What Do Philosophers Do?

The romanticized version of what it's like to be a philosopher must be one of the
most appealing careers possible: read great thinkers, think deep thoughts, and
while away the days in a beautiful office, surrounded by books, an Emeralite lamp,
a hot mug of coffee, and perhaps a cat curled up by your feet. For the very few,
your profound thoughts could revolutionize whole fields, herald new political ages,
and inspire generations.

Of course, for many, academic philosophy proves a disappointment—an endless

slog to publish, the tedium and heartache of departmental politics, and a dismal job
market that tends to people to far-flung college towns, far away from family and
friends.

So what is a budding philosopher to do?

An informative series of posts by Helen De Cruz of New APPS: Art, Politics,

Philosophy, Science features interviews with seven philosophy Ph.D.s who have
left academia for the private sector. There's a software engineer, a television
comedy writer, a statistical researcher, a consultant, a network-security engineer,
and a search-engine developer. None of them are what would traditionally be
thought of as a "philosopher."

In a few cases, they've found that their new jobs provide surprising platforms for
further philosophical examination, such as the television screenwriter Eric Kaplan,
who said, “I’m very interested in [the] tension between life and theory and mind and
emotions; I explore that both in philosophy writing and in script writing.” Similarly,
Claartje van Sijl, who now runs her own consulting and training company, says that
the philosophy she studied informs the advice she gives. Her philosophy training,
she explains, "has familiarized me with the greatest philosophical thoughts of 2500
years of history that I can now use as a sounding board for my clients’ and my own
reflections."

But, for the most part, the philosophers aren't deploying their firm grasp of
Kierkegaard in their private-sector work. Rather, it's the skills that philosophers are
trained in—critical thinking, clear writing, quick learning—that translate well to life
outside of academia. As Zachary Ernst, a software engineer at Narrative
Science, puts it, "As a professional philosopher, if you haven't gotten over-
specialized and narrow, then you've got really good analytic and communication
skills. So you've got the ability to learn quickly and efficiently. You're also in the
habit of being very critical of all sorts of ideas and approaches to a variety of
problems. And if you've taught a lot, then you're probably pretty comfortable with
public speaking. Those skills are very rare in almost any workforce, and they're
extremely valuable."

This is not to say that the transition from academia to industry was easy. A few of
the philosophers report that the dim view of private industry inside academia can
stifle an exploration of what else might be out there. Ian Niles, the search-engine
developer, advises, "Don't consider a job outside academia as 'slumming it.'
Academia, for all of its virtues, instills a fear of the 'real world' in students,
particularly graduate students."

To that end, another one of the philosophers noted that for all the training he
received, very little of it led him to conclude that he might be able to make it outside
of a university. Carl Baker, who is now a statistical researcher at the House of
Commons Library, said, "If I had to highlight one weakness in my postgraduate
training it would be the lack of discussion of how the skills developed during a
philosophy Ph.D. can be used elsewhere."

Reading: Introduction part 2

What is philosophy? What makes a perspective Christian?

What Is Philosophy?

What is philosophy all about, and why should we study it? The second question is
easier to answer than the first. Studying philosophy gives us insight into the world
and our place within it and thus provides us with a guide for conducting our lives.
Understood as the history of human thought, philosophy relates to the beginning of
nearly every other major academic discipline - from physics to psychology, from
religious studies to biology, and so on. Not only does philosophy force us to think
hard about difficult and fundamental questions, it also teaches us how to think -
providing us with analytical skills we can use in many other areas. As for the
question of what philosophy is about, it is helpful to begin, as many great
philosophers have, with the idea that the nature of philosophy is itself a matter for
philosophical debate. Phrasing it this way gives us a sense of what to expect
throughout this course, because whatever particular topics philosophers are
concerned with, their practice is always one of questioning. Philosophers from
many different time periods and cultures have asked questions and tried to answer
these questions in ways that can be compared and contrasted. For example, some
philosophers believed that true knowledge came from contemplation and
understanding of the human mind, while others felt that reliable knowledge came
from sensory experiences and testing ideas against the physical world. The
following are some questions philosophers might consider: How do I know that
what I believe is true? What is the difference between right and wrong? What
makes an action just? What makes a painting beautiful? Does God exist? Are
ideas and concepts more “real,” or is physical matter more “real?” What happens to
us after we die? What kind of government is justified? In this unit, we will look at
the question “What does it mean to study philosophy?”

retrieved from http://www.saylor.org/courses/phil101/#

The foregoing is what I would call a typical introduction to Philosophy 101 in just
about any college that one might attend. The issues in philosophy really do not
change all that much. We are confronted by similar issues as the rest of the people
in the world are. So a philosopher attempts to give a reasoned explanation for why
one thinks about the world in the way one does.

