/philosophy/ - Philosophy

As long as he doesn't exploit the ontological proof of God then what can go wrong?

>>291

>If at any point during his argumentation you disagree with him (with reasons of your own) you are obliged to ask him to either back his claim up some more

>he doesn't know about infinite regress

Philosophy classes are a shit stain.

You either have a professor that only throws a bibliography that you could easily find on your own while he gives obvious commentary for the slow ones or some bullshitter like OP's.

But the worst ones are surely the "Socratic" asshats who think that forcing people to "debate", while he makes banal comments or awkwardly tries to correct the same pretentious pothead that invariably raises his hand without telling him he is a moron, is the very essence of teaching.

You rarely get someone with an original idea dancing on his mind that he sometimes tries to quickly expose to his class. But you are better off reading his articles on that, where he had the time to fully develop his arguments.

The internet effectively killed the utility of undergrad philosophy courses, I'd say it killed the entire undergrad humanities.

And by utility I don't mean the typical STEM or law school utility, I mean the utility for someone interested on philosophy, the library and someone to tell you what to read if you are interested on a particular topic. You could say that the courses can teach you to have a solid text and to better your arguments. But how can a single professor teach that to the mass of students he is in charge of grading?

The courses need to be abolished and replaced by an entity charged of grading thesis and essays sent remotely, facilitating the more rare texts and giving a place for public lectures from recognized researchers a la college de france.

>>1893

I'm new to philosophy and have taken no classes in it. I think a class would have been a useful overview.

I did take a class in critical thinking at the Jc, but my professor was extremely lazy- took him two weeks to give us a syllabus, and when he did he typed less than a page. Had no assignments either, just two easy tests. The only useful thing that class opened me up to was a lecture on a list of logical fallacies.

My teacher also had a liberal political bent, and would photocopy his own opinion pieces for the local paper, and the response he got from some ranters. He would then ask us to find logical fallacies in the articles that responded to him, but exempt his own article from criticism. He bragged about his intelligence, and the disassertion he wrote on Kant when he studied abroad in Germany, and how he became a doctor, was Agnostic, and knew more than his family on a daily basis.

Needless to say, I wasn't left with a positive impression on taking those classes. But I did visit a good debate where a Skeptic that taught philosophy/religious studies at the same college debated with a religious guy from Oxford over the probability of the resurrection of Jesus, and mopped the floor with him with myriad arguments and facts, which rekindled my hopes that there are capable lecturers, and I just had unlucky experiences.

>>1894

Philosophy really does attract the smug crowd. Took an intro to philosophy class. 1/3 of the students were fedoras, one of them actually worr a fedora, cargo shorts, a band t-shirt, finglergloves and a trench-coat daily. Another 1/3 were 2deep4u stoners, and the last 1/3 just needed a humanities credit and never contributed.

>>1914

so there's no good people at all?

>>1914

Had I been in that class, I wonder how you would have generalised me.

>>1894

There definitely are capable lecturers, and unlike >>1893 implies, some of them can be of the 'socratic' type. It very much depends on the class, and I was rather lucky to have been in one where all students gladly partook in discussion and had a reasonable amount of views they were flexible and stubborn on, while also having the decency of recognising their own arguments falter and have new arguments convince them. The teacher sometimes even modified essay topics according to the questions the open discussion drifted towards, forcing the students to contemplate all the new stances they had heard and try to evauate the case for all of them.

It really does seem like philosophy classes are redundant, but being in a good class with a good teacher is nonetheless an amazing learning experience.

Philosophy 101 courses can be taught by anything from actual professors with 30 published books to mouthbreathing adjuncts with a bachelor's degree in women's studies. In a philosophy course in general, you can, should, and are expected to argue about shit if you disagree with it, as long as you can bring actual arguments to back yourself up.

But at the 101 level it's likely just going to be a shitshow. If you stick it out to actual topics courses, it'll probably be better, though there's always the hipster fucking faggots at every level.