Almost everyday that I walked through the halls of Boyer Academic building I would hear at least one person complain about their philosophy class. "It's just so difficult to understand!" "The teacher is saying things that clash with my own beliefs. I can't stand it." "All of this is conceptual. It doesn't apply to reality at all." I started college as a Criminal Justice major, wanting to become a detective and "clean up the streets" as they say. I took Intro to Philosophy my freshman year and was one of those people who complained about the class purely because it was so difficult. But when the semester ended, I was at a loss; this was the most eye-opening class I had ever taken! Sure, I couldn't understand most of what was going on, but a hunger had awoken inside me that wanted to know more and to understand it. Within a year I ended up switching to Philosophy and took every class I could on the subject (except Philosophy of Science, because science and I don't play well together.) I started to care about philosophy when I realized that it is the most important field of study for any individual to understand.
Why should you, the reader, the skeptic, the blank-slate, the viewer, CARE about philosophy? I don't intend to convince you that philosophy is THE most important field (if you're researching a cure for cancer, please don't stop to read Hume or Descartes) but I will try to give a concise argument on why philosophy is relevant to you, the modern person.
The most obvious category is ethics. Religious or non-religious, we all have ethics. As long as we live in a universe where there are other living creatures, we have to decide what is "good" and what is "bad" when interacting with others. For instance, it is almost universally accepted that torturing infants is bad, but torturing a terrorist for information about a bomb? That is an area of hot debate whether it is good or bad. If you want to live a decent life (and, if you intend to go into politics someday, have less problems with your inevitably dirty past) then you should know a bit about meta-ethics and different schools of ethics. There are the universalists (focused on an individuals actions), the utilitarians (focused on the perceived outcome of an action), the nihilists (focused on only their personal gain), etc. Knowing a persons ethical viewpoint, even if it is not your own, can turn-around an otherwise terrible situation.
Maybe you think philosophy doesn't matter in the same way that religion no longer matters. Science has become the undisputed king of explaining reality... right? Sorry to disappoint, but there are plenty of loopholes in current scientific thought that philosophers can easily take advantage of. For instance, the universe started with the big bang. This is generally accepted. But what came before the big bang? Well, maybe the universe is cyclical in its time, i.e. a big bang happens every time the last one ends. If so, then where did this cyclical universe come from? The universe could not have been created out of nothing unless we agree that something can come from nothing. Even if we assume that to be true despite its horrible flaws, we can still question just what is outside of our universe. This is just one of the problems modern science faces that few people ever address. You can bet I will post more than a few articles on this.
The last reason philosophy should be important to you, and the reason I have no regrets having taken it as a major, is logic. You may be saying, "I took differential equations. I know enough logic for the rest of my life." If that is true, then you must know modus tollens and modus ponens. If you actually DO know what those mean, congratulations! If not, you clearly don't know basic logic. Modus tollens states "if A then B", "not B", "therefore, not A", i.e., If jack did the dishes then the dishes are clean, the dishes are not clean, therefore, Jack did not do the dishes. Modus ponens states "if P then Q", "P", "therefore, Q", i.e., if Sam is hungry then she will eat a burrito, Sam is hungry, therefore, Sam will eat a burrito. There are plenty of rules of logic that apply to everyday life and plenty of reasons to study them. For instance, the dishes may have been clean but that does not mean Jack did them. A more extreme example would be "if the Christian Bible is true then God exists," "the Christian Bible is true," "therefore, God exists." If this isn't one of the most highly debated arguments in the last two millennia then i don't know what is. Hey, that last sentence was a logical statement!
I hope this entry has shown you some reason why philosophy should matter to you. If you still aren't convinced then try reading a few of my other entries. There will at least be a bunch of dirty jokes in them to keep you entertained.
Steve
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