For example, if one is convinced that the only proof of a fact has to come to me by
my own personal experience, then one will simply ignore history, because that is
simply the record of other people trying to discover if a fact was provable in their
lives as they lived it. Also, one will not want to learn anything from a teacher since
the teacher’s experience will always be different from my own. So today, we have
many examples of friends who look at life very differently because they have
differing experiences. We hear the line, “That may be true for you, but it is not true
for me.” How can a fact be both true and not true? How can that be? Well, it can be
if only my experiences prove anything to me. Your experiences convince you of
your truth, mine convince me. So we agree that it is only our experience that
makes any difference. We do not even disagree at the fundamental level of life
because we are both depending on our own personal experience to know the truth
of a factoid.

Into such a world as we find today, comes the Christian who asserts that God is
real, even if we cannot see him, touch him, smell him, hear him, nor taste him. The
person who only accepts her own personal experience as an indicator of truth will
scoff at the Christian who says, I have no sensory experience of God, but I know
he is real. I have no sensory experience of the dead being raised, but I know
Jesus is alive. I have no sensory experience of the truth of the Scriptures, but I
know the Bible is true. All of us need to realize that no matter where we live in the
world today, there are any number of people who will scoff at our understanding of
the world because they have a different philosophical perspective.

That is why we need to know something of the world of philosophy, but I will
quickly say that this course is a slow slog through the difficult questions that face
each of us. We will only touch the surface of any one of the issues what we take
up. What I desire for you is that you will see the importance of being able to think
things over. While you are thinking about your life and what it is all about, I want
you to be able to realize how readily we engage in making a statement that does
not bear scrutiny. I want you to know that you can, on the other hand, begin the
journey toward a deeper understanding of our world and your place in it.

The issue for us to be digging into as we go along in this course is, “What makes
my perspective ‘Christian’?” There are many people who have decided on a
specific approach to the world and called it Christian. I am not going to be making
any definitive statements about what is Christian and what is not. That is for us all
to evaluate as we study the Word of God and the world in which we find ourselves.
What I do believe you will discover is that as a Christian, I must be very careful in
how I present my thoughts and ideas. I cannot go off on some wild tangent and call
it Christian. There is a long history of Christian philosophy which we can study and
benefit from in our own ruminations on our world. This history will assist us in
keeping a careful eye on our own thoughts.

As we make our way through the next several weeks, keep asking yourself is what
you are reading or seeing or hearing is in any way helpful to you in being able to be
a Christian with a perspective on the world. That is how you become a Christian
philosopher!

Reading: The Big Questions

Who am I?

This is a fundamental question that every human being needs to attempt to

answer.

Am I an animal that has evolved just like all the rest of the animals we find around
us?

Am I different from the pets I own?

If I am fundamentally similar since my DNA is about 90% the same as a cat?

If we are so similar in the basic building blocks of our cells, what makes me
special?

Does my life go on when I die or is my life only as viable as the offspring I have
given birth to?

If I have no children, does my life simply end and that is all there is?
Do I need to have a community around me to give me my identity?

Or is my identity given me by something else? Given to me by God?

What is real?

What is meant by the term real?

Do I have to be able to touch something for it to be real?

If I cannot touch it, can the sun be real?

Is history real?

How do you know for certain that your body is real? Could it be your imagination?

If you can imagine something or dream something that seems as though it is very
real, is it? Or is a figment of my imagination or a dream just so much unreal stuff?

Is darkness real? Or is it a measurement of the absence of light?

Is there a God? Does it matter?

Is God real? How do I come to know him/her/it?

