Why study philosophy

An MA in philosophy can serve many purposes: it can be a bridge to a PhD program; the intensive focus and heightened intellectual atmosphere can be valuable in its own right, and can also distinguish one from the field in applications for jobs or positions in professional schools.

Our department offers annual workshops to explain graduate study in philosophy and the applications process, and also intensive personal assistance to students assembling application files. Further information on graduate study in philosophy is available from the Philosophical Gourmet Report. Toggle navigation. Why study philosophy? Philosophy provides training in the construction of clear formulations, good arguments, and apt examples.

It thereby helps one develop the ability to be convincing. One learns to build and defend one's own views, to appreciate competing positions, and to indicate forcefully why one considers one's own views preferable to alternatives.

Writing is taught intensively in many philosophy courses, and many regularly assigned philosophical texts are unexcelled as literary essays. Philosophy teaches interpretive writing through its examination of challenging texts, comparative writing through emphasis on fairness to alternative positions, argumentative writing through developing students' ability to establish their own views, and descriptive writing through detailed portrayal of concrete examples: the anchors to which generalizations must be tied.

Philosophy can yield immediate benefits for students planning postgraduate work. As law, medical, business, and other professional school faculty and admissions personnel have often said, philosophy is excellent preparation for the training and later careers of the professionals in question. In preparing to enter fields which have special requirements for postgraduate study, such as computer science, management, medicine, or public administration, choosing philosophy as a second major or minor alongside the specialized degree can be very useful.

Talk to an advisor about potential pathways to a double-major. Philosophy is indispensable for this. Many important questions about a discipline, such as the nature of its concepts and its relation to other disciplines, do not belong to that discipline, are not usually pursued in it, and are philosophical in nature.

Philosophy is, moreover, essential in assessing the various standards of evidence used by other disciplines. Since all fields of knowledge employ reasoning and must set standards of evidence, logic and epistemology have a general bearing on all these fields. Still another value of philosophy in education is its contribution to one's capacity to frame hypotheses, do research, and put problems into manageable form.

Philosophical thinking strongly emphasizes clear formulation of ideas and problems, selection of relevant data, and objective methods for assessing ideas and proposals.

It also emphasizes development of a sense of the new directions suggested by the hypotheses and questions one encounters in doing research.

Philosophers regularly build on both the successes and failures of their predecessors. A person with philosophical training can readily learn to do the same in any field.

Employers want—and reward—many of the capacities that the study of philosophy develops: for instance, the ability to solve problems, to communicate, to organize ideas and issues, to assess pros and cons, and to boil down complex data. These capacities represent transferable skills.

They are transferable not only from philosophy to non-philosophy areas, but from one non-philosophical field to another. For this reason, people trained in philosophy are not only prepared to do many kinds of tasks; they are particularly well prepared to cope with change in their chosen career field, or even move into new careers. As all this suggests, there are people trained in philosophy in just about every field. They have gone into such professions as teaching at all levels , medicine , law , computer science , management , publishing , sales , criminal justice, public relations , and many other fields.

Law schools will tell you that a major in philosophy provides excellent preparation for law school and a career in law. Philosophy excels as a pre-law major because it teaches you the very proficiencies that law schools require: developing and evaluating arguments, writing carefully and clearly, applying principles and rules to specific cases, sorting out evidence, and understanding ethical and political norms. They can elicit hidden assumptions and articulate overlooked alternatives.

They can persuade people to take unfamiliar views or novel options seriously. They can summarize complicated materials without undue simplification.

They can integrate diverse data and construct useful analogies. They can distinguish subtle differences without overlooking similarities. They can also adapt to change, a capacity of growing importance in the light of rapid advances in so many fields. And well educated philosophers can usually teach what they know to others. This ability is especially valuable at a time when training and retraining are so often required by rapid technological changes.

These abilities are quite general, but they bear directly on the range of careers for which philosophers are prepared. Philosophers have the skills necessary for an enormous range of both academic and non-academic jobs. The kind of basic education which philosophical training provides is eminently useful in some major aspects of virtually any occupation.

Below are lists of philosophy courses that are particularly appropriate for people studying, aspiring to, or working in disciplines outside of philosophy, as these philosophy courses help to deepen one's understanding of other fields of study, to answer some of the fundamental questions that arise in other disciplines, and to clarify the relationship between one discipline and another field of study.

These texts are available online at apaonline. Annual Security and Fire Safety Report. Why Study Philosophy? William W.

Why study philosophy? General Problem Solving Skills: The study of philosophy enhances a person's problem-solving capacities. Communication Skills: Philosophy contributes uniquely to the development of expressive and communicative powers. Persuasive Powers: Philosophy provides training in the construction of clear formulations, good arguments, and appropriate examples.

Writing Skills: Writing is taught intensively in many philosophy courses, and many regularly assigned philosophical texts are also excellent as literary essays.

Understanding Other Disciplines: Philosophy is indispensable for our ability to understand other disciplines. Development of Sound Methods of Research and Analysis: Still another value of philosophy in education is its contribution to our capacity to frame hypotheses, to do research, and to put problems in manageable form. Philosophy and Religion. Grace Harrisonburg, Virginia