When people ask me what I’m taking in university, they are often surprised to hear that it’s philosophy that I’m studying. By their reactions, I can only assume they think I must be some kind of coffee drinking head-case who shuts himself off from the outside world, and devotes his time to the pondering of nonsensical and otherworldly things. While I do drink way too much coffee, I spend most of my time thinking about the same things that everyone else does. Certainly, philosophy has intellectual head-cases in its membership, but it is not unique in this.

Since I intend to do regular posts on philosophical issues, perhaps I should explain why it is that I chose philosophy, and why I think it’s an important endeavour. To do this, I need to explain what I think philosophy can and can’t do, and what I think is its rightful scope.

While some may contend that philosophy is absolutely necessary for determining truths about life, the history of philosophy should prove to anyone who studies it that philosophers are no more likely to be right about anything. The simple fact that they disagree with each other means that they can’t all have it right. Furthermore, since every philosophical view has an equivalent in non-philosophical circles, philosophy can’t be necessary in order to come to those views. Philosophers also don’t hold some special grasp of the issues they deal with. Laymen have opinions about the answers to philosophical questions, just as philosophers do, and for philosophers to pretend they know things that others don’t is just plain arrogant.

However, while I don’t think I’m more likely to know what the truth is because I know about philosophy, it has nonetheless been extremely useful to me.

I first declared philosophy as my major because I had taken, and then proceeded to hate, nearly every other subject. They were much too specific for, and my mind is much more at home when processing general concepts rather than specifics. I am a forest sort of guy, and the other subjects seemed to deal too much with individual trees. The initial reason why I picked philosophy, then, is that it fits better with my personality, but I have gone on to gain understanding from my studies. This understanding has to do with knowing where I, as well as others, stand on issues and why we stand where we do.

It is useful to think about people’s beliefs as lying somewhere on a big branching tree of thought. Everyone has a place somewhere on that tree. You and I might be on the same branch, but on a different twig, or even on the same twig, or we may be on different branches altogether. Everyone rests on some twig or another. Too often, someone on a twig on one branch will debate someone on a twig on a different branch, without realizing that their disagreement results from their lying on different branches, and not from their lying on different twigs. To debate in a meaningful way the discussion must centre on the place where the first split occurred, at the base of the branches. When people are arguing, if they make their arguments too specific and ignore the more general principles, they will likely argue past each other rather than engage with each other. Philosophy helps in understanding the map of this tree, even if doesn’t make you more likely to be on the correct twig on the correct branch. It helps philosophers centre debates in the right places, and helps them get their points across by helping them avoid making assertions that will be meaningless to others.

Like every academic subject, philosophy has its own language and conventions, although so far I have survived my studies without knowing any more about these than I need to. I always try to write my papers in ordinary language, since philosophy is useless to me if it can’t be communicated outside the field. Not that the philosophical language and conventions are useless, but that they don’t help me get out of philosophy what I want to get out of it.

I am also not all that interested in the history of philosophy, and I find it the most exhausting endeavour of them all. I recently had to learn the nuances of the rationalists, and this felt to me like sifting and carefully cataloguing a stranger’s garbage. This brings me back to the reason why I find philosophy useful in the first place: I think the rationalists are on a branch that should be lopped off the tree. Understanding the structure of the twigs on the rationalist branch doesn’t make much sense when I think the whole branch is based on error.

One last thing I should note: philosophy is not a stand-alone subject. To be a good philosopher and to make good philosophical arguments requires that one know a lot of other things, too. No one, and this includes philosophers, has ever proved anything meaningful with the rules of logic and reason alone. An argument can be perfectly structured, but without a true premise, that argument will be useless. The premises of arguments must come from facts about the world, and go on to show some conclusion or other. Without knowledge about the world, philosophers cannot have conclusions at all.

So my answer to the question why philosophy? First, my personality led me to it. Second, it helps me clearly understand what my own opinions are and the assumptions I have made to get to those opinions, and it also helps me understand what assumptions other people have made to get to their opinions. Last, it helps me know where to centre my discussions and to better get my points across. These are more than the other subjects were able to do for me, and that is why I am a philosophy student.