Is this God dependent on my idea of him to exist?

Is there a star in the sky which is actually us seeing God?

Does God interact with the world in which we live?

What difference does it make to me if God exists?

Which religion is the "correct” one? Are they not all the same?

Does God speak to us?

Is there a God? Does it matter?

How do we know anything?

I know something if I experience it. For example, I fell to the ground like everyone
else falls to the ground. Gravity must exist.

I know something if I am logically convinced of its truth. For example, I can see the
ruins of ancient Rome. I was not there, but those who have studied this have
discovered that the Roman culture existed.
Is faith a viable avenue to the arrival of truth?

What does it mean to know something is true? What if a new discovery proves that
the thing I thought was real, is just an imaginary creation?

How do we learn anything? What does it mean to go from ignorance to insight?

What is my mind? Is it my soul, too?

Is my mind something more than the neural tracks that have been formed between
cells in my brain?

Why does it seem like I can be outside of myself watching myself think or do an
activity?

How does my mind function? What are memories? How are those memories
stored in my mind?

How is it that some people simply are more capable of using their mental capacity
than others are? What makes one "smart”?

Religion speaks of a soul within the human being, what is a soul? Is it the
equivalent of my mind?

What makes me capable of experiencing joy? Is it a construct of my mind or is it

something else?

Is there a universal "ought”?

If I speak of morality, what does that word mean?

Are there such things as right and wrong ways of acting and thinking?

If I am confused, does that make me a bad person?

If something is wrong for me, is it wrong for you? Who gets to say?

Reading: Advice to Christian Philosophers by Alvin Plantinga

Truth Journal

Advice to Christian Philosophers

(With a special preface for Christian thinkers from different disciplines)

Professor Alvin Plantinga

Date: 1984

Preface.

In the paper that follows I write from the perspective of a philosopher, and of
course I have detailed knowledge of (at best) only my own field. I am convinced,
however, that many other disciplines resemble philosophy with respect to things I
say below. (It will be up to the practitioners of those other disciplines to see
whether or not I am right.)

First, it isn't just in philosophy that we Christians are heavily influenced by the
practice and procedures of our non-Christian peers. (Indeed, given the
cantankerousness of philosophers and the rampant disagreement in philosophy it
is probably easier to be a maverick there than in most other disciplines.) The same
holds for nearly any important contemporary intellectual discipline: history, literary
and artistic criticism, musicology, and the sciences, both social and natural. In all of
these areas there are ways of proceeding, pervasive assumptions about the nature
of the discipline (for example, assumptions about the nature of science and its
place in our intellectual economy), assumptions about how the discipline should be
carried on and what a valuable or worthwhile contribution is like and so on; we
imbibe these assumptions, if not with our mother's milk, at any rate in learning to
pursue our disciplines. In all these areas we learn how to pursue our disciplines
under the direction and influence of our peers.

But in many cases these assumptions and presumptions do not easily mesh with a
Christian or theistic way of looking at the world. This is obvious in many areas: in
literary criticism and film theory, where creative anti-realism (see below) runs riot;
in sociology and psychology and the other human sciences; in history; and even in
a good deal of contemporary (liberal) theology. It is less obvious but nonetheless
present in the so-called natural sciences. The Australian philosopher J. J. C. Smart
once remarked that an argument useful (from his naturalistic point of view) for
convincing believers in human freedom of the error of their ways is to point out that
contemporary mechanistic biology seems to leave no room for human free will:
how, for example, could such a thing have developed in the evolutionary course of
things? Even in physics and mathematics, those austere bastions of pure reason,
similar questions arise. These questions have to do with the content of these
sciences and the way in which they have developed. They also have to do with the
way in which (as they are ordinarily taught and practiced) these disciplines are
artificially separated from questions concerning the nature of the objects they
study-a separation determined, not by what is most natural to the subject matter in
question, but by a broadly positivist conception of the nature of knowledge and the
nature of human intellectual activity.
And thirdly, here, as in philosophy, Christians must display autonomy and
integrality. If contemporary mechanistic biology really has no place for human
freedom, then something other than contemporary mechanistic biology is called
for; and the Christian community must develop it. If contemporary psychology is
fundamentally naturalist, then it is up to Christian psychologists to develop an
alternative that fits well with Christian supernaturalism-one that takes its start from
such scientifically seminal truths as that God has created humankind in his own
image.

