysticism (or "softer"western branches of thought like Jungian psychology) rather than western analytic philosophy. But, for sure, there was a segment that was more rigid, left-brained, and often strongly oriented towards logical empiricism. As a life sciences major, I found the epistemology course pretty interesting. (and also the mind/body problem, as it was referred to mostly then)

I remember being, briefly, infatuated with a pretty phil major, and turned-on by her eccentricity and very direct way of talking about anything. But she wasn't all that in to me and a stage of social cluelessness that I was going through at the time (as I suspect many scholarly people do). One of those people you wish you had met ten years later than you did, and can imagine things might have gone differently.

[charon]

how they write pretentious paragraphs with obscure vocabulary and elaborate grammar, just to say something that is actually very simple, but they're scared they will sound dumb if they write things simply.

'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.'

Bert Einstein

[Keep_Relentless]

That's interesting that it was like that in the 70s, I'm pretty sure it is not like that now. I know hardly anyone who came to proper philosophy through mysticism, which is a shame because it would be useful to a budding philosopher to have some meditation experience so that they don't identify with their thinking. People tend to come to philosophy now in my experience similar to how I did, because they honestly believe they can find "the answers" if they act as stenographer taking dictation of their thoughts.

Hi charon, as for where I am headed it looks like I will end up doing a lot of work in mental health because I have bipolar disorder (for which I am currently in rehab) and I would like my experience to be of help to people in distress and confused. I don't want to end up as an academic who works on narrow topics that are of no interest or utility to anyone else, I very much want to be active in the community.

[charon]

Joshua -

Good, I'm quite sure you have a great deal to offer. I still think you're way ahead, bipolar or not. From what I know of it, I do have some faith in CBT.