Well, to be somewhat fair, several of the commenters there are not saying “read original sources for the sake of reading original sources” but rather “read original sources because they have value which this particular branch which developed from it has lost sight of.” Which is not as obviously wrong as a matter of logic as you make it sound. The claim is precisely that in addition to B and C, there is a potential B’ which could be derived from A, and that B does not include the elements of A from which B’ could be derived.
That said, it seems the proper response to that claim is “what value, and why should I believe that it’s worth the effort involved in obtaining it?”
Hmm, maybe my pattern matching was too quick. My prior for “Philosophy and history of philosophy are conflated” is quite high, since most philosophy courses in French high schools basically teach us what old dead guys wrote on things like Love, Death etc. I did have an actual philosophy professor for 2 months though (he tried to teach semantic and logic).
By the way, I also strongly suspect that Philosophy is often also treated as a literary discipline (at least here in France). The two biggest clues are the obligation to read the original works, and the refusal to admit that such works could be correct or incorrect as a simple matter of fact¹.
(1) In our high school final exam, any definite answer to the philosophy question is shot down. We are mainly supposed to spit back old dead wisdom, and conclude somehow that we don’t have the answer. Even if the question is as silly as “Can opinions at odds with the facts be true?”
I guess this is one of my problems with philosophy: unlike in sciences, there is no B, only a collection of disjoint and often incompatible B’s with various asterisks.
Well, to be somewhat fair, several of the commenters there are not saying “read original sources for the sake of reading original sources” but rather “read original sources because they have value which this particular branch which developed from it has lost sight of.” Which is not as obviously wrong as a matter of logic as you make it sound. The claim is precisely that in addition to B and C, there is a potential B’ which could be derived from A, and that B does not include the elements of A from which B’ could be derived.
That said, it seems the proper response to that claim is “what value, and why should I believe that it’s worth the effort involved in obtaining it?”
Hmm, maybe my pattern matching was too quick. My prior for “Philosophy and history of philosophy are conflated” is quite high, since most philosophy courses in French high schools basically teach us what old dead guys wrote on things like Love, Death etc. I did have an actual philosophy professor for 2 months though (he tried to teach semantic and logic).
By the way, I also strongly suspect that Philosophy is often also treated as a literary discipline (at least here in France). The two biggest clues are the obligation to read the original works, and the refusal to admit that such works could be correct or incorrect as a simple matter of fact¹.
(1) In our high school final exam, any definite answer to the philosophy question is shot down. We are mainly supposed to spit back old dead wisdom, and conclude somehow that we don’t have the answer. Even if the question is as silly as “Can opinions at odds with the facts be true?”
I guess this is one of my problems with philosophy: unlike in sciences, there is no B, only a collection of disjoint and often incompatible B’s with various asterisks.