Of course I do not presume to tell Christian practitioners of other disciplines how

properly to pursue those disciplines as Christians. (I have enough and to spare in
trying to discern how to pursue my own discipline properly.) But I deeply believe
that the pattern displayed in philosophy is also to be found in nearly every area of
serious intellectual endeavor. In each of these areas the fundamental and often
unexpressed presuppositions that govern and direct the discipline are not
religiously neutral; they are often antithetic to a Christian perspective. In these
areas, then, as in philosophy, it is up to Christians who practice the relevant
discipline to develop the right Christian alternatives.

Reprinted from Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian

Philosophers vol. 1:3, (253-271), permanently copyrighted October 1984. Used by
permission of the Editor. New preface by author. Journal web site:
www.faithandphilosophy.com

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Reading: A Peek Ahead

A peek ahead

What are we going to study and in what order?

As we move our way through the various weeks, I will be assigning activities that
will assist you in coming to grips with some of what we are doing. There will be
several quizzes which will help you to discern if you are making progress in
understanding the material. The quiz results are what we use to determine if you
have passed the course.

As an added “treat” we will be reading a couple of pages each week from a

recently retired Christian philosopher named Alvin Plantinga as he gives “Advice to
Christian Philosophers.” This will give us an opportunity to read a full philosophical
work by a gifted thinker. Much of the rest of our reading will simply be excerpts
from much larger works. So this will be a unique opportunity to see how a
philosopher thinks and works his way through various arguments.

In the weeks to come, these are the topics we will be addressing:

Week 2: A. Logic and arguments: here we will be introducing the topic of

arguments. In philosophy everything needs to take the shape of an argument. That
means, it has to be logical. Many times when we use the term arguments, we are
referring to a sharp disagreement between two or more people. But here it is
referring to its use in philosophical discourse. One must have more than a
response of, “I guess that is what I mean” when someone asks about a position
one has taken. The philosophical argument is based on the idea that one can
state a thought and then demonstrate with various methods of support, why one
has arrived at the thought.

B. How to write a philosophy essay: here you will have an opportunity to

work your way through a power point presentation that gives many very useful
pointers concerning how an essay in philosophy might look. One important aspect
is proper attribution of our sources. Philosophical writing takes place in a broad
community of scholars (that includes you!!) and we need to learn how to give
proper credit for their thoughts that have challenged our thoughts, refined our
thoughts, or affirmed our thoughts.

C. We will work our way through a chart of the most common fallacies – that is,
statements that when we look more closely might sound good, but are simply not
true. These are often used in our everyday discussions to influence others to think
the way we do. But they are examples of how the great Liar can make things
sound like he is speaking as an angel of light. (See II Corinthians 11: …

13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as
apostles of Christ. 14No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of
light.15Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as
servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.)
We, I hope, have no intention of deciding to fight darkness with darkness. So we
are called, I believe, to learn to speak the truth with love so that others may come
to know the truth of God as we speak.

D. Then we will take a little time to listen to a great Christian philosopher, CS

Lewis, as he makes some pithy statements that are worth thinking over. My intent
in that lecture will be to give a window into the mind of a man who knew how to
think clearly and logically. In my opinion, you just might find some statements that
are worth writing down and letting them percolate through your thinking as we
study philosophy together.

Week 3 Ancient Philosophers:

The first thing we will do is to learn about a few of the really, really old Greeks.
These are the early philosophers of the world. It was ancient Greece that first
developed teachers who spent their days thinking about how the world works and
how humanity fits into it. Much of their teaching remains as a seed for our own
thinking about life and the world in which we live.

The second part of week three introduces us to the two great philosophers of the
ancient Greek world: Plato and Aristotle. We will only touch on a little bit of their
work since it is easily worth an entire course just to scratch the surface of either of
them.

Finally in week 3 we will be taking a short look at how the art of the ancient Greeks
which has descended to us today still speaks of their philosophical convictions.

