I’m not sure of the merit of studying philosophy as opposed to just personally thinking about philosophical ideas. For me, the most profound pragmatic benefit has been to deeply alter my own psychology as a result of examining ideas like free-will and morality. I had a lot of unexamined assumptions and strongly felt conventions and taboos that I managed to overcome through examining my own feelings in a philosophical way. This is very different from the kind of learnt understanding that can be obtained by reading other peoples ideas. I think it is very common for people to parrot philosophical statements without them actually altering a persons behaviour in any significant way.
In particular, I find a lot of classic philosophy unsatisfying as it seems much less relevant in our society. I think this is particularly the case if you adopt a science is enough to explain everything and the brain is a computer perspective. I’d love to read some philosophy that gave me a new and distinct perspective that might alter my priorities, and thus my behaviour, but I have yet to read such material. The closest I’ve encountered would be status anxiety which helpfully reframes classic philosophical statements concerning status and value in a modern context. This really brought home the extent to which our values are culturally specific. This helped me to pursue my life with my own priorities, as well as giving me the perspective to enable me to examine what I actually value. In that sense I consider these philosophical ideas to be much more practically useful to determining my life than any piece of technical or theoretical understanding.
I’m not sure of the merit of studying philosophy as opposed to just personally thinking about philosophical ideas. For me, the most profound pragmatic benefit has been to deeply alter my own psychology as a result of examining ideas like free-will and morality. I had a lot of unexamined assumptions and strongly felt conventions and taboos that I managed to overcome through examining my own feelings in a philosophical way. This is very different from the kind of learnt understanding that can be obtained by reading other peoples ideas. I think it is very common for people to parrot philosophical statements without them actually altering a persons behaviour in any significant way. In particular, I find a lot of classic philosophy unsatisfying as it seems much less relevant in our society. I think this is particularly the case if you adopt a science is enough to explain everything and the brain is a computer perspective. I’d love to read some philosophy that gave me a new and distinct perspective that might alter my priorities, and thus my behaviour, but I have yet to read such material. The closest I’ve encountered would be status anxiety which helpfully reframes classic philosophical statements concerning status and value in a modern context. This really brought home the extent to which our values are culturally specific. This helped me to pursue my life with my own priorities, as well as giving me the perspective to enable me to examine what I actually value. In that sense I consider these philosophical ideas to be much more practically useful to determining my life than any piece of technical or theoretical understanding.