Week four gets us into an area of philosophical thinking rather than an historical
era. We jump into the field of ontology as it is called as we ask ourselves, “What is
real?” What makes a thing a thing? Is an idea real? Is a flower real? How do we
know what the difference is? We will be listening to the teaching of Aristotle which
seems to influence so much of what is involved in ontological thought today.

We will then turn to the teaching of a man named George Berkeley. One of his
teachings can be finalized into this sentence, “Thus a material thing such as an
apple consists of a collection of ideas (shape, color, taste, physical properties, etc.)
which are caused in the spirits of humans by the spirit of God.” Berkeley’s ontology
says that God is the One who causes the ideas of various material things to
resonate in our minds and at that point we call it such and such.

The third part of the week is focused on attempting to understand something of the
ontology of Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff.

Week 5 Does God Exist?

As we get into week five, we take up one of the great questions of all time, Does
God exist? The goal of the week is to have read and comprehended something of
the many differing thoughts on how we know God is real.

We will begin with a consideration of the Ontological argument presented by St.

Anselm about 1000 years ago. You will notice that here we are considering
arguments – just the sort of thing we did in week two. This is a working out of how
arguments work and how they continue to have effects over many years and
differing generations.

In the second section of week two we will read the work of a contemporary
Christian philosopher named Peter Kreeft. He works his way through many
different arguments for the existence of God. We will be reading his material on
just a few of them.

The third major reading for week three is an interview published in the New York
times in which the author asks Alvin Plantinga to make the case for the existence
of God in his philosophical perspective.

Week 6 addresses the area of philosophy we call epistemology. Here the basic
question is how do we know something. For example, what does it mean to say “I
know Jeremy. He is my friend.” What do we mean to say when we assert that we
know something or someone? How reliable is that knowing?

The beginning of the material for his week is focused on some interesting material
from the web on the subject of knowing. Then we move to the philosophy of Rene
Descartes because his understanding of epistemology is thought of as the basis for
much of modern philosophical thought. The third entry on the materials sheet has
to do with how Christianity and Science interact. It is written by John Suppe who is
a professor at Princeton University. His insights will be a valuable window into how
today’s scientists look at the issue of epistemology.

Week 7 delves into the mysteries of what it means to be human. What

differentiates us from the other creatures that inhabit our world with us? What does
it take to qualify as human? Then we ask, “what is the difference between the soul
and the spirit?” We will make use of an article by Wayne Jackson to investigate this
issue. Our third article for week 8 makes use of a Jewish point of view to help us
dig into the Old Testament Scriptural idea of the relationship of Body and Soul.

Week 8, by this time, you may be wondering how long this course is going to take?
How long until I am finished? So, in order to make this all very relevant we will dig
into the concept of time. What is time and how do we understand our place in
time? We will use some videos, some thoughts from St Augustine who was the first
philosopher to attempt to understand time, and an article from a contemporary
Christian who gives us his idea of time.

In week 9 we turn our attention to a man who has been called the father of modern
philosophy, Soren Kierkegaard. He was a Danish Christian philosopher whose
works established him as a thinker that needed to be heard. After listening to a
couple of secular people attempting to understand Kierkegaard, we will hear from a
wonderfully articulate Christian thinker as he explains his take on the philosophy of
Kierkegaard.

When we reach week 10, your mind will be spinning, I’m sure! So we might as well
ask the question that will be on all our minds by this point, “So what is my mind?”
what is this thing that is bewildered by all these differing philosophical concepts? Is
it my soul? Is it my heart? What is the mind of a human being?

Week 11, the penultimate week of our time together, digs into the question of
ethics. Is there such a thing as what is known as a “universal ought”? Are there
standards of right and wrong, good and evil that are consistent no matter where we
are at in the world? Or are our morals and ethical standards simply a unique
cultural expression of who we are in our various countries? I think you will find this
to be intriguing.

Our final week will be devoted to an introduction to a significant Dutch philosopher

of the late 20th Century by the name of Herman Dooyeweerd. His thinking has
played a significant role in developing the way Christian philosophers in the
Calvinist tradition have approached the issues of our day.

That will conclude our time together as we skim the surface of all that philosophers
have been working at over the past three thousand years. I know you will enjoy the